In the post-apocalyptic, zombie infested wasteland, there is one beacon of safety in the foothills of the Rocky The Stronghold. For decades, the inhabitants have fortified and defended the Stronghold from zombie hordes, building their society and culture on military precision. And chosen from the best of the best is Denver Team Alpha. DTA is the elite strike force used to rescue survivors and refugees that have made it to the hellish wasteland of Denver below. But because of the unbelievable risks, and high mortality rate, DTA has come to stand for something Dead Team Alpha. Now DTA will be put to the test as something far worse than zombies comes at them out of the wasteland.
Jake Bible, Bram Stoker Award nominated-novelist, short story writer, independent screenwriter, podcaster, and inventor of the Drabble Novel, has entertained thousands with his horror, sci/fi, thriller, and adventure tales. He reaches audiences of all ages with his uncanny ability to write a wide range of characters and genres.
Jake is the author of the bestselling Z-Burbia series set in Asheville, NC, the bestselling Salvage Merc One, the Apex Trilogy (DEAD MECH, The Americans, Metal and Ash) and the Mega series for Severed Press, as well as the YA zombie novel, Little Dead Man, the Bram Stoker Award nominated Teen horror novel, Intentional Haunting, the ScareScapes series, and the Reign of Four series for Permuted Press.
Find Jake at jakebible.com. Join him on Twitter @jakebible and find him on Facebook.
This was a hard book to get through. I think it comes down to the writer and how he seems a bit too focused on his “style” and not on the reader's enjoyment. The book starts abruptly, with an incredibly large number of characters, presented with little care or thought. The names start pilling up and suddenly you feel a little lost, with no introduction to the world and the plot. Things only get worse from there when we are introduced to more characters and places and situations with little help to the reader to go along. It felt like the book was more of a “sequel” than the start of a series and as I looked on line, although its meant to stand on its own, the story is on a “world” already explored and established on another long running series, so I suppose that explains it. Still, the new reader is left a bit overwhelmed by what is a less than compelling beginning. What we have next is a bunch of characters, most of them obvious cannon fodder and right out of a bad 80's aliens colonial marines knockoff. The banter, with excessive foul language becomes unbearably cartoonish and the constant focus on sex and pure delight on the author by making these people as nasty as possible quickly make getting through the pages a chore. Quite frankly all these people are annoying and extremely unlikable and I could find no reason to care about them or anyone else in the story. In this genre, this is the worst that can happen. About a third in, the zombies come in but they're just gross, decaying, pathetic foes. They're bait for the reader. They're not menacing at all, just punching bags for our “heroes”. To counter that, the author presents a somewhat silly threat but goes overboard making “them” so overpowered that all impact is gone. There's lots of action, heroic deaths of people I hardly knew the name and the “villains” just being like “The Predator” on steroids. After a big showdown, which I admit was engaging, it all ends, full of loose ends for the sequel and hardly any plot development. So we have pages and pages of truly nasty people, lots of repetitive carnage, a silly antagonist, weak zombies and lots of “bad words”. There's good here. Some moments are intense, some “jokes” work occasionally and the action is well written but the effort and obsession by the writer to make every character as vile as possible, prevents any sort of attachment to anyone. They are all cartoons with no development and no traits other than being a badass. You can get away with one or two characters like that. Not a whole book.
The book description caught my eye and the cool cover as well. If you look at all my reviews (here and on Amazon) you will see many many zombie books and just as many special forces/action thrillers. Dead Team Alpha is a good combo of the two.
This book features lots of graphic/gory zombie action....like a good zombie thriller should have. But it also features a group that is even deadlier than the zombies! The opening chapter sets the stage and is one of the creepiest openings I have read in a long time.
I have another of Jake's books on my Kindle, but I have not gotten around to it yet: . Well, I will read this book soon, and can only hope it is half as thrilling/scary as Dead Team Alpha.
I had some questions about the ending, so I e-mailed Jake Bible and he responded within a few hours and answered my questions (mostly). Looks like this is just the first in an exciting series. I am very much looking forward to the next Dead Team Alpha thriller. It would be cool to get a T-Shirt of the cover.
I call this a review but really it is just a few random thoughts about the book because I quit reading it so quickly. It didn't take me long to delete this one off the ereader. Each word out of the character's mouths were f-bombs, foul mouthed swearing or crude sexual references. It was like listening to a bunch of moronic teenage boys yell insults at each other about their mothers and sisters and what fantasies they had about women. It was juvenile and certainly not entertaining. I don't care if this is how troops really talk on combat missions. I don't want to see a bunch of oversexed potty mouthed muppets with their macho crap when I want to be entertained by a good zombie novel.
I like books that have real dialogue, clever writing and characters you would actually give a damn about. This lacks all three, frankly and was a waste of my time.
~Disclaimer: I received a free audiobook copy of this book.~
I feel this book might be an acquired taste. I was excited for the story because this wasn’t a new zombie apocalypse book, but one where this stuff is old hat. 100 years down the line and folks are still fighting. Interesting right?
