Joseph DuncanReseñas

As an avid horror fan this is not the type of book I usually buy. The reviews and the description at amazon (A blend of historic fact, fearsome fantasy and explicit sex)caught my attention. It was an interesting, well written, and enjoyable story. Even though it's not exactly my type, I'll be reading part 2 to see what happens to Gon next.

I love haunted house and bad house stories, and I was really excited to stumble onto Duncan's work. The concept is a little bit different, which is always good since these subgenres lend themselves to stories that are a bit formulaic, and digging into it felt fresh, with strong writing and great depth to the characters. The first half of the book read fantastically, actually, and I really enjoyed it... but then the pacing started feeling rushed... and more rushed... and more rushed, leaving me feeling like I'd read a fairly uneven book in the end.

It really did come down to pacing. The first half was carefully developed and read really well, but then the action picked up, and the second half of the book became a roller coaster that desperately needed a bit more space and depth. I hate to finish a review by saying that a book needed to be much longer in order to work, but that really is the case here just because it ended up being so uneven.

I'd certainly try Duncan's horror again, but I'd be prepared for the same pacing issues, and I'm not sure I'd rush it to the head of my reading line if it had been self-published. There's a ton of amazing self-published work out there, but this is one book that needed more time and development and revision, and if he rushed it to completion as appears to be the case, my worry is that the same would happen with his other works.

Still, for lovers of haunted house and bad house lit, this is a nice little escape if you're prepared to deal with the caveats above.

Sigh... it is so hard to rate a book when certain parts of it drive you crazy but overall it is a decent concept/story. Do I subtract points for the long-winded conversations within the main character's head, or for the dream sequences (man, oh man, I really really dislike dream sequences - a novel is already fiction/fantasy, why add another lame layer to that?)

Way too much conversation among characters and way too many words... it is a zombie novel but it has a feeling as if the author thought he was writing literary fiction...

It could have been better if there was some action and less "author trying to make some point/moral", and characters that felt real. And a plot/goal would have helped too... most of the story has no forward momentum, just descriptions of XYZ...

This book was formulaic, but competently written and edited. It has a very clever base premise, which I wish had been more central to the story. The characters were reasonably likable, but could have been filled out more - they seemed a bit flat.

Overall, the book was like a slasher movie - you know what's going to happen, but it's still scary anyway.

A decent haunted house story - worth reading.

Note: This is a sequel of sorts to the novel Mort, formerly published under a pen name (Rod Redux). It works just fine as a stand alone.

10 years after the phage turned most humans into flesh-craving zombies, it has now mutated. Now zombies can awake to their memories, can dream again, and they definitely know what they are eating. So they have started organizing into nations and have created breeding facilities to maintain their food supply. This includes capturing humans for a people breeding facility. Yep. It’s just as horrendous as it sounds.

Brent and Harold have been traveling together for a while now. They heard a radio broadcast from a nearby human town, one that has a truce of sorts with the closest zombie population. They are trying to make it to this haven called Home when they are spotted by a zombie patrol. Harold is killed in the pursuit and Brent is captured. However, the Revenants (zombies who have their wits about them) need a new rooster for their human hens. So Brent is tossed in with the other roosters; Ian, Jamie, and Vicars. They’re a right cheery bunch. Right off, the three suspect the Revenants may be planning to retire one of them and none of them want to be it.

The prison/meat plant is an old supermarket. The men are kept in the back where the butcher’s station use to be. The ladies have their cubicles and the zombies have their stations inside and then quarters outside (old trailers and such). It seems so orderly and civil…. except that part where they are breeding the ladies for baby meat. Muriel is one of the older yet still of breeding age ladies. She had escaped, again, and was recaptured at the same time that Brent was caught. Throughout the story, she often provides comfort and advise to Brent. She got the most page time out of all the lady characters and she was my favorite. She was the brains of the bunch and I wish she had gotten a larger role in the story. There’s a limited number of female characters in a sea of male characters (and why is there only 1 female zombie?).

There’s this whole command structure among the zombies and I thought this was interesting. So often, we think of them as pretty brainless, simply reacting to a deep hunger (and indeed, that kind do exist in this world and are called Chompers). So it was different to see them thinking and organizing and holding back from their instant cravings to plan for the future. Also, it was good to see that the Revenants were just as scared of the Chompers as the humans, as the Chompers are none too picky about what kind of meat they are eating. Blech!

