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Carrier Wave
Humanity listened to the night sky. What we heard shattered the world.
Listen.
Just once. That’s it.
As soon as you hear it, it has you. And once it has you, it’s over. You may think you’re in control. You’re not. You want one more listen. You want to look at that strange spot in the sky. The one that’s been slowly growing. The one that didn’t make sense… until you listened. You want to listen again, and you will do whatever it takes to make everyone else listen. By any means necessary. Even if it kills you.
Just one more listen. One more.
Listen.
Listen.
Just once. That’s it.
As soon as you hear it, it has you. And once it has you, it’s over. You may think you’re in control. You’re not. You want one more listen. You want to look at that strange spot in the sky. The one that’s been slowly growing. The one that didn’t make sense… until you listened. You want to listen again, and you will do whatever it takes to make everyone else listen. By any means necessary. Even if it kills you.
Just one more listen. One more.
Listen.
631 pages, Paperback
First published November 24, 2015
About the author
Robert Brockway
13 books600 followersRobert Brockway is an author, screenwriter, podcaster and comedian from Portland, Oregon. He is the co-founder of the comedy site 1900HOTDOG, as well as co-host of podcasts BIGFEETS and The Dogg Zzone 9000. Please update this to read "shooting star gone too soon RIP" when Robert Brockway dies doing jetski stunts.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 118 reviews
February 18, 2022
I ain't never read no nuthin' like this, ever. Like EVER ever.
A huge story of an end of days event as told through the eyes of a bunch of people. Each chapter is someone different but towards the end some of them double up. Another novel by this author was recommended to me but having not read anything by him I thought this might be a little more my groove. Carrier Wave was a tremendous reading experience. I have seen it compared to World War Z and I think this is a way more complete and explored story, the voices of the characters and the tones of the stories is more diverse, and I felt more emotions during this than when reading WWZ. There are scary stories, thrilling stories, funny stories, sad stories, uplifting and devastating ones and there is the most wonderful one in the middle of the book about a little boy and his parents who happen to be the last three people left in their particular big city that manages to be funny, scary, sad, and beautiful all at the same time. This is a spectacular book and when some of the early characters reappeared at the end of the story I felt like I had known them for a long time and it was weird seeing how everyone transformed throughout because they were real to me. Read this freaking book, it kicks some major ass.
A huge story of an end of days event as told through the eyes of a bunch of people. Each chapter is someone different but towards the end some of them double up. Another novel by this author was recommended to me but having not read anything by him I thought this might be a little more my groove. Carrier Wave was a tremendous reading experience. I have seen it compared to World War Z and I think this is a way more complete and explored story, the voices of the characters and the tones of the stories is more diverse, and I felt more emotions during this than when reading WWZ. There are scary stories, thrilling stories, funny stories, sad stories, uplifting and devastating ones and there is the most wonderful one in the middle of the book about a little boy and his parents who happen to be the last three people left in their particular big city that manages to be funny, scary, sad, and beautiful all at the same time. This is a spectacular book and when some of the early characters reappeared at the end of the story I felt like I had known them for a long time and it was weird seeing how everyone transformed throughout because they were real to me. Read this freaking book, it kicks some major ass.
February 29, 2020
This book is like if World War Z and Lovecraft had a dread-filled psychotic baby. If you like any of the words in that sentence, you definitely need to read it.
January 10, 2021
Intense and anxiety inducing, this novel went places I didn’t expect. I had trouble putting it down, and the book lived rent free in my head when I wasn’t reading it. A cosmic horror apocalypse just wasn’t what I was expecting, but it was a great ride.
October 31, 2020
The Good: A multivoiced anthology about signals from space ripping open humanity's minds to cosmic horror, that's a mix of a mix of The Stand, World War Z, and Langford's BLIT plus an obligatory dash of the good parts of Lovecraft? Wow. That's an ambitious undertaking, and damn do I like ambition. It's also witty and fun. This is full of ideas, and if you read for ideas, I hope you dig these brilliant ideas like I did.
The Bad: The book's ambitions are a little beyond what it delivers, and each of its 630ish pages feels like a progressive dilution of its potential. The horror at the beginning quickly gives way to regular disaster/apocalyptica. We have a huge story from multiple perspectives, but it can't quite settle into their voices or worldviews, and so the attempts at diversity, while well-meaning, feel more like casting roulette on a too-long TV series by LA writers, instead of its attempted range of modern American lives. The inconsistent flopping between perspectives (omniscient 3rd, subjective 3rd, limited 3rd, 1st person) and past vs present tense feels like an unnecessary creative writing exercise. And so it's glib when it should be vivid.
In short: Great ideas. Needs a moderate edit and some heavy research. Would make the bones of a good TV series.
The Bad: The book's ambitions are a little beyond what it delivers, and each of its 630ish pages feels like a progressive dilution of its potential. The horror at the beginning quickly gives way to regular disaster/apocalyptica. We have a huge story from multiple perspectives, but it can't quite settle into their voices or worldviews, and so the attempts at diversity, while well-meaning, feel more like casting roulette on a too-long TV series by LA writers, instead of its attempted range of modern American lives. The inconsistent flopping between perspectives (omniscient 3rd, subjective 3rd, limited 3rd, 1st person) and past vs present tense feels like an unnecessary creative writing exercise. And so it's glib when it should be vivid.
In short: Great ideas. Needs a moderate edit and some heavy research. Would make the bones of a good TV series.
January 20, 2024
Carrier Wave has tons of good ideas but they are often diluted in favor of survivalist action scenes. Also the writing is so confusing that it’s difficult to root for the many characters.
I really wish this story had been handled by a better writer.
I really wish this story had been handled by a better writer.
