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The Ark Series #1
The Ark of Asylum
In the wake of endless terrorist attacks that have taken the U.S. to the brink of societal collapse, a kind of rabid zombie is born that catapults the world beyond the brink and into unprecedented levels of terror. And on the eve of the apocalypse, only three types may survive: the wealthy, the fortunate, and the well prepared.
A long string of terrorist attacks has humanity on edge, which prompts John, a very rich man, and his family to buy a mountain in the Rockies and build a massive bomb shelter there. It’s their own version of NORAD—and their salvation. Unwilling to leave any family members behind, John also builds a house with a bomb shelter for his niece, Maggie, who is going to college in Boulder. Meanwhile, an ex-military biologist, Simon, and his son, Peter, have been living above a bomb shelter in a Denver suburb for years, and they are more than prepared, or so they think.
After the attacks subside for a few years, protests against the government roar up across the country. Rampant and uncontained, the situation forces the police to use an experimental tear gas. However, the tear gas has been tampered with, which causes a kind of human rabies, creating a kind of zombie effect in anyone infected. Suddenly, “uncontrollable” means something all together different. Not even John, Maggie, Simon, and Peter, despite their preparations, can anticipate what is to come.
When the infected spread outside the major protest cities, it cripples the country and makes it vulnerable to further attack. An eventual nuclear attack will force the president to respond by attacking the suspected countries, thus creating a domino effect that will become full-out nuclear war, World War III, and, eventually, the Apocalypse.
A long string of terrorist attacks has humanity on edge, which prompts John, a very rich man, and his family to buy a mountain in the Rockies and build a massive bomb shelter there. It’s their own version of NORAD—and their salvation. Unwilling to leave any family members behind, John also builds a house with a bomb shelter for his niece, Maggie, who is going to college in Boulder. Meanwhile, an ex-military biologist, Simon, and his son, Peter, have been living above a bomb shelter in a Denver suburb for years, and they are more than prepared, or so they think.
After the attacks subside for a few years, protests against the government roar up across the country. Rampant and uncontained, the situation forces the police to use an experimental tear gas. However, the tear gas has been tampered with, which causes a kind of human rabies, creating a kind of zombie effect in anyone infected. Suddenly, “uncontrollable” means something all together different. Not even John, Maggie, Simon, and Peter, despite their preparations, can anticipate what is to come.
When the infected spread outside the major protest cities, it cripples the country and makes it vulnerable to further attack. An eventual nuclear attack will force the president to respond by attacking the suspected countries, thus creating a domino effect that will become full-out nuclear war, World War III, and, eventually, the Apocalypse.
- GenresZombies
270 pages, Paperback
First published October 2, 2014
2 people are currently reading
1209 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
May 1, 2018
Okay, so. The plot is interesting enough, I’m not gonna lie. Zombie apocalypse caused by biochemical war? WWIII? Community of people ready for TEOTWAWKI? Count me in.
But fuck, the writing is atrocious. The whole book is all “tell, don’t show”. Conflicts are all “OMG NO WAY I CANNOT DO THIS”, and then the main characters go “yes way” and everything is solved. Everybody magically agrees with them cause they’re so intelligent.
The main characters are incredibly smart, prepared and rich. Everybody else basically nods and followed them. So that’s boring.
Some grammar errors too.
But fuck, the writing is atrocious. The whole book is all “tell, don’t show”. Conflicts are all “OMG NO WAY I CANNOT DO THIS”, and then the main characters go “yes way” and everything is solved. Everybody magically agrees with them cause they’re so intelligent.
The main characters are incredibly smart, prepared and rich. Everybody else basically nods and followed them. So that’s boring.
Some grammar errors too.
December 4, 2014
I really enjoyed this book. Once I got into it I couldn't stop til it was finished. It kept me up most of the night. Recommended.
March 8, 2015
The Ark of Asylum is a highly suspenseful zombie apocalypse thriller.It starts out slowly,setting the scene,then moves quickly.It begins September 12,2025 as we learn of terrorist attacks being carried out in major US cities across the country.The world has become too dangerous and John,the main character,fears for the safety of his family.He buys a mountain in the Colorado Rockies and builds a town with all that the residents need,including heavily armed security with the latest technology prepared for any foreign or domestic attack.Under the town is built a multi-level,highly advanced bomb shelter called the Ark because it will also accommodate their zoo animals.The story also follows two other groups who have also prepared for disaster and have underground bunkers.One group is John's niece,Maggie,and her friends in Boulder.The other is Simon,his son Peter,and their neighbors Jason,Kelly and Dave in Denver.During the largest mass nationwide Occupy protests in the US a new tear gas is used with horrific results.Those exposed turn into zombies attacking and eating the living.The book ends with the US entering nuclear war.This is Book 1 of the Ark series,I highly recommend it and am looking forward to Book 2.