Unfortunately, there were a lot of things that weren’t for me in this book. For one, there are too many characters that are introduced one after another. It is hard to remember who any of them are. For another, the world-building acts more like the author thinks you already know the world and don’t need a proper explanation (this can be done well, but here I just felt like I couldn’t follow). The book's cast of characters might hit for the right reader, but I think I’m not that reader. The constant belches, farts, talk about genitals/sex, and the foul language didn’t work for me.
Examples: ““You had to go down on that Stokely chick again, huh?” Diaz laughs. “Man, you can smell that twat a mile away.” Alastair shrugs. “It takes an educated nose to appreciate a bouquet like that, Diaz.”” (Pg 54)
““God, you’re sexy when you talk, cuz,” Stanford says. “If we weren’t blood relatives, I’d take you now. Right here on the floor. Just rip that uniform off and show you how a woman should feel.”” (Pg 162)
I’ll just admit it. I didn’t like pretty much anyone in the cast. Which made getting through the book more difficult.
There are good elements to this book. The military influence, the 100 years after the start of the apocalypse, good descriptions of violence and there is some good build up and tension to the story.
As far as narration, unfortunately this is one of the books where I have to say the narrator didn't help the story. The characters' voices were all too similar to really give any personality and distinction to the huge host of characters in this book.
All in all, if my complaints didn’t turn you off then give the book a shot. It's on KU. It wasn't for me, but I think there is an audience for this book.
Well into the zombie apocalypse the remaining survivors have relied upon teams of Special Forces warriors to defend them. The beast of these teams is Denver Team Alpha or as they are more affectionately known Dead Team Alpha due to their missions and fatality numbers. The home base for DTA is The Stronghold. DTA and DTB(beta teams) have come across something far more dangerous than the hoards they are used to. Creatures without eyes that have been training for decades to take revenge on the survivors. These creatures are known as Code Monkeys and they protect the code that is written upon their flesh. This code will preview the destruction of all survivors, but there is still something missing for them to succeed. High up in the chain of the teams is a well-kept secret of the distant past. Within this secret is what the Code Monkeys need to complete their mission. Will DTA discover the secret and stop the Code Monkeys? You’ll have to stay tuned to find out. Pretty good story with lots of action and well-developed characters. This audiobook was given by the author, narrator, or publisher at no cost in exchange for an unbiased review via Audiobook Boom.
Das Buch ist ein einziges Gemetzel. Zombies bedrohen die Menschheit, bzw. was noch davon übrig ist. Dazu kommt auch noch eine weitere Gruppe, die es auf die Menschheit abgesehen hat. Nicht meines, bei einem Film hätte ich vermutlich in einer Werbepause weg geschalten. Aber ich wollte bei dem Buch wissen was es mit dieser sonderbaren Gruppe auf sich hat. Was auch noch komisch ist, dass "Powerfrauen" eine große Rolle oder große Rollen spielen, aber an Cover ist der Hollywood-Stereotyp von einem Zombiekiller.
( Format : Audiobook ) "Death is coming. Death is coming." I am an enormous fan of Jake Bible usually, but found this particular book hard going, mostly because of the vast army of characters introduced, often in groups, who then disappeared. The book was an ambitious project to cover the entire attack on the Citadel, built to defend survivors against the roaming zombie population, and it certainly achieves a sense of overwhelming odds against an additional unexpected enemy, but in so doing left me confused about who was who - or even if it matters. Narrator For.C.McAlister did a sterling job in alleviating some of the confusion with his voicing of the multitude of protagonist. But there were just too many. As a storyline, Dead Team Alpha was original, action packed and unpredictable as would be expected from Mr. Bible, but the overabundance of players had me constantly rewinding in an attempt to link names from one dramatic scenario to the next. Eventually I gave up and just let the story wash confusingly over me. Perhaps this was, in fact, the book's intention. My thanks to the rights holder of Dead Team Alpha for gifting me my copy, via Audiobook Boom. I intend to relisted again some time in the future and hope that all will then become more clear. If so, i will revise my rating. Until or unless this happens I can only say that, though potentially a very good read, this book was hard work unless violent death in various aspects is all that the reader requires.
This book was great, it is a look at the world 100 years after the Z-day of Z-Burbia. I loved the Z-Burbia series and was so sad when I finished Sister's and had to leave that universe. It was awesome to see what our heroes had wrought for the future. I was blown away by the imaginative enemy that Jake Bible introduced, the Code Monkeys are scarier than Zombies. Just diving into the 2nd DTA book now.
Well done story set 100 years after the Z-Burbia series. Not nearly as light hearted and funny, but still offers a compelling story. Pretty much self contained so you don't have to read the previous series, but it doesn't hurt.
The world has been transformed and zombies rule, with just tiny pockets of survivors. They hunt and scavenge for survival, but a new threat is coming, even worse than the zombies. Good book that moves at a nice pace with some interesting, over the top characters, typical of a Jake Bible story.
This is an exciting book. Many years after the apocalypse man is still fighting the undead. Unfortunately there are far more dangerous things that zombies seeking to destroy them.
I really like the way this book is written. It has a great story and wonderful characters. I really enjoyed this book, and the action parts really pull you in...I highly recommend.
A fantastic fast paced, non stop action book with unforgettable characters and a cut throat plot! I received this book in exchange for my honest review.
F.C. McAllister does an excellent job of narrating this audiobook. Not once did I wonder which character was speaking. He did an amazing job of creating unique voices for each person in the story. I rate his narration as 5 out of 5 stars.
I'm conflicted with this book and it comes down to 2 different reasons. One being the narrator and the fact that most of his voices sounded the same and the second reason being the characters. There was simply too many and the fact that the narrator wasn't that good, made it all the more harder to follow who was talking at any given time. I honestly couldn't tell you how many characters in total there were nor even can I remember most of their names, I just remember being confused as to how one character could be in one place one second and another pace a second later, it hit me then that it was 2 different characters but the narrator made them sound the same.So confusing!!
I also felt like we are thrown into their world with no explanation as to how it happened or why. I thought that being book 1, we would have some world building but nope, we are thrown into the story straight away and I felt lost.
I do think that it had a few things going for it though. I liked the addition of the blind fanatics! They were crazy!!! It was also action packed and kept you on the edge of your seat and I definitely wanted to see what would happen to the DTA and the Stronghold. I just wished I read it instead of listened to it!!
F.C. McAllister didn't do a great job with this. He has the makings of a good narrator, but I think he needs more practice. Nearly every tone he used was the same, apart from a gravelly one he did, but he seemed to use that for multiple characters, including for some reason, a woman!! At least I think she was a woman!! His female voices were awful and totally felt forced and unnatural. I felt like he didn't really try to differentiate the characters and just read the story. He didn't really make me interested in the plot nor world!
*I received a free copy of this but voluntarily reviewed it. This in no way affected nor influenced my thoughts.*
The story doesn't come together into something cohesive until about 70% through the book. Prior to that point many, many characters are thrown at the reader with zero character development. Leaving one to constantly be pulled from the story to figure out who someone is again. This includes the main characters. Unfortunately what this skimpy character development leads to is zero connection between the reader and the characters. When characters were dying, I had no emotion about it because I barely knew who they were. This was very disappointing. The story could use an edit. Problems detract from the reading experience. The last 30% of the book was great! The story and characters finally come together within an interesting storyline. But it takes a lot of patience to get there, hence the three star rating. I so wanted this book (and the second in the series) to be five star material. Jake Bible is such an affable guy. He promotes (the heck out of himself) incredibly well. With all the hype, I expected insanely good work. I'm sorry to have to give low stars, but it's an honest review.
If you have read the Z-Burbia series, you may find yourself picking this book up as well, thinking wow! Here's another chance to read a great Bible novel. Well, you would only be partially correct. There is none of the humor we have come to expect from Bible, but there you will find action. Lots of action as well as some F-bombs. I happen to love F-bombs and think they make a book that much better but I know some of you get your panties all tied up over them. There is also sex. He intertwines sexuality as well as homosexuality into this novel. No clue why. It doesn't add once ounce of anything to this book. Honestly, this book reads more like it was meant for the YA crowd than it does for adults. I am still going to read book 4 of the Z-Burbia series but I think I may skip the second book of this series. Shame. I really enjoyed his style of writing.
This book isn't like most zombie thrillers. It gives the reader a peek at what the world is like 100 years after a zombie outbreak. Of course there are still Z's everywhere, but in this story there is also a group of people far more dangerous than zombies. The Stronghold is a community of survivors that is strategically put together in order to survive. The teams of trained military personnel are what keep the Stronghold running and safe. This book follows these teams, with Dead Team Alpha being the cream of the crop, as they encounter more dangerous enemies and fight to protect The Stronghold. If you like books about zombies, war, survival, strategy, you will love this book.
A glimpse of the future Zburbia -the fight for life is never ending
This is the world created by the Stanfords and their fellow survivors. Zombies are still running around and humanity still has a dark side. Great introduction to the new cast and way of life. Once the action starts you can't put it down.
A Bible classic. An old position with new enemies, hints back in time about the origins of the Stronghold, and brand new heroes to grab our hearts. Packed full of action and gore, another book I was unable to put down.
Meh...not so great. Interesting if you like military zombie apocalypse stories. I'm more into the non military zombie stories with characters of everyday people. I'm not leaving a 3 star review just because it wasn't my cup of tea, I just don't think it's a 4 star rating regardless.
The reviews on this book are way harsh. I thought it was pretty good. Not your average zombie book. Adding the blind crazies was a nice touch. The people are always what’s going to be the toughest after an apocalypse, and this adds a new dimension.
I really like how Mr. Bible took the zombocalypse and added an extra element! Very interesting, good flow, fast paced for the most part, all of the things you look for in a good zombie novel!