June 17, 2022
I read 340 pages. Then skipped ahead a couple vignettes when I thought it was dragging. I'm done yall. I can't do another 300 pages.
I liked the first several stories, up until and including War Bastard. But once it ventured into generic "surviving the post apocalypse" territory is where I started to check out. The idea that a sound infects people is a cool idea, and the lovecraftian nature of the unfolding event is cool. But damn does this need some editing. Some stories could be cut. Felt like diverse characters were shoehorned in without enough research done to properly represent them.
I dunno. There's some good stuff here but I need a faster payoff instead of just including every idea the author had.
I liked the first several stories, up until and including War Bastard. But once it ventured into generic "surviving the post apocalypse" territory is where I started to check out. The idea that a sound infects people is a cool idea, and the lovecraftian nature of the unfolding event is cool. But damn does this need some editing. Some stories could be cut. Felt like diverse characters were shoehorned in without enough research done to properly represent them.
I dunno. There's some good stuff here but I need a faster payoff instead of just including every idea the author had.
March 22, 2021
More like a 3.8. This book was such a fantastically fun cosmic horror ride told via disjointed and disconnected anecdotes and accounts from different folks attempting to cope with the collapse of humanity.
The ending was a little weak, felt like a flimsy Deus Ex Machina without really giving the threat they had built up enough credit. Rest of the book was great, though, and I enjoyed reading it so damn much.
Recommended for people who like Zombie, post-apocalyptic, cosmic horror stories.
The ending was a little weak, felt like a flimsy Deus Ex Machina without really giving the threat they had built up enough credit. Rest of the book was great, though, and I enjoyed reading it so damn much.
Recommended for people who like Zombie, post-apocalyptic, cosmic horror stories.
August 22, 2023
My cosmic horror baby of 2023 🥰 I absolutely LOVED this book and soaked up every second. It was a book review titled “buckle up, motherfuckers” on Audible that really got me here. I sent it to my dad while it was on sale and asked “does this look epic or what?”
His simple response was “yes” with a screenshot of his purchase receipt. He is just a few hours behind me in the audiobook. I can’t wait for our father-daughter-what-the-hell-did-I-just-read book club.
His simple response was “yes” with a screenshot of his purchase receipt. He is just a few hours behind me in the audiobook. I can’t wait for our father-daughter-what-the-hell-did-I-just-read book club.
October 9, 2025
Man, I love this book. I don’t have much time for re-reads these days but I know that I’m going to want to read it again once the details fade from my memory.
Not exactly a novel, Carrier Wave is a series of zombie stories – even if the monsters aren’t technically “zombies.” Each story is set in the same world and they eventually weave themselves together into a larger narrative.
It’s a terrifically creepy concept: A sound, an audio track, that makes people go crazy. Not just crazy but almost like they’re tools of an otherworldly, extra-dimensional force. They become “zombies”, although they’re closer to the infected from Garth Ennis’s Crossed, Vol. 1 than traditional undead – only without all of thesexual assault edginess. It’s a concept that I’ve seen done before – Cell, Pontypool and The Signal all come to mind – but I feel like I’ve never seen it executed this well. If you’re at all a fan of the genre, Carrier Wave might feel like familiar ground - at first. But if you’re a looking for a well-written collection of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic stories, I think you’ll find a lot to enjoy here.
The writing starts out a bit rough around the edges for the first chapter or two but it gets better in a hurry. By the time I got to “War Bastard”, I was completely hooked. Brockway probably won’t win many literary awards but I love his style of writing. It’s so descriptive and brutal.
Each story being mostly self-contained made me feel like I was bingeing a comic series more than reading a standalone novel but I absolutely flew through the 843 pages of the Kindle edition. It’s just so easy to finish one story and start the next. I was surprised by the sheer variety and depth to the stories: I cared about each group of characters and their individual plights. I kept expecting Brockway to run out of steam, for the next story to be some generic filler, but it never happened. Every story was fresh and intriguing, pushing the overall narrative forward.
If I have one complaint, it’s the exposition. Explanations are given and, while they are fascinating, I preferred the mystery of not knowing. The carrier wave and subsequent madness are so much scarier when the cause is unknowable and ineffable. But even though the explanations do diminish the horror, they craft a more engaging narrative: Mindless killings without purpose would have gotten old after a while.
I don’t know if this will be my book of the year but it’s one that I’m very glad I added to my collection. Robert Brockway is now on my list of instant-buy authors.
Edit: I listened to the audiobook for my re-read and it's quite good. Michael Braun really kills the narration. And the book itself has held up well. Strangely, it actually seemed to be a bit on the short side despite clocking in at 35+ hours.
Not exactly a novel, Carrier Wave is a series of zombie stories – even if the monsters aren’t technically “zombies.” Each story is set in the same world and they eventually weave themselves together into a larger narrative.
It’s a terrifically creepy concept: A sound, an audio track, that makes people go crazy. Not just crazy but almost like they’re tools of an otherworldly, extra-dimensional force. They become “zombies”, although they’re closer to the infected from Garth Ennis’s Crossed, Vol. 1 than traditional undead – only without all of the
The writing starts out a bit rough around the edges for the first chapter or two but it gets better in a hurry. By the time I got to “War Bastard”, I was completely hooked. Brockway probably won’t win many literary awards but I love his style of writing. It’s so descriptive and brutal.
Each story being mostly self-contained made me feel like I was bingeing a comic series more than reading a standalone novel but I absolutely flew through the 843 pages of the Kindle edition. It’s just so easy to finish one story and start the next. I was surprised by the sheer variety and depth to the stories: I cared about each group of characters and their individual plights. I kept expecting Brockway to run out of steam, for the next story to be some generic filler, but it never happened. Every story was fresh and intriguing, pushing the overall narrative forward.
