Countdown

A Newsflesh Novella

By: Mira Grant

Narrated by: Brian Bascle

Length: 2 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

From New York Times best seller Mira Grant comes Countdown, a novella prequel set in the thrilling and treacherous world of Feed.

The year is 2014, the year everything changed. We cured cancer. We cured the common cold. We died.

This is the story of how we rose.

When will you rise?

More from Mira Grant:

Newsflesh

• Feed
• Deadline
• Blackout
• Feedback
• Rise

Newsflesh Short Fiction

• Countdown
• Everglades
• Sand Diego 2014
• How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea
• The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell
• Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus
• All the Pretty Little Horses
• Coming to You Live

Also listen to Feed: The Newsflesh Trilogy, Book 1.

©2011 Mira Grant (P)2011 Hachette

and then, in the middle, some background.

Prequel information, released in the middle. If you're listening to the series already, you REALLY want this information.

Another Zombie Story, from the start.

this is basically a Zombie story, However it details the Human loss, the Human side of the virus that makes us all zombies in the future. A good listen. While confusing at times, Brian pulled off well. I would not have listened for over six bucks i must admit.

The story isn’t bad

I read the other books by checking them out in the library I didn’t want to buy the physical copy of this book. It was interesting but the man who voiced it didn’t do a good job doing the female voices. It was kinda creepy

This short prequel is better than the main story!

I felt it had more plot and drama than the main novel. The writing was much better and seemed more mature. Maybe it gets better after Feed, but I actually prefer this short story to the novel.

Great prequal

An interesting prequal the other books in the series. Since the current series starts some time after the outbreak, it is interesting to see how the world got from ours to the one we encounter in the other books.

Good plot, terrible performance.

A unique introduction to a horror zombie series. This book is short, but contains a lot of detailed descriptions of biology. The author has an interesting take on the cause of a virus as creating the zombie apocalypse. With the paperbook, the plotline would have been fairly entertaining, but I surely don't recommend the audio book. The narrator's speech was terrible, full of lisps, poor timing, and irrelevant inflections. With that said, the main series has a different narrator who is much better, if not too cheery for a frightful zombie book

Strong Prequel

Countdown is the story of the events leading up to The Rising, and acts as a prequel to the series. It tracks the scientists working on cures for cancer and the common cold, and the events that lead to these two seemingly wonder cures being released into the world, merging and becoming the Kellis-Amberlee virus, which upon full amplification, revives the dead into zombies. Countdown is full of characters only briefly mentioned in Feed and Deadline, and fills in much of the back story that sets the stage for these novels. You also see a few peripheral characters from the series, and get a glimpse of what they were like before the tragic day that changed the world forever. Yet, none of these characters are the true stars of this tale. The true star is the science of the Kellis-Amberlee virus. Unlike much hard science fiction that presents the science as hard theorem and datum, Mira Grant does what she does best by presenting the science in a beautiful, almost poetic way that allows the reader to do more than simply understand, but to experience it. Grant turns the actual viruses into characters, allowing us to see the transformation from helpful to world destructive in a vivid fashion. Yet, despite being a cautionary tale, Grant never demonizes the science or those involved in the development of the viruses. Instead she just allows us to see them for who they are and what they were hoping to accomplish. Countdown is Mira Grant’s gift to the fans of The Newsflesh World, a prequel that isn’t wooden or forced, but gives us a new perspective to look at the world she created.

This was my first experience listening to Brian Bascle and thought he did a good job. For the most part, he just allowed me to enter into the story and stay there, presenting Grant’s words as they lead me where I needed to go. He has a nice narrative voice, and handled most of the characterizations well. The only characters he struggled with were adolescent girls, which is not strange for male narrators. My only real complaint about the audio production was that the transitions were presented with no real pause letting us know we were moving to another point of view. This would pull me out of the story a bit, when I realized we had switched characters or story arcs. This small complaint wasn’t enough to really detract from a wonderful listening experience.

Read this one first

If you're interested in reading this trilogy, start with this one first. I think the first book should have had these excerpts in it.

Love this fresh approach

I really enjoy the Newsflesh series. I’m a zombie book lover and enjoy this series initially because of this. I stay for all of the additional story lines because the author has created a rich world with characters that are intriguing and well rounded. I well understand why this series has won awards. Those who like this unusual genre will be drawn in by this new refreshing look.

You can't cure the common cold!

Looks to be an interesting story, we'll see how it develops. BTW, I don't think the common cold can be cured; it's a virus.