While Brent is in this meat prison, he has to make some really tough choices. First, all of them are being coerced into breeding, including the 14 year old Ruth. Definitely a sad state of affairs. Brent has a set of morals, and while some of them have been tarnished, bent, or broken over the years, that is not one of them. It seems Brent’s basic nature is to trust people, but here, in this literally cut throat place, he has to choose very carefully who he can trust. The other roosters are big question marks. Brent’s most difficult position and the tough choices he keeps having to make definitely had me fully engaged throughout the story.

Late in the tale, the author tosses in a little tidbit I really enjoyed. Two characters are added to the mix and they have an odd dialect. Basically, they and their little group of people had become isolated long enough to have developed their own version of the language, making it a little difficult for others to understand them, though in the big picture, they are all speaking the same language (roughly). This is such a realistic probability, that I really enjoyed it being tossed in here.

This was a great zombie read because it was different and original. It’s not just your mindless eating hordes versus the last remaining humans. Nope. These zombies come in different flavors and at least some of them can think and organize. This book sets a new bar for zombie horror fiction.

I bought a copy of this book from Audible.com.

Narration: Ian M. Walker did most things really well and a few things need a little work. First, his female voices could be a bit more feminine. And also, it would be OK for him to show some emotion while narrating (was he bored by the book?). On the other hand, he did this incredible job with the zombie voices – these falling apart, decaying faces and vocal chords make some truly horrible sounds. Walker managed to pull that off and keep the dialogue understandable. Also, later in the book when two characters with their own version of English are tossed in, Walker had to make it sound almost like English and also smooth like the character knew exactly what they were saying. That was well done too.

ABR's original The Oldest Living Vampire Tells All audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

My thoughts on the cover of The Oldest Living Vampire by Joseph Duncan are the guy looks like Vlad the Impaler. It is not very spooky looking or anything; it is more like what people picture when they think of old vampires.

The main character is Gon, a vampire that is over 30,000 years old. This whole story is told from his point-of-view on his life before and after he became a vampire. Gon has some nice qualities; he has a sort of dry humor that will catch the reader/listener at random. He is VERY old fashioned in his thinking though. That is both a plus and a minus. On the plus side it is because it helps show his life before he became a vampire; a minus because Gon seems to be more focused on his life before vampirism. It seems to be way too much in this story.

I found the descriptions of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon people and life very interesting. It helped set the frame of mind to the reader that it was a very long time ago. Downside was that it took the story over seven hours before it gets to Gon facing his maker and becoming a vampire. This story is not fast paced to get to the heart of the story at all.

I did not like several of the more graphic scenes involving children. Even though Gon explains they are there to show the reader the difference between then and now, I do not believe that to be true. This book could have progressed very well without them. Also, fair warning to future readers/listeners if you are in a public situation, this is not a book to have playing on speakers. Headphones are a must because of the graphic nature of several scenes in this book. These scenes include sex and graphic violence. Warning – Not for young readers; I would not recommend for anyone under the age of legal consent.

This is an ok-ish book. I liked several things about it, but what I didn’t like was the sex scenes involving children. That was a bit too graphic and disturbing for me. They were in there at random places. One minute the story was progressing sluggishly, and then the next children are having sex. In fact, it kept bringing up the ‘sexual nature’ of children a few times after that. Nope, not cool. Thankfully the main character soon aged into an adult so the children ‘sexuality’ went away.

I think the author was trying to make the story have a feel kind of like The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel, but it fell short of that mark. It was just to off putting to me to give it a good rating. I cannot in all fairness suggest it as a good read to others. I did like several parts of the story, but overall it would not be something I would ever read again.

The Author is Joseph Duncan. The Narrator is Ian M. Walker. I liked the narrator’s voice. He has a lovely accent. I do wish that he had read the other character’s voices in different tones to help distinguish them better, but overall it was enjoyable. I recommend it not be listened to it all in one setting though. The tone of voice had me zoning out several times when I listened to the story for too long. This book is ten hours and fourteen minutes long.

This story left me very glad I live in this era. Not that I would know the difference if I lived in that era, but from my perspective of living now looking back to then…I am very happy to be alive now. It is amazing that humans managed to stay alive with so many elements fighting to kill them off. How many of us would really last a day in Gon’s time? I don’t believe I would have lasted long at all. So yes, I am very happy to be alive now and I am very thankful I don’t have to fight off plants or animals to stay alive daily.

Audiobook provided for review by the narrator.½