If I have one complaint, it’s the exposition. Explanations are given and, while they are fascinating, I preferred the mystery of not knowing. The carrier wave and subsequent madness are so much scarier when the cause is unknowable and ineffable. But even though the explanations do diminish the horror, they craft a more engaging narrative: Mindless killings without purpose would have gotten old after a while.
I don’t know if this will be my book of the year but it’s one that I’m very glad I added to my collection. Robert Brockway is now on my list of instant-buy authors.
Edit: I listened to the audiobook for my re-read and it's quite good. Michael Braun really kills the narration. And the book itself has held up well. Strangely, it actually seemed to be a bit on the short side despite clocking in at 35+ hours.
November 11, 2020
I couldn't get through this one. Minor spoilers follow, but only for the first 150 pages, because...that's all I read.
I thought that this book could really have benefitted from an editor, not only because there were multiple typos and spacing mistakes, but also because it took waaaay to long to reach the story. I got 140 pages in before a single character lived through their introduction. When I finally met some characters who didn't immediately die, it was children being attacked by each other in gruesome ways that made me immediately put the book down. At 600+ pages I can safely say that we get the point about the danger of the signal after the first few deaths. We didn't need a full 100 pages to establish how bad it was.
I think I might have gotten through more if the book wasn't so deeply violent and gruesome. Brockway's other series certainly had some horrifying moments, but it also had a LOT of humour and actual characters, so I didn't mind how gross it was because it felt justified and earned. Here it just felt gratuitous, and as someone who isn't a big fan of horror to begin with, I was turned right off.
I thought that this book could really have benefitted from an editor, not only because there were multiple typos and spacing mistakes, but also because it took waaaay to long to reach the story. I got 140 pages in before a single character lived through their introduction. When I finally met some characters who didn't immediately die, it was children being attacked by each other in gruesome ways that made me immediately put the book down. At 600+ pages I can safely say that we get the point about the danger of the signal after the first few deaths. We didn't need a full 100 pages to establish how bad it was.
I think I might have gotten through more if the book wasn't so deeply violent and gruesome. Brockway's other series certainly had some horrifying moments, but it also had a LOT of humour and actual characters, so I didn't mind how gross it was because it felt justified and earned. Here it just felt gratuitous, and as someone who isn't a big fan of horror to begin with, I was turned right off.
November 26, 2023
One of the most boring, generic "zombie apocalypse but make it cosmic" books I've ever read. Nothing was surprising, the violence is gratuitous, the characters annoying and there really is not a single original thought in this. It tries to emulate World War Z but then drifts off towards bigger and better things without ever offering a real or believable explanation. Cosmic horror just isn't scary if said horror behaves like very brutal and butthurt children.
January 17, 2022
An extremely interesting way to tell a very old story. A little long, but engaging to keep me reading, a few vignettes could have been removed.
April 2, 2026
(2.25 Stars)
This just wasn't for me. I didn't really find the story compelling or the characters relatable.
I saw a lot of people compare this to World War Z, but I just don't see it, especially the WWZ book. Maybe the argument could be made it reminds people of the WWZ movie, but this book was nothing like the Brooks book.
The story was rambling and the characters did not really have their own voice. This isn't my first book by this author, so I know he is a good writer, I feel like maybe this was an experiment and it just didn't work (imo). The audiobook narration was ok.
Based on most other reviews, I am in the minority, so if the premise sounds good for you, give it a shot. It might be independent stories all under the umbrella of a world-wide catastrophe, but the format is completely different than WWZ.
This just wasn't for me. I didn't really find the story compelling or the characters relatable.
I saw a lot of people compare this to World War Z, but I just don't see it, especially the WWZ book. Maybe the argument could be made it reminds people of the WWZ movie, but this book was nothing like the Brooks book.
The story was rambling and the characters did not really have their own voice. This isn't my first book by this author, so I know he is a good writer, I feel like maybe this was an experiment and it just didn't work (imo). The audiobook narration was ok.
Based on most other reviews, I am in the minority, so if the premise sounds good for you, give it a shot. It might be independent stories all under the umbrella of a world-wide catastrophe, but the format is completely different than WWZ.
September 17, 2024
Another on my recent run of brilliant book after brilliant book. This has a lot in common with Fever House (Keith Rosson) which I have also recently read, and loved.
This is really an exceptional book, fast paced and gory, sci fi horror at it's finest. Some brilliant takes on the zombie genre. Really fantastic scenes, creepy and anxiety inducing, I felt on edge throughout what is a long book. I see a few mention it has World War Z vibes, I am not too convinced by that, the zombies here are a lot more intelligent and omnipresent. They converse and have greater hive mind aspects. Some zombies come across like the Bogeyman, very creepy and chilling in places. There are some horrifying images drawn here of the post apocalypse world, but also some dark humour. And lots of gore. More ripped arm sockets than a MMA brawl.
And that centipede...
Overall, I really loved this.
This is really an exceptional book, fast paced and gory, sci fi horror at it's finest. Some brilliant takes on the zombie genre. Really fantastic scenes, creepy and anxiety inducing, I felt on edge throughout what is a long book. I see a few mention it has World War Z vibes, I am not too convinced by that, the zombies here are a lot more intelligent and omnipresent. They converse and have greater hive mind aspects. Some zombies come across like the Bogeyman, very creepy and chilling in places. There are some horrifying images drawn here of the post apocalypse world, but also some dark humour. And lots of gore. More ripped arm sockets than a MMA brawl.
And that centipede...
Overall, I really loved this.
January 12, 2024
I had mixed this up with Inscape in my head, I think because both have similar covers, and I had read maybe 5 pages of Inscape at the library, so I was expecting this to be a cyberpunk-y action thriller kind of book, only to be pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be a Junji Ito-esque rage zombie apocalypse kind of book. It's always fun when an author blends genres well, and Brockway does a really good job playing a cosmic horror tune with post-apocalypse instruments, though, making even the most well-worn zombie apocalypse tropes feel less cliche than they otherwise would.
