The Orphans

Loved the story!!

Do you ever wonder how or why does the Zombie Apocalypse start? I mean, I know how it usually starts in books or movies, but if it was real, how would it start? Well I think Mike Evans hit a home run with this because it's exactly the way I think it would start!!

The government recruit some top scientists to create something soldiers could use in defense of chemical warfare, but things don't go as planned. Frank Fox was one of the scientists but was sent home before he could see the finished product. His wife had died of cancer and he had to care for his son. Years later, he meets a woman and just as he proposes to her, she tells him that she has terminal cancer. He can't lose someone else to this disease, so gets his research out from the time he was working with the government and decides to try to modify it so it can become a cure. Well... that's all I'll say about it!! Want to know what happens? Then go buy it.

I find with a lot of the Zombie books I read, there is always an abundance of characters who are glossed over. I often find myself confused with what is happening to who, but not here. The author really took the time to let us get to know each and every character. We get to see how and why the outbreak happened and I loved that!! I loved that I became invested in them so quickly. I loved getting to see why someone would create something so destructive, why you would play God as such!! I pretty much loved everything about this!!

The story is compelling, it's entertaining, it's captivating and I devoured it. The pace is fast enough to hold your attention, and as it starts with kids shooting Zombies, you know it's going to become more scary and intense. The author has created an amazing book 1 and I can't wait to see if all the rest are just as good. I'm invested in the characters and need to know what's going to happen with them :)

In all, a well crafted and developed story. This author knows how to tell a great story and I need more!!!

The narration is the only thing that brought this down. The narrator was...... boring. I don't know, he was reading it slow and with little inflection, plus he seemed to take a lot of pauses in the middle of sentences. It was quite frustrating to listen to and was almost a DNF for me. I ended up having to speed up his narration and it became just about bearable. By the end, it didn't annoy me that much!! I will listen to the next one and can only hope he will have grown as a narrator with each one.

I was voluntarily provided this audiobook for free from the author, narrator, or publisher. This in no way affected nor influenced my thoughts.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Narrator stinks

Couldn't even continue listening. The narrator reads awkwardly and it was distracting. It was a waste of money.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Awesome zombie book!

Most zombie books start out just before or just after the outbreak not giving you too much of a back story and go straight to the zombies. Mike Evans does not do that with this book. He gives plenty of back story for the characters and how the outbreak happened, which is a very realistic possibility of how it could happen, if it ever did. I kept telling myself "this is where it will happen", but was wrong almost everytime! Eventually I was right lol. It definitely wasn't predictable or rushed! You get to know each of the characters and what they are like before the outbreak. Don't worry though, there is plenty of zombie action, and it's great! I'm looking forward to the rest of this series! My only constructive criticism is for the narrator. He was very slow and almost boring at times. This book was highly recommend by a friend so I kept going. I hate speeding up a book, but I found 1.2x speed was a huge improvement for this narrator.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Listen at 1.5x and you will enjoy.

It's an interesting new take on the genre. I'm a fan of the "this is how is all started" books and origin stories in general.

I knocked off an overall star due to the narration.

I thought I was just going to not finish it due to the random, unnatural pauses by the narrator completely ruining the flow of practically every other sentence.

But joy! I found that bumping up the playback speed to 1.5x makes this awkward, pondering narrator sound almost normal.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Romero Zombie Fiction With A Twist

The Orphans Origins Volume 1 is a story about the beginning of a hate. It is a story about the beginning of something awful. And it is a story about what one man will do to survive.

The narration was done by Jack Wallen, Jr. does a wonderful job with this. He is easy to follow along with and progresses the story nicely. Basically he felt like everything that Evans was looking for in a narrator. He definitely brought The Orphans to life.

Comparing a book to one of my favorite movies: 28 Day Later is rough for me. I will be constantly comparing the two and seeing if the book lives up to the movie. This one did. It was more Romero based, the zombies were scary and the main character was out for vengence.

After I found myself being surprised by the horror aspects, I stopped looking at it as a single genre and I found myself enjoying it a lot more. This book is really well written. The story is incredibly scary and believable. The characters are well designed and felt like real people who would be going through the story. Even though we are not living through a Zombie apocalypse right now, this book gave me a sense of what that might feel like.

Mike Evans is someone to watch out for, he will scare your pants off but give you a wonderful story to back the horror back up.

4 of 5 people found this review helpful

The Narrator was HORRIBLE !!

What disappointed you about The Orphans?

The narrator. I would love to listen to more from Mike Evans but he uses this same narrator a lot!

What could Mike Evans have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Have someone else with more personality less emotion reading. I liked his voices for each character but his regular voice was to excited throughout the book. He made it hard to take the story serious. I could not get into it at all

Would you be willing to try another one of Jack Wallen, Jr.’s performances?

No

What character would you cut from The Orphans?

Not sure I couldn't get to know any of them well enough because I didn't feel like the narrator was representing the characters as they were suppose to be.

There was some emotional parts but they were lost on me because of the yes you guessed it "Narrator".

Any additional comments?

I wish he could have them reread.

It seemed like it's a good story but I could not focus on listening.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Gore fest!

A scientifically plausible zombie apocalypse, with all of the back-story included. You will love and hate these characters, and cheer when some of them get chewed on. It took me almost a week to finish, because at heart I'm kind of a chicken. Couldn't listen alone, or before bed. Great story, and looking forward to the rest of it!

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Cliched characters and irritating narrator

Any additional comments?

I had a really hard time finishing this book.The characters were one dimensional and cliched and the dialog was predictable.The narrator has a pleasant voice yet the constant pauses between sentences was irritating and ruined my experience of listening to the audiobook.I purchased this e-book,yet received an audiobook from the author in exchange for an honest review.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Funny as hell, loved this book!!!

I haven't laughed this hard while reading a book in many, many moons. At least during the first part of the book. Then it gets a bit more serious with bodies and zombies. Hard to be funny when you got all of that going on.

The initial few chapters with dialogue between Ellie and Sean (hope I spelled those right...never saw their names, just heard them) were hilarious and gut busting, for me anyways! I could probably read endless chapters just listening to them go through life even if nothing else happened. Brilliant!

The rest of the book I thought was very good as well. After the infection, it reminded me a lot of The Walking Dead (which I'm addicted to), except these zombies were much stronger and faster, hence, much more dangerous.

I really enjoyed getting the backstory and hearing the progression of events that led to the outbreak. Lots of these apocalypse stories get into the meat too quickly and leave you wondering how all of this happened to begin with. It was put together very well and I thought it interesting to see the story being told through a bit of a back and forth timeline.

Narrator (Jack Wallen, Jr.) definitely did the dialogue justice. He was spot on with the sarcasm and really did a great job with timing and execution of the punchlines. Outstanding job reading this book. I was very impressed and I'm going to look for more books read by him just because I thought he did such a good job.

I'm very much looking forward to the next installment of this series to see how it progresses.

I received a free copy of this audio book for an honest review.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Ready for Vol 2!

I listen to loads of books and zombies are my fav. I read this in exchange for review but thought it had to be a winner. It's zombies for gosh sakes! Ther story was very draggy until the actual outbreak more than halfway into the book but then it went very quickly. Narration was terrible with continuous pauses throughout, possibly a editing issue? I would def listen to the next, I usually find they get better after the first book.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful