Zombie Galaxy: Outbreak

By: Scott Reeves

Narrated by: Andrew Wehrlen

The first novella in the new Zombie Galaxy series takes the zombie apocalypse and raises the stakes to galactic proportions.

Thousands of years in the future, the planet-city Caldor is ground zero when a new method of matter transmission unleashes a zombie apocalypse on the planet's 800 billion inhabitants. A handful of people fight to survive and reach the roof of a 10-mile high skyscraper, where they hope to be rescued by a starship. But they will soon discover that no world is safe from the horde of undead that has been unleashed upon the galaxy.

Part dystopian fiction and part zombie thriller, Zombie Galaxy is a new breed of science fiction horror.

©2012 Scott Reeves (P)2012 Scott Reeves

An Interesting Twist On The Zombie Trend

This audiobook was provided to me by Audiobook Jukebox for review.

Unlike most zombie books this one does not start on Earth, instead it is on another planet, Caldor, which is essentially one big city and uses advanaced technology for just about everything. The way the zombie “disease” arrives and spreads is actually quite interesting, people use transmission pads to transport to and from places and it is the use of one of these new pads that brings the zombie disease onto Caldor. It is certainly not the typical start to a zombie story and the way it spreads so quickly using this everyday technology puts the entire planet in chaos in a matter of hours. With technology being not only the source of the initial infected person but the way it is spread to so many so quickly it gives the plague an eerie efficiency.

Likely the most interesting twist of all in the whole story is that it’s not just humans who get infected, but the technology they use as well. One would think something like zombies would be restricted to sentient beings, but in this case it is not and that in itself proved to be a nice difference from other zombie stories.

There were a number of characters introduced throughout the span of the book though each chapter focused on a certain character. The stories of each character became woven together, some right away, others closer to the end. I can’t say that there were any characters that leapt out at me as being truly amazing, but they each lent something to the story which made it flow smoothly through the events.

The narration of the story was decent. I found that the narrator, Andrew Wehrlen, had a good voice to listen to however he spoke quite fast and there were times where the speed in which he spoke made me almost miss parts of the story. A bit slower narration would have made the overall experience of this audiobook better. The downside to the book. It was short, a little too short. The chapters were really fast and seemed to fly by way too fast even though the story steadily moved forward.

The ending was a bit lackluster and in fact considering how short this book was it felt like the author broke it into two or more parts simply to make a series, which are growing in popularity over stand alone books, when it could easily have been done in a single book. Nonetheless it was an interesting book and a nice twist on the zombie genre. However if you are looking for a quick zombie read that is different and leads to more than this book is a good choice.