September 1, 2023
This was a wild ride. A damn good listen. The way the story plays out is pretty damn believable for the most part. Human nature plays a big part in this and Brockway really hits it in some of the characters and trials they go through.
October 7, 2025
Oh boy... Where to start... I listened to this, so all my terms will be in hours, not pages.
This review contains major spoilers. You've been warned.
Positives:
-The initial concept is really good.
-... and that's where the positives end.
Negatives:
-This book is at least 12 hours longer than it needs to be.
-Far too gory and gruesome.
-It introduces WAY too many characters, probably half of which just die anyway.
-The diversity in the book is to its detriment. Every single character is a different ethnicity it would seem with no real rhyme or reason.
-Every female is a girlboss, and every male is a whiny baby. This modern trend is why Hollywood films are failing in the last few years.
-The characters don't feel real. They all feel like caricatures of what *insert ethnicity here* is supposed to be. The Native American teen carries a hatchet. The Latina girl is super uppity. The gay couple is SUPER GAY. Like they're all thrown in just to fill a quota instead of actually serving a purpose to the story.
-3/4 of the book is just bloat. The author elaborates on every single little detail with some sort of metaphor or simile.
-After the slog through the whole book, the ending is so anticlimactic that I just rolled my eyes because I was so done at that point.
The opening to Carrier Wave was one of the most fascinating concepts I've ever read. Basically a zombie virus that spreads through sound. Zombies aren't new, but the sound aspect was extremely interesting.
The first 1/4 of the book sets up events well and it made a lot of sense. But the book was absolutely too long for what it is. Which is sort of an anthology of characters that all come together in the end. However, they just so happen to be together in the end without any actual meaning behind it. They all just kind of show up together, do some stuff next to each other, and then it ends.
There was an incredibly long chapter in the middle about a group of people that just talk about their feelings and how the bully white dude shouldn't make fun of the Israeli girl. And of course they're all paired with the gay couple who CONSTANTLY put the whole group in danger because of their newly found (I shit you not) pet pig... Princess Sparkle Hog... It was one of the most frustrating chapters of any book I've ever read. Oh yeah, we literally never hear from any of the characters after this chapter except for the gay couple, who should've objectively been the first to die.
But the characters are all just frustrating. And like I said, half of them just die.
Plus, the book jumps from 3rd person to first person to omniscient all the time. Sometimes in the middle of chapters. It was somewhat jarring going from person to person trying to figure out whose perspective we were hearing at that moment. Especially at the end!
There's a MASSIVE chapter at the end that was literally 3 hours long. WHY!? And it jumped perspectives so many times and kept naming characters that I was supposed to know that I was just lost for most of it. The author would just name drop some person and eventually I understood who it was, but that character hadn't been seen for like 10 hours, so how was I supposed to know who it was!?
The timeline for the book is also wonky. It starts off okay, but then as the chapters roll on it just skips an unknown amount of time and the characters are older, but it never tells you how old. Could have jumped by weeks, months, even years, but never strictly says. So it ends up just being hard to follow.
There's also entire chapters that are 100% worthless. There's a whole story in the middle somewhere about how a whole community lives in an abandoned Costco and only one lady can go up into the light. The whole community has infighting about it and then the lady just ends up killing them because they went outside after she protested. If I heard of someone else from that little mini story, it's unclear, because I couldn't be bothered to remember the names of 100 people from the Costco commune that went NOWHERE!
Lastly, I'm very sick of stories that elevate others by putting down another. The book constantly shoves diversity and girl boss power in your face and it's just so artificial... I hate that it's become a trend to shove people into stories due to their ethnicity or sexual orientation without any meaning. This book takes place all across the US, so it makes sense that you'd have a diverse cast. BUT, it shoves all these characters together with no rhyme or reason and constantly puts down the men. And especially the white men.
Every time something tense would happen, the female character would take the gun while the male character cried or cowered away... It was so annoying to have zero competent male characters in the end. The only competent male in the story was kinda rude and stubborn and died anyway...
The cast consisted of:
-A Latina teen girl (turns into a girl boss by the end)
-Her little brother (who doesn't talk due to trauma)
-Her older brother (who goes crazy and dies)
-A Native American teen boy (who is portrayed as timid and weak)
-His Native American dad (takes a lot of time to mention that he lies a lot, is full of self hatred, and then dies)
-An old Asian dude (legally blind, who sucks at jokes, dies)
-His two daughters (twins, both bitches)
-Some dude (constantly points out he's fat, dies)
-Some dude's daughter? (mentions he's "not a real man" pointing to him being a 40 y/o virgin, so this didn't make sense)
-An old army general guy (stereotypical guy with tons of weapons, dies)
-The old guy I mentioned above (some girl infiltrates his hideout and he has some empathy for her because she looks like his deceased wife, dies because of the girl)
-A gay couple (literally contributes nothing to the story, constantly puts their group in danger chasing after a stupid pig, the girl with them wants to eat the pig because they're LITERALLY STARVING and they refuse, they end up not dying somehow.........)
-Some kid whose parents both catch "the wave" (writes everything down, plays zero part in the story, but in the last chapter he's some history teacher that's somehow important)
-A boss bitch military lady (outranks everyone)
-Boss bitch's husband (who basically just takes orders from his wife)
-Their pre teen boy (gets boners every time he sees the Latina girl because boy hormones, literally asks permission to touch that girl when she tells him to grab something from her hip pouch... WTF is that all about? They're about to die and he asks permission to touch her... That's actually the stupidest thing ever. He gets visions from the zombie people and such, but that doesn't really go anywhere)
-Some kid with a bowl cut apparently... (talks about him once and how he's some tech guru, then never uses him again)
-Some DJ guy (ends up infecting the whole planet, kills himself)
It's insane the amount of characters... These are just MOST of the main ones. All the girls survive. Most of the men die (except the gay couple OF COURSE).
The ending is so horrendous too. The Latina girl goes to sacrifice herself and then doesn't die.
And you know how they beat the zombie things? A nuke. That's it. We spent all this time building stupid little random stories just so the Latina girl can go to sacrifice herself, not die because the bomb has a timer, then they drive away and watch the NUKE explode because it's not THAT big of a nuke, and then the bomb just goes off and all is well...
That's literally the ending.
I spent 22 hours of my life listening to this garbage.
Do not read.
I'll give it a 1.5/5 because of the original concept. About as bad as Wonder Woman 84...
This review contains major spoilers. You've been warned.
Positives:
-The initial concept is really good.
-... and that's where the positives end.
Negatives:
-This book is at least 12 hours longer than it needs to be.
-Far too gory and gruesome.
-It introduces WAY too many characters, probably half of which just die anyway.
-The diversity in the book is to its detriment. Every single character is a different ethnicity it would seem with no real rhyme or reason.
-Every female is a girlboss, and every male is a whiny baby. This modern trend is why Hollywood films are failing in the last few years.
-The characters don't feel real. They all feel like caricatures of what *insert ethnicity here* is supposed to be. The Native American teen carries a hatchet. The Latina girl is super uppity. The gay couple is SUPER GAY. Like they're all thrown in just to fill a quota instead of actually serving a purpose to the story.
-3/4 of the book is just bloat. The author elaborates on every single little detail with some sort of metaphor or simile.
-After the slog through the whole book, the ending is so anticlimactic that I just rolled my eyes because I was so done at that point.
The opening to Carrier Wave was one of the most fascinating concepts I've ever read. Basically a zombie virus that spreads through sound. Zombies aren't new, but the sound aspect was extremely interesting.
The first 1/4 of the book sets up events well and it made a lot of sense. But the book was absolutely too long for what it is. Which is sort of an anthology of characters that all come together in the end. However, they just so happen to be together in the end without any actual meaning behind it. They all just kind of show up together, do some stuff next to each other, and then it ends.
There was an incredibly long chapter in the middle about a group of people that just talk about their feelings and how the bully white dude shouldn't make fun of the Israeli girl. And of course they're all paired with the gay couple who CONSTANTLY put the whole group in danger because of their newly found (I shit you not) pet pig... Princess Sparkle Hog... It was one of the most frustrating chapters of any book I've ever read. Oh yeah, we literally never hear from any of the characters after this chapter except for the gay couple, who should've objectively been the first to die.
But the characters are all just frustrating. And like I said, half of them just die.
Plus, the book jumps from 3rd person to first person to omniscient all the time. Sometimes in the middle of chapters. It was somewhat jarring going from person to person trying to figure out whose perspective we were hearing at that moment. Especially at the end!
There's a MASSIVE chapter at the end that was literally 3 hours long. WHY!? And it jumped perspectives so many times and kept naming characters that I was supposed to know that I was just lost for most of it. The author would just name drop some person and eventually I understood who it was, but that character hadn't been seen for like 10 hours, so how was I supposed to know who it was!?
The timeline for the book is also wonky. It starts off okay, but then as the chapters roll on it just skips an unknown amount of time and the characters are older, but it never tells you how old. Could have jumped by weeks, months, even years, but never strictly says. So it ends up just being hard to follow.
There's also entire chapters that are 100% worthless. There's a whole story in the middle somewhere about how a whole community lives in an abandoned Costco and only one lady can go up into the light. The whole community has infighting about it and then the lady just ends up killing them because they went outside after she protested. If I heard of someone else from that little mini story, it's unclear, because I couldn't be bothered to remember the names of 100 people from the Costco commune that went NOWHERE!
Lastly, I'm very sick of stories that elevate others by putting down another. The book constantly shoves diversity and girl boss power in your face and it's just so artificial... I hate that it's become a trend to shove people into stories due to their ethnicity or sexual orientation without any meaning. This book takes place all across the US, so it makes sense that you'd have a diverse cast. BUT, it shoves all these characters together with no rhyme or reason and constantly puts down the men. And especially the white men.
Every time something tense would happen, the female character would take the gun while the male character cried or cowered away... It was so annoying to have zero competent male characters in the end. The only competent male in the story was kinda rude and stubborn and died anyway...
The cast consisted of:
-A Latina teen girl (turns into a girl boss by the end)
-Her little brother (who doesn't talk due to trauma)
-Her older brother (who goes crazy and dies)
-A Native American teen boy (who is portrayed as timid and weak)
-His Native American dad (takes a lot of time to mention that he lies a lot, is full of self hatred, and then dies)
-An old Asian dude (legally blind, who sucks at jokes, dies)
-His two daughters (twins, both bitches)
-Some dude (constantly points out he's fat, dies)
-Some dude's daughter? (mentions he's "not a real man" pointing to him being a 40 y/o virgin, so this didn't make sense)
-An old army general guy (stereotypical guy with tons of weapons, dies)
-The old guy I mentioned above (some girl infiltrates his hideout and he has some empathy for her because she looks like his deceased wife, dies because of the girl)
-A gay couple (literally contributes nothing to the story, constantly puts their group in danger chasing after a stupid pig, the girl with them wants to eat the pig because they're LITERALLY STARVING and they refuse, they end up not dying somehow.........)
