The World Ends in Hickory Hollow

By: Ardath Mayhar

Narrated by: Dennis Holland

When the bombs fell and Western civilization ended, the residents of Hickory Hollow, Texas, scarcely noticed the difference. They were already used to fending for themselves - growing their own food, helping their neighbors survive, keeping their rural life going, much as before. But when the Ungers - a band of renegade thieves, murderers, and ne'er-do-wells-began raiding the nearby plots, looting and killing everyone in sight, it was time to take action!

©1985 Ardath Mayhar (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Good not great

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Yes, it was well worth the listen.

What does Dennis Holland bring to the story that you wouldn???t experience if you just read the book?

Narrated well, production was seamless, no heavy breathing or noticed edit breaks.

Any additional comments?

This was not as action packed as I had expected. The story is good enough that you pay attention to characters, but not as exciting as other titles in the SHTF / T.E.O.T.W.A.W.K.I. genre that seems to be expanding with new stories monthly. As a prepper myself I love to read(listen) these books for the authors point of view and research on post fall living.

Unforgivable Casting Mistake

I am really, really upset with Audible for what they did with this audiobook. There really isn’t any excuse for it. For a company who is the leading distributor of audiobooks, and one of the major producers of audiobooks, a mistake in casting this bad should never be made. The book is told from the perspective of a woman, with many strong female characters, and the main antagonist are also female, yet, the narrator is a male. Not just a male, but a male with a pretty deep baritone voice. I can not tell you how many times in this 6 hour production that I had to remind myself that the narrative voice should be female. The funny thing is, when the book originally started, I thought that perhaps the Hardeman’s were a homosexual couple, until I found out that our perspective character’s name was Lucinda. Now, Dennis Holland isn’t a bad narrator. He did a great job giving the book a Texas feel, but it was a male Texas feel. Having a male narrator was simply asinine. There are so many great female narrators that could have taken on this role, Xe Sands, Cassandra Campbell, Khristine Hvam… Hell, Tai Sammons would have been brilliant here. It angers me to no end how simply wrong and lazy this casting was. It would have been like casting Tom Arnold to star in Pretty Women, or to have Carrot Top star in a Malcolm X biopic, or cast Tom Cruise to play Jack Reacher… oh, wait… So, yes. WRONG. I just wonder if anyone at Audible actually read the novel. Harrumph…

What the HECK?

This is a post apocalypse story of a family who lives out in the wilderness when everything goes to hell in the world. They for the most part had been living off the land and fending for themselves when “it” happens so for them not much changes. The story was well written and there was some depth to it. However, I felt like it was written in a way that was to pleasant for this type of subject matter, “she was as uneasy as a fox in a box” or “they were as busy as ticks in a tar bucket”. A lot of statements like this in every chapter; it just didn’t fit with this genre.

I have probably read/listen to just about every Post Apocalypse book out there and had never come across one that was as warm and nice as this. They took boxes of can goods to a town food pantry because they thought they had way to much even though they took in every stray and stranger.

The main character is a woman named Lucinda and it’s her story so why they had a man narrate baffles me. Not only was it a masculine sounding man he then tries to disguise his voice by lowering it and speaking softly trying to imitate a woman which made it worse. At first I thought maybe it’s a transvestite couple and he’s in the middle of his gender reassignment operation but that wasn’t the case (ok I’m kidding!). I never could get use to him speaking like he did and it made it very hard to focus on the story. Just imagine a man talking about birthing his children or his menstruation cycle? It’s weird and it totally ruined the story. Who would make a decision like this? Maybe they think stupid people listen to books. I didn’t even want to give it one star for narration/performance but if I would have left it blank then it would seem like I didn’t have a problem with it or that I didn’t care.

If you like warm and fuzzy Post Apocalypse stories then you might like this - BUT PLEASE listen to the sample reading before you use/waste your credit.