The Mountain and The City

The Complete Saga

By: Brian Martinez

Narrated by: Victoria Smart

An epidemic has killed off most humans, turning the rest into beasts with sharp nails, keen senses and an insatiable hunger. Now, years later, a solitary survivor hides in a trailer above a dead city. This is life with the door and windows taped shut, where survival comes down to two, simple rules: stay quiet, and protect the air.

One day, a visitor comes up the mountain. It's a meeting that leads to a fateful decision, and a sacrifice that will change everything.

Collected here for the first time, The Mountain and The City is a post-apocalyptic serial that has kept its faithful listeners on the edge of their seats time and time again.

©2012 Brian Martinez (P)2013 Brian Martinez

Great story but the audio version was a bit echoy'

Where does The Mountain and The City rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

This is a pretty good apocalyptic book.

What did you like best about this story?

The Mountain and the City has a great first person narrator. Brian Martinez has created a great character with which he explores the effects of having grown in an apocalyptic world: trust issues, stunted emotional development, issues with morality in a survival mode, etc. It was very well done.

What three words best describe Victoria Smart’s voice?

Echo, monotone, low

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Every time the Main Character was looking after Child.

Any additional comments?

Near the end of the book I was thinking that this book lacked a lot of world building and that we were pretty much blind as to what had happened to the world. Then, BAM! the very end is the story of how everything went to hell. Great story.

Wasn't sure at first

A story of survival, regret, and redemption in a virus ridden apocalypse. The minimalistic​ nature of the writing threw me at first, but I quickly realized how integral to the story it was. Loved it.

A fresh take on the zombie theme

Where does The Mountain and The City rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

A solid listen. Well written and decently narrated. It takes the idea of the zombie apocalypse and injects a bit more humanity into the creatures than is usually seen.

What other book might you compare The Mountain and The City to and why?

World War Z - The Mountain and The City is a serialized novel, so each chapter feels more like an individual episode than chapters often do. Because of this, the read style is similar to WWZ, in which several different stories are told woven together from an almost journal-style perspective. TMATC is certainly more of a traditional narrative, but still felt like a similar read to WWZ.

Which character – as performed by Victoria Smart – was your favorite?

The performance didn't stand out as anything particularly memorable to me.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Yes. The second half of the book actually takes a pretty steep decent into some pretty emotionally compelling material.

Any additional comments?

A very interesting read. It starts off seeming to be a staple zombie apocalypse story. It doesn't take long to discover that there is more to the creatures in The Mountain and The City than just mindless walking corpses. The story does a great job of giving the reader (listener) perspective from several different viewpoints. I would certainly recommend giving this a read if you're into post-apocalyptic or zombie literature, you might just find something you haven't seen before.I wish I had known that the novel was a serial before I went into it. After finding out that that was the case, the pacing made a lot more sense. There are a lot of climactic moments through the novel, and I kept thinking it was about to end, only to notice that there was a ton more. This was always a pleasant surprise, as the story kept getting better, but I did think it was a little strange to start with.

NEED A BETTER NARRATOR!

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Okay, just because the book involves the whole entire planet practically being dead, does NOT mean the narrator has to be dead on the inside too. seriously no emotion in the voice, didn't change her voice AT ALL to different characters so you had no idea who was talking and she would pause for like 10 in between periods which is the way you're NOT supposed to do it. ANYONE WHO IS READING THIS, TURN AWAY! DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY AND TIME ON THIS AUDIOBOOK!

I LOVED this book!

I loved this book. The narration was different to be certain but it absolutely fit with the story- read in first person narrative, the main character was a child when she last was around others so her language and speech was very youthful even though years had passed. I found it to be perfectly suited for THIS story.
There have only been a handful of stories where I nearly grieved when they were over and this was one!
I am excited to locate this authors other works.
So so so sad it's over:(

Awesome Reaf

I listen this on Audible all the way through start to finish, I loved it!

A Touching Single Book Post-Apocalypse Novel

The Mountain and the City is dreamy, poignant novel of a young lady in a post apocalypse world. she has lived in isolation for a number of years, since the collapse, but leaves her isolation for an unexpected reason, to readers and I expect the character.

The world itself described was unique. We aren't talking standard template slow zombies, fast zombies, etc, but a world of new ideas. It was a touching story of humanity. When being an uninfected human doesn't make you human, nor an infected inhuman.

I liked how the book wrapped up with part zero, which covered the collapse and the girl.

Both endings (the main story, and part zero) were on the sad side, I do admit.

On a technical note, I found the audio volume level a bit low. It was OK on headphones, but when using my phone speaker I was unable to listen to the book, as opposed to most other books I listen to. The narrator speed was a little slow as well, but the audiobook speed adjustments handle that.

After burning myself out on Zombie books (most of

them utter trash) I found myself looking for a dystopic novel to listen to. I finally purchased TM&TC... after it lay languishing in my wish list for well nigh on a year.

I am SO glad I purchased it. The story and premise are unique to the zombie genre- it is well constructed world but the author is "John LeCarre like" in his lack of "telling you how it all happened" but letting the reader deduce, through scattered and dissonant clues, what is really going on.
i found the child like language of the protagonist poignant and the use of phrase (which the author should copy-rite) "for that is what life is" provoking on so many levels.

Push on past zero- I beg you. The conclusion is every bit as good as the prologue- which is not to say that the novel (or novels- not sure which) is not outstanding.

Well written, disturbing and, as all good novels are, a reflection of the fears and desires of our current age!

Worst Audible book I have ever heard

What disappointed you about The Mountain and The City?

Narration was excruciating. Very hard to listen to, quality was poor, intonation was absent.
Very flat affect, monotone.

What could Brian Martinez have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Narrator was so bad as to spoil the whole thing for me. D.J. Molles mentioned the book, said it was one book that he learned from, that is the only reason I ordered it. Now, we know what he learned, He learned if he could not afford a great narrator, don't publish a audio book.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Victoria Smart?

Anyone would be better than Victoria Smart. (Sorry Victoria, but it is the truth.)

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The Mountain and The City?

I would avoid the lengthy description and frequent referrals to past events. The story would have benefitted from a more chronological approach.

Any additional comments?

I really don't like to write such a negative review, but I would tell my friends to avoid the Audible version for sure.

Not what I was expecting

This felt more like a race against time, with all the build up and sharp let downs. The story is told from the point of view of girl who was abandoned at the age of five, so she talks like she is five. Who's name we don't even discover until the end, survived the apocalypse in a trailer with plastic sheeting, duct tape and a Haz-Mat suit. All of the scences took a lot of time to explain, time that could have been spent elsewhere. Did I mention there are mutants? The girl ends up befriending a child mutant and they embark on a series of hair brain adventures. The dialogue between the two is slow and painful, remember five years old. They first go into the city and narrowly escape capture by going into a cave where the girl ends up taking her mask off and becoming infected. This is where I was lost, the plague infects everybody changing them into blood thirsty mutants but this girl somehow delay’s the effects long enough to tackle all these missions. After escaping that they venture to a military base to re supply when they almost get caught and end up killing one a survivor. By this point the two characters are referring to each other as mother and child. They eventually find a brother to join with him to take back control of the base. For the end the girl and the brother walk off into the sunset for a few days before the girl realizes she loves the mutant child and returns to her.

Audiobook provided for review by the author.

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