-Some kid whose parents both catch "the wave" (writes everything down, plays zero part in the story, but in the last chapter he's some history teacher that's somehow important)
-A boss bitch military lady (outranks everyone)
-Boss bitch's husband (who basically just takes orders from his wife)
-Their pre teen boy (gets boners every time he sees the Latina girl because boy hormones, literally asks permission to touch that girl when she tells him to grab something from her hip pouch... WTF is that all about? They're about to die and he asks permission to touch her... That's actually the stupidest thing ever. He gets visions from the zombie people and such, but that doesn't really go anywhere)
-Some kid with a bowl cut apparently... (talks about him once and how he's some tech guru, then never uses him again)
-Some DJ guy (ends up infecting the whole planet, kills himself)
It's insane the amount of characters... These are just MOST of the main ones. All the girls survive. Most of the men die (except the gay couple OF COURSE).
The ending is so horrendous too. The Latina girl goes to sacrifice herself and then doesn't die.
And you know how they beat the zombie things? A nuke. That's it. We spent all this time building stupid little random stories just so the Latina girl can go to sacrifice herself, not die because the bomb has a timer, then they drive away and watch the NUKE explode because it's not THAT big of a nuke, and then the bomb just goes off and all is well...
That's literally the ending.
I spent 22 hours of my life listening to this garbage.
Do not read.
I'll give it a 1.5/5 because of the original concept. About as bad as Wonder Woman 84...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 23, 2022
Brutal. This book is brutal.
My friend dropped this book into a conversation once, and I thought I would give it a shot. The story is interesting, and it took a few chapters to understand how it was being told. Each chapter was more of an essay (novella in some cases) about the destruction of humanity through an audio and visual contagion. After a couple chapters, I realized that characters were not coming back, and that made it easier to settle in.
But it was hard to get comfortable with a book where nothing good happens. The action is very brutal. The things people turn into resemble zombies, and then there is a sentience to them. The Merry and the Judges were just terrifying. I had a hard time visualizing what the sky must have looked like, and I really wonder what the planet would have looked like from somewhere else in the solar system.
The last chapter jumps from multiple viewpoints all with characters from some previous chapters. That is where I feel the book lost its footing a little. This was going to be a hard story to end no matter what. But bringing in characters was a nice way to bring it all together.
I don't want to see a movie of this. But I think vignettes in this story would be interesting. I wouldn't recommend this for most people, unless you like this kind of thing. One thing that helps a lot is the author's humor. He is very funny and witty. That helps. In many cases, it makes the stories very human.
My friend dropped this book into a conversation once, and I thought I would give it a shot. The story is interesting, and it took a few chapters to understand how it was being told. Each chapter was more of an essay (novella in some cases) about the destruction of humanity through an audio and visual contagion. After a couple chapters, I realized that characters were not coming back, and that made it easier to settle in.
But it was hard to get comfortable with a book where nothing good happens. The action is very brutal. The things people turn into resemble zombies, and then there is a sentience to them. The Merry and the Judges were just terrifying. I had a hard time visualizing what the sky must have looked like, and I really wonder what the planet would have looked like from somewhere else in the solar system.
The last chapter jumps from multiple viewpoints all with characters from some previous chapters. That is where I feel the book lost its footing a little. This was going to be a hard story to end no matter what. But bringing in characters was a nice way to bring it all together.
I don't want to see a movie of this. But I think vignettes in this story would be interesting. I wouldn't recommend this for most people, unless you like this kind of thing. One thing that helps a lot is the author's humor. He is very funny and witty. That helps. In many cases, it makes the stories very human.
January 14, 2021
The book was meh. Overall I didn't like it. It takes a very long time to pick up some pace and even then I didn't quite care. I strongly disliked the ending. Of course that's personal preference. I'm a fan of r/HFY because it feels every SF book is the opposite and I am so tired of that.
July 6, 2024
Such a great start, so full of Lovecraftian promise, really enjoyed the initial 3rd of the book, was hopeful that we’d have a delve into the abyss with the entities, sadly was not to be.
Maybe it’s me, a lack of attention, but I grew tired of what seemed like the same chapter being reconfigured with different character/circumstances ad-nauseam and so gave up at 40%
What I really wanted was to have a small group of main characters diving into the void, exploring the depths, being slowly consumed, some losses, a few, perhaps just one returning, forever damaged, bringing the void back with them. Maybe that happens later in the book, I skimmed a few chapters to see but didn’t find that.
I did appreciate the author clearly being a modular synth fan though, Red Means Recording sent me to this book.
Perhaps this would have been better as a short story rather than an attempt at an epic, as it got too repetitive for me.
Maybe it’s me, a lack of attention, but I grew tired of what seemed like the same chapter being reconfigured with different character/circumstances ad-nauseam and so gave up at 40%
What I really wanted was to have a small group of main characters diving into the void, exploring the depths, being slowly consumed, some losses, a few, perhaps just one returning, forever damaged, bringing the void back with them. Maybe that happens later in the book, I skimmed a few chapters to see but didn’t find that.
I did appreciate the author clearly being a modular synth fan though, Red Means Recording sent me to this book.
Perhaps this would have been better as a short story rather than an attempt at an epic, as it got too repetitive for me.
January 7, 2025
An original apocalyptic, cosmic horror story told from multiple perspectives. Each chapter can almost be read as an independent short story, gradually building a narrative that culminates in a big final confrontation. The average quality of these stories is great, featuring a wide and diverse cast of characters, most of whom are very well characterized. The tone also varies between the stories, being most of them terrifying, with some leaning more toward humor and others being action-packed.
I really liked the beginning of the story, with its weird phenomena transmitted through sound waves. I also enjoyed the cosmic pantheon that serves as the story's backdrop. Overall, it’s a great book. The ending felt a bit weaker compared to the rest of the book, making me almost wish the story had ended 150 pages earlier without a clear conclusion.
I really liked the beginning of the story, with its weird phenomena transmitted through sound waves. I also enjoyed the cosmic pantheon that serves as the story's backdrop. Overall, it’s a great book. The ending felt a bit weaker compared to the rest of the book, making me almost wish the story had ended 150 pages earlier without a clear conclusion.
December 30, 2020
I got 45% through and realized the whole thing is just a bunch of short stories with different characters. Most of the time the stories are basically the same. It's too bad because I was excited with the concept, but without any continuity of characters it just didn't hold my interest. It also came across as a school project to write a book with a number of stories, each from a different perspective (1st person, 3rd person limited, omniscient, one is even epistolary).
And by the time I was done it just seemed like another zombie-type story, and I've never been a fan of those.
And by the time I was done it just seemed like another zombie-type story, and I've never been a fan of those.
November 6, 2021
The first half of this book reads like an 80’s slasher film, just gore for the sake of gore with no impact on the plot or meaningful development to almost any characters. Whole chapters are just a violent digression from the core story and at a certain point they stop adding the atmosphere they were probably intended to set, and just become distracting.
The second half is touching, insightful, clever, and really unique; it’s borderline frustrating how much better it gets. If you have a strong stomach, it’s absolutely worth sticking with.
The second half is touching, insightful, clever, and really unique; it’s borderline frustrating how much better it gets. If you have a strong stomach, it’s absolutely worth sticking with.
May 17, 2023
Sadly I stopped reading at about 30%. The idea is really interesting and the first few chapters really got me into the story. It then became just a long series of (long) chapters that are just gratuitous zombie survival stories and do very little in terms of developing the main idea. All the atmosphere created initially is lost and it reads much like a movie about people surviving zombie apocalypse. I kept skipping pages to find more about the main story, which is interesting and frightening, but eventually gave up.
October 29, 2025
The first 340 pages start strong and really had drawn me in with the story thus far, but after this portion it just seems like very repetitive vignettes that you really cannot discern one from the other with the characters introduced. This book should have been reduced to 400 pages. Also the entities in this book have no depth, and the finale really leaves a lot to be desired. I never skip ahead when reading, but this felt mandatory to do so, and I was not rewarded either by doing so. The prose itself is great, just a lack of structure and depth to this story unfortunately.
March 17, 2021
While the horrors happening to the myriad of characters may have been new to them, by the seventh or eighth time I had to read about other people realizing something wasn't quite right with the people around them, I was pretty bored with waiting for more substance than "these people are dying horribly." The book could have easily been half as long and likely would have benefited from the editing.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 27, 2022
"Mum, can we have The Stand?"
"We have The Stand at home."
The Stand at home: Carrier Wave.
Rounded up from 2.5 stars. I gave up at 90% and skipped to the end because Carrier Wave is a mainstream horror novel that was sold to me as science fiction. Spoiler: it isn't.
"We have The Stand at home."
The Stand at home: Carrier Wave.
Rounded up from 2.5 stars. I gave up at 90% and skipped to the end because Carrier Wave is a mainstream horror novel that was sold to me as science fiction. Spoiler: it isn't.
March 30, 2021
This is one of the few times I can actually say I had difficulty putting a book down. The story is an interesting spin on cosmic horror lightly seasoned with zombie/contagion tropes, which winds up being more interesting than the sum of those parts might make you think. The world and characters are well-developed and the dialogue in particular is fantastic. However, the real treat is Brockway's wonderful experiment in using tone, tense, and POV as fluid variables to be played with in every new chapter. Though that may sound jarring, it's executed masterfully, and was one of the reasons I chewed through this book in record time.
The only major flaw is that the book occasionally stumbles off course to dabble in B-movie splatterfilm dreck. Rather than summoning up the disgust or terror that Brockway was aiming for, it instead causes cringing and eyerolls until the plot is mercifully allowed to resume course. In particular, the handful of scenes where children are mutilated and/or murdered in extreme, graphic detail is the sort of edgelord fluff that a good editor would scrap and a better storyteller wouldn't have to lean on to try and evoke emotion in their readers.
Despite that one glaring flaw, this book still has enough bonus points in the bank to sail through with an easy 4/5. However, I can't help but feel that there was a real missed opportunity here: if it weren't for the unfortunate and unnecessary forays into splatter-flick-with-$100-budget territory, Brockway's otherwise excellent grasp of writing technique would have made this novel a safe inclusion in any creative writing course's reading list. Rather than adding anything of value, the ultra-violent scenes will instead cause many potential readers to pass this book up completely, which is a damn shame and likely why it has a middling 150 ratings despite being published more than a year ago.
Overall, Carrier Wave is a good novel. Sadly, the occasional blocks of text that read like Cannibal Corpse lyrics will forever prevent it from being a great one.
The only major flaw is that the book occasionally stumbles off course to dabble in B-movie splatterfilm dreck. Rather than summoning up the disgust or terror that Brockway was aiming for, it instead causes cringing and eyerolls until the plot is mercifully allowed to resume course. In particular, the handful of scenes where children are mutilated and/or murdered in extreme, graphic detail is the sort of edgelord fluff that a good editor would scrap and a better storyteller wouldn't have to lean on to try and evoke emotion in their readers.
Despite that one glaring flaw, this book still has enough bonus points in the bank to sail through with an easy 4/5. However, I can't help but feel that there was a real missed opportunity here: if it weren't for the unfortunate and unnecessary forays into splatter-flick-with-$100-budget territory, Brockway's otherwise excellent grasp of writing technique would have made this novel a safe inclusion in any creative writing course's reading list. Rather than adding anything of value, the ultra-violent scenes will instead cause many potential readers to pass this book up completely, which is a damn shame and likely why it has a middling 150 ratings despite being published more than a year ago.
Overall, Carrier Wave is a good novel. Sadly, the occasional blocks of text that read like Cannibal Corpse lyrics will forever prevent it from being a great one.
April 5, 2021
Highly enjoyable.
Didn't think it would be possible to have so many interwoven stories and characters wind up in a neat little bow, but I came away from it pretty satisfied with the ending and the logic of it all.
I enjoyed the characters and the first few introductions to the different types of 'monster' are genuinely well written horror. I don't think I have any real problems with the pacing or way things were revealed over time, although there were a few cases where it just sort of dumped a ton of information in one go later on - mainly during the interview with the Mechanic on the land train which effectively serves as the whole explanation in one fell swoop - when I was enjoying piecing things together on my own terms up to that point.
The earlier chapters serve as a good introduction to everything you need to know about what the rest of the story involves, I think. There were plenty of "oh what the fuck" moments early on which weren't really repeated in a gratuitous fashion as things progressed, which I was happy about. As an example, I feel like repeatedly going over the sadistic behaviour of certain 'monsters' - the first Merry we meet and the way he kills everyone in the lab comes to mind - would've gotten a bit old hat. I was glad that it never outstayed its welcome.
I think the last chapter may have been better off as some shorter chapters overall, but I appreciated what it was trying to do all the same and it was nice to see certain characters from earlier on in the book reappear.
I also didn't mind how the infection ended up spreading on a large scale. It was rooted in something tangible and as something that could - and probably would - happen. There were a few contrivances to get the plot device in the right hands but nothing that was in the realm of unbelievable or absurd.
Overall, this is one of those books I wouldn't struggle with recommending to people and I'm glad to have read it.
Didn't think it would be possible to have so many interwoven stories and characters wind up in a neat little bow, but I came away from it pretty satisfied with the ending and the logic of it all.
I enjoyed the characters and the first few introductions to the different types of 'monster' are genuinely well written horror. I don't think I have any real problems with the pacing or way things were revealed over time, although there were a few cases where it just sort of dumped a ton of information in one go later on - mainly during the interview with the Mechanic on the land train which effectively serves as the whole explanation in one fell swoop - when I was enjoying piecing things together on my own terms up to that point.
The earlier chapters serve as a good introduction to everything you need to know about what the rest of the story involves, I think. There were plenty of "oh what the fuck" moments early on which weren't really repeated in a gratuitous fashion as things progressed, which I was happy about. As an example, I feel like repeatedly going over the sadistic behaviour of certain 'monsters' - the first Merry we meet and the way he kills everyone in the lab comes to mind - would've gotten a bit old hat. I was glad that it never outstayed its welcome.
I think the last chapter may have been better off as some shorter chapters overall, but I appreciated what it was trying to do all the same and it was nice to see certain characters from earlier on in the book reappear.
I also didn't mind how the infection ended up spreading on a large scale. It was rooted in something tangible and as something that could - and probably would - happen. There were a few contrivances to get the plot device in the right hands but nothing that was in the realm of unbelievable or absurd.
Overall, this is one of those books I wouldn't struggle with recommending to people and I'm glad to have read it.
February 15, 2026
Buckle up, it’s the end of the world. Some science guys see some patterns and some audio guys hear some sounds and as soon as the rest of us see it or hear it we turn on each other.
Is it aliens? Is it monsters? Vengeful gods? Sure, your guess is as good as mine because we only really get info from non science survivors and occasionally some unhelpful side character who has tapped into something.
Reader beware though, this book is long and it’s written as a sort of short story collection, instead of eye witnesses who are important to each others story. You will find some of your old buddies hanging out at the end, but you have to rely on your memory to spot them. Also I feel it’s important to note: THE PIG DOES NOT DIE. This is for anyone who doesn’t care about people getting ripped from limb to limb but draw the line at sweet lil pets wearing cable knit sweaters.
I actually think this is a 5 star book but I’m going with 4 for 2 reasons: It’s super long and some of the interesting to me things happen early on, when your doing the 23 hour audiobook you can’t look back for reference. AND I’m not sure I really understood what happened, just that it happened and maybe that’s the point but Im not sure. (This might be my autobiography title.) I kind of wonder if this author doesn’t care for a drawn out climax (hey bestie, I see you) but I listened to the last part twice and was like… wait, that’s it?
To be clear: As a low key entertainment only reader, I also don’t know what happened in The Stand or in World War Z either. This book reminded me of those books, so that’s what I’m comparing it to and unlike the others I actually really liked this one, I’m basically obsessed with this author now.
Is it aliens? Is it monsters? Vengeful gods? Sure, your guess is as good as mine because we only really get info from non science survivors and occasionally some unhelpful side character who has tapped into something.
Reader beware though, this book is long and it’s written as a sort of short story collection, instead of eye witnesses who are important to each others story. You will find some of your old buddies hanging out at the end, but you have to rely on your memory to spot them. Also I feel it’s important to note: THE PIG DOES NOT DIE. This is for anyone who doesn’t care about people getting ripped from limb to limb but draw the line at sweet lil pets wearing cable knit sweaters.
I actually think this is a 5 star book but I’m going with 4 for 2 reasons: It’s super long and some of the interesting to me things happen early on, when your doing the 23 hour audiobook you can’t look back for reference. AND I’m not sure I really understood what happened, just that it happened and maybe that’s the point but Im not sure. (This might be my autobiography title.) I kind of wonder if this author doesn’t care for a drawn out climax (hey bestie, I see you) but I listened to the last part twice and was like… wait, that’s it?
To be clear: As a low key entertainment only reader, I also don’t know what happened in The Stand or in World War Z either. This book reminded me of those books, so that’s what I’m comparing it to and unlike the others I actually really liked this one, I’m basically obsessed with this author now.
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