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Performance
Overall
Excellent, Unforgettable, Best of the nest
Very good, thoroughly enjoyed,
Good, Solid, Enjoyed many aspects
STAR RATINGS GUIDE
So Real, So Smart, So Gripping
THE BIRDICT
🧡 This is like watching a Netflix series on the collapse of the world as we know it. It’s just brilliantly done. The style is fast paced, with multiple storylines and viewpoints. Some are tough to take, others lighter and easy going. The mix means there’s a good balance. There is some stereotyping and simplification of the human condition, but this is probably necessary with so many voices.
💚 I found the detail in this impressive. Very few apocalyptic stories delineate the end with such microcosmic thoroughness. Mr Birmingham has really thought this out… Anyone checked on him? You okay, John?
💜 It ends very suddenly, but worry not. There are two more books in the series. And at the time of writing, they are all included in Audible Plus (which is annoying as I’d bought them already, but it’s great news for others).
🧡 If you like the in-depth nature of this, try William R Forstchen’s After series, which the author intended as a warning bell on the danger of EMPs.
SQUAWKING THE TALK
🎧 Narrator Rupert Degas is the mimic octopus* of the vocal world. Australian voiceover, female British copper, gruff American outlaw, he embodies them all effortlessly. As I said at the start, this audiobook has the seamless quality of a top tier miniseries and it is all narrated by one man.
🎧 Everything about this production is carefully thought out. No bells or whistles, just a straightforward, but meticulously made product. Even the chapter listings are thorough.
*(Look it up. Think chameleon with tentacles)
BIRDS OF A FEATHER: SIMILAR AUDIOBOOKS
No spoilers for this one. Maybe next time!
Click For Spoilers
Zero Day Code
THE BLURB
Every modern city has one week’s worth of food to feed itself. Then it will collapse.
Cut off the resources to New York, Sydney, or even a mid-size metropolis, and millions will soon starve. In Zero Day Code we see those immense and open, hyper-complex, networked supercities of the new millennium die. And in the last moments we see their vengeance take form as all the best and worst traits of humanity bubble to the surface.
Zero Day Code is set in a realistic near future with dwindling global food supplies under increasing pressure from worsening droughts, floods and extreme weather events. Written by prolific Australian writer John Birmingham, the thriller follows a handful of survivors from the first day of society’s descent into violent, uncertain futures.
James, a consultant to the US National Security Council, is the first to suspect that the worldwide emergence of a crippling computer virus is actually a cover for something else - a devastating cyber-attack by China on the food distribution system of the United States. The attack is a bid for the Middle Kingdom to distract America as it seizes the food bowl of South East Asia and feeds its starving population. But Beijing has miscalculated.
Follow the missions of an embittered activist chasing salvation, a single mum rescuing her child from a frantic San Francisco and an army veteran who has long retreated from society, as the world they knew crumbles around them.
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