Great story

Honestly, this was my first LitRPG book, so I didn't know what to expect. I was not ready for this. The story moves along at a good pace. George, the protagonist, I really liked. He's not your typical 20 something ultra-soldier, he's an every day guy, a janitor.
I'm looking forward to episode 2!

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I wanted to like it but...

First I will say I misunderstood the beginning of the book that explained things a bit. I got confused on the writing until I figured out that this was reading as a video game. When I did I caught on. once you picture yourself playing zombie video game it all makes sense.

I am sorry that I did not like the writing itself. It used redundant wording a lot in the descriptions. I think this author has potential though.

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A wonderful gameLit story

It was a wonderful read and I'm a sucker for horror, zombies and video games which meshes nicely in this story. You follow along with George, a school janitor by day and an investigative reporter looking to uncover the mystery as to why the shady mega pharmaceutical company Hybrid doing in a small area just on the outskirts of New York city.
After a lot of sneaking and snooping, he uncovers that Hybrid is partnering with a local hospital to test its cure for cancer drug in the patients. George discovers and tries to collect evidence that Hybrid is up to no good and runs into zombies, freaky creatures like man eating frogs, lizard creatures, and worst of them all: Mr Z, a superhuman monster that won't stay dead.it's a wonderful story that you can actually feel like you're playing a game like Resident Evil. One thing that caught my attention was the author put in choices that George should make, either conversation or what to do, like in games such as Mass Effect. Part of me wishes that I could make the different choices and see where the story goes, like I did with old find your own fate novels. That would make this wonderful story interactive and unique, but might be a pain in the zombie bite to do. Yes, I just geeked out and with that, I highly recommend this one!I

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ZombieLitRPG? Is that a thing? No, well it is now.

This is going to take some getting used to. I love Zombie books, I just started to dip my toes into GameLit/LitRPG, but both in one, WOW! The story starts off interesting enough to keep me flipping pages. There isn't ton of game-stats, and I like that, just enough so you know the genre and how it impacts good ol' Georgie boy. I look forward to continuing the story and seeing if our bad ass gets the bad dudes!

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review

this book wasn't what I thought it would be.. it has a game style mixed in with zombie story, now if you're gamer great book..

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Fascinating Can't wait for the next episode

The story was interesting, a little out there, but I like that. The narrator was a good fit.

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It could be better

Story-wise it could be better. It certainly is interesting, but sounds like a bad knockoff of the Resident Evil games. I say this because the dialogue could be better and the author could have used this as an opportunity to use POV instead of a third person accounting. Even if it is a GameLit, there were other was to have written the story to give it more descriptive depth.

Narrator could also have done better. There was a lot of additional noise mostly. However, the main issue I had with the style had been it did not fit with the story.

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The Fifth Survivor: Episode 1

The one thing I liked about this book was the zombies and other mutant creatures. Otherwise this was not my kind of book. To me it sounded like someone was reading a play by play of a resident evil game...down to picking up ammo how much ammo is left and red, blue and green herbs and mixing them. Marchinuke did a great job reading it though his voice was smooth and clear.

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concept is good deliverance bad

I like the concept of the book the way it's written but the narration and how was read is absolutely horrible. I mainly listen to audiobooks due to not enough time to read them myself so alot of drive time....I'm going to make time to read these myself because I really like the concept but the narrator almost drones.

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Can you survive?

Ok, Guys and Gals you know that I am a horror nut, and lust after all things zombies especially. Secondly, I pretty much adore short stories. To me a good story that is short is hard to tell. There’s a lot you have to trim away and yet still tell a tale and get some sort of impact out of it. Put the two of those things together and you have one happy funeral director.

The fifth survivor comes across like a real-life resident evil combined with some James Bond type elements. Angel Ramon has taken who I believe to be his real life hero, George Fisher, an all around cool cat who like to write, and acting as a literary agent who has a license to kill. In the novel George is rough, tough, and sneaky as Pete. He is as good with a gun as he is a disguise and is out to solve a question about some place called Hybrid. In the process he encounters zombies, mutants, corporate bad guys, and an unkillable foe called Mr. Z. I guessing the Z is for zombie, but I’m not all that smart.

The concept is well executed, but for me it was a little difficult to listen to because it is that present tense stuff that makes it hard for me to get into. Full disclosure on that. I have to look at it beyond that point to be fair, but that style of writing is really hard for me to listen to or just read. It’s my personal baggage. So, skipping the style the other issue I had is that there were some scenes that could have been more fleshed out, as in some more description rather than telling us what happened.

The story is pretty wild and pure cheesy fun, sort of reminding me of the Return of the Living Dead. There are plenty of zombies, bacon, and badass George to keep you interested as man-eating frogs try to swallow you whole, and zombies try to swallow your soul. This definitely has the crazy camp of Evil Dead mashed up with Resident Evil. To be honest I would love to see Angel take on a combo of his 5th survivor novels and the old Playstation game, Dino Crisis. I know he loves dinos, and if we could get some friggin zombie fossils for George to contend with all would be right in the world. The story is pure crazy over the top fun mixed with undead cannibals, what’s not to like.

The narration by MP is pretty good. I think he did a great job and played everything straight. He clearly had fun with the material but didn’t treat it like so many people do horror in general, like it is something beneath them. Horror is the purest piece of writing. It taps into something primal that we cannot hide from or disguise as something else. M.P. is an MVP for how he took care of this book.

Final score: 7.6 Stars. I think Angel captures the mood and atmosphere well, but does have a few parts where the show don’t tell rule applies. Still the book is buckets of blood fun. If you like dead guys, creepy mutants and hardcore grumpy old guys then this is something you want to check out.

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2 people found this helpful