December 12, 2014
I received this book for free from Goodreads First Reads. It was definitely out of my usual genre, but I enjoyed it no less for that. It is a well written futuristic Zombie Apocalypse type book. I started reading it, and was up a good part of the night finishing it, as I couldn't bear to put it down.There was plenty of detail about the characters and the setting, but I hope most of the things in this book never come to pass. I hope there is a second book, as I would love to learn what happens to the inhabitants of the Ark, and some of the other characters.
December 14, 2014
I received this book as a Goodreads First Reads giveaway for an honest review...
I really enjoyed this book. My husband did too.
Thanks!
I really enjoyed this book. My husband did too.
Thanks!
February 26, 2016
This was a fast, easy, enjoyable read for me.
January 7, 2016
Great series starter
January 26, 2016
Let me start by saying that I really liked many aspects of this book. It really has promise as a story and novel. However, it's not without its flaws and some are so troublesome it's hard to overlook them.
--
The Good: I think this book does an excellent job trying to bring a premise for a zombie apocalypse that's plausible and rational. I really could believe that a biological weapon, especially in the context of terrorism, could be employed against the country and potentially that could cause humans to act in a zombie like behavior. I liked that the author tried to provide some reason for the zombieism instead of just saying, "Hey, there's some zombies out there."
The other thing I like is the pace at which the book moves. There's no Hemingway here. This get right to the point and any details unnecessary to the story are not included. I could see how this could be a distraction to many readers. You're certainly not immersed in the environment not have any real feeling or emotion about the characters. Even for as much as I love getting to the point this almost goes too far, relying on the reader to fill in many of gaps in the details.
--
The Bad: For all the plausibility it tried to provide it goes too far quite a few times. The military and police both use encrypted communication methods, as well as frequency hopping. Listening in on those communications in near impossible for the NSA to do without the ciphers, nevermind John or the neighbor. Likewise for live or even recent satellite imagery, basically impossible for a civilian to intercept.
What's the point of the ATF surrounding the complex?Perhaps that's to be relevant in a subsequent book, but it was completely irrelevant to the story in this one.
All the action in the story sounds like it's written by someone who spends more time on Call of Duty than obtaining a firm understanding of military operations. I'll accept for the sake of argument that Dave, Peter and the rest of that team can shoot with relative precision, however their composure, tactics, and communication are amateur. If you're going to write a Navy Seal into the story, he needs to reflect the competence and patience that he's been trained for. On the other hand Eric, Maggie and the others in college seem way to capable to handle weaponry like they did. Making shots in rapid succession, with deadly accuracy while under pressure with no collateral damage seems quite unlikely for people without professional training. In whole, most of the conflict read like it was written by a gamer, not someone with actual military knowledge would write. Perhaps that's acceptable for some people; I found it lazy.
The book doesn't culminate to any point nor has any resolution in it. Granted this the first of a series, but it's missing any sort of climax, tension and resolution that would make it stand alone in its own right. It ends abruptly with all three stories at not climax or resolution - the story just stops. It's like a sitcom that was broken into two parts because they couldn't fit it all within a half hour. That's acceptable within the time constraints of a TV show, but it's not appropriate for a book. Expand he story, provide some depth and resolve an actual point of tension. The entire book seems like a better fit as Act I to a larger book.
--
The Ugly: I don't ask for much to give four or five stars on a rating, but there's an expectation that is required. Spelling and grammatical errors, or gross errors can have no place in professional writing. Page 174, "Coronel Stevens". In any modern military the proper spelling is Colonel Stevens. Page 170, the "Marines" in the doorway are clearly identified beforehand and afterward as members of the Army and therefore should be referred to as "Soldiers".
But more than anything else I have a negative opinion on, my complaint lies on page 13 where Kate says "We're not billionaires." To which John agrees "No, but we are close". So let's say they have a billion dollars, or two, or ten. They still couldn't afford all of the infrastructure required to build the Ark. Hollow out a mountain enough to hold a couple hundred people indefinitely with grow rooms, entertainment and recreation facilities, a zoo, presumably some pasture for the farm stock, a factory, plus all the supporting hardware (generators, transportation, lights, water & air filtration) all remotely located in Colorado? You're not talking a billion dollars, you're on the order of billions, perhaps tens of billions. Then everything is top of the line technology, assuming civilians could even get their hands on he latest military hardware, it still doesn't come cheap. Drones, combat gear, satellites, direct internet connections, combat vehicles developed on site - it's all state of the art and ridiculously expensive. And that's just the stuff underground. What about the houses, factories, schools, entertainment and recreation facilities that are outside the Ark. We're talking hundreds of billions of dollars of resources to do what is suggested in the book. Kate either has poor accounting skills and is off by orders of magnitude or John has a ridiculous amount of hidden assets from Kate the he uses to build this paradise. With every word in the book, I couldn't get over this point - it's completely unnecessary for John to be described as a non-billionaire. Why not just write the story with him having trillions of dollars and the credibility of the story goes way up.
--
So I know that's a lot of negatives but I actually really enjoyed the story, hence the mixed review. Hopefully, the feedback within is viewed in the constructive way I mean it to improve the story in a positive way because I think it has such promise. I'm not against reading the next book in the series but there's nothing to the story that was planted to make me need to read it right now.
--
The Good: I think this book does an excellent job trying to bring a premise for a zombie apocalypse that's plausible and rational. I really could believe that a biological weapon, especially in the context of terrorism, could be employed against the country and potentially that could cause humans to act in a zombie like behavior. I liked that the author tried to provide some reason for the zombieism instead of just saying, "Hey, there's some zombies out there."
The other thing I like is the pace at which the book moves. There's no Hemingway here. This get right to the point and any details unnecessary to the story are not included. I could see how this could be a distraction to many readers. You're certainly not immersed in the environment not have any real feeling or emotion about the characters. Even for as much as I love getting to the point this almost goes too far, relying on the reader to fill in many of gaps in the details.
--
The Bad: For all the plausibility it tried to provide it goes too far quite a few times. The military and police both use encrypted communication methods, as well as frequency hopping. Listening in on those communications in near impossible for the NSA to do without the ciphers, nevermind John or the neighbor. Likewise for live or even recent satellite imagery, basically impossible for a civilian to intercept.
What's the point of the ATF surrounding the complex?Perhaps that's to be relevant in a subsequent book, but it was completely irrelevant to the story in this one.
All the action in the story sounds like it's written by someone who spends more time on Call of Duty than obtaining a firm understanding of military operations. I'll accept for the sake of argument that Dave, Peter and the rest of that team can shoot with relative precision, however their composure, tactics, and communication are amateur. If you're going to write a Navy Seal into the story, he needs to reflect the competence and patience that he's been trained for. On the other hand Eric, Maggie and the others in college seem way to capable to handle weaponry like they did. Making shots in rapid succession, with deadly accuracy while under pressure with no collateral damage seems quite unlikely for people without professional training. In whole, most of the conflict read like it was written by a gamer, not someone with actual military knowledge would write. Perhaps that's acceptable for some people; I found it lazy.
The book doesn't culminate to any point nor has any resolution in it. Granted this the first of a series, but it's missing any sort of climax, tension and resolution that would make it stand alone in its own right. It ends abruptly with all three stories at not climax or resolution - the story just stops. It's like a sitcom that was broken into two parts because they couldn't fit it all within a half hour. That's acceptable within the time constraints of a TV show, but it's not appropriate for a book. Expand he story, provide some depth and resolve an actual point of tension. The entire book seems like a better fit as Act I to a larger book.
--
The Ugly: I don't ask for much to give four or five stars on a rating, but there's an expectation that is required. Spelling and grammatical errors, or gross errors can have no place in professional writing. Page 174, "Coronel Stevens". In any modern military the proper spelling is Colonel Stevens. Page 170, the "Marines" in the doorway are clearly identified beforehand and afterward as members of the Army and therefore should be referred to as "Soldiers".
But more than anything else I have a negative opinion on, my complaint lies on page 13 where Kate says "We're not billionaires." To which John agrees "No, but we are close". So let's say they have a billion dollars, or two, or ten. They still couldn't afford all of the infrastructure required to build the Ark. Hollow out a mountain enough to hold a couple hundred people indefinitely with grow rooms, entertainment and recreation facilities, a zoo, presumably some pasture for the farm stock, a factory, plus all the supporting hardware (generators, transportation, lights, water & air filtration) all remotely located in Colorado? You're not talking a billion dollars, you're on the order of billions, perhaps tens of billions. Then everything is top of the line technology, assuming civilians could even get their hands on he latest military hardware, it still doesn't come cheap. Drones, combat gear, satellites, direct internet connections, combat vehicles developed on site - it's all state of the art and ridiculously expensive. And that's just the stuff underground. What about the houses, factories, schools, entertainment and recreation facilities that are outside the Ark. We're talking hundreds of billions of dollars of resources to do what is suggested in the book. Kate either has poor accounting skills and is off by orders of magnitude or John has a ridiculous amount of hidden assets from Kate the he uses to build this paradise. With every word in the book, I couldn't get over this point - it's completely unnecessary for John to be described as a non-billionaire. Why not just write the story with him having trillions of dollars and the credibility of the story goes way up.
--
So I know that's a lot of negatives but I actually really enjoyed the story, hence the mixed review. Hopefully, the feedback within is viewed in the constructive way I mean it to improve the story in a positive way because I think it has such promise. I'm not against reading the next book in the series but there's nothing to the story that was planted to make me need to read it right now.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 2, 2015
I won this book through Goodreads giveaway.
This is a fictional thriller that is based on the current terrorism scare with World War III thrown in for good measure. Certain citizens exposed to a tampered tear gas become zombie-like in their behavior. Other than the zombies, current events make this thought provoking and, hopefully, not an accurate prediction of the near future. I can recommend this as an edge of your seat book.
June 9, 2015
The writing wasn't particularly good, I didn't have any genuine concern for the characters and the premise was weak for the genre. It was alright, but nothing that would make you look forward to the next in the series, indeed it's likely I would have long forgotten it by the time it comes out.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews