Three Days in Undead Shoes

Pandora Strain: Zombie Road, Book 1

By: Dee J. Holmes

Narrated by: Freya Ravensbergen, Troy Kain

One woman. One Great Dane. And a zombie above the rest.

Jane Finch wishes her problems ended with a bad commute and no coffee. But when she and her beloved Great Dane, Schrodinger, emerge from a locked room they discover a city changed for the undead.

Zombies are everywhere. Some are endlessly cycling through their last actions, others have turned feral—and hungry. Jane and Schroddie's best chance for survival? Reaching her parents' bunker on the city's north shore.

Not an easy commute on foot—when surrounded by zombies.

Dodging stray bullets and feral zombies is one thing. But soon Jane realizes one of the zombies is following her. Built like a tank, silent as the grave, his attention never wavers. Wherever she goes, he's there. If she hides, he finds her. There's no fighting him, no escape.

He's not like the others—and he might be Jane's only hope for survival.

Contains mature themes.

©2021 Deana J. Holmes (P)2023 Tantor

Different kind of zombie

Not gory or full of torture. More of a young adult story than the usual zombie story. Moved at a good pace.

If you can stand the sound effects…

Story’s not bad. I like the take on having multiple types of zombies, with the majority actually being fairly harmless and some deadly. A little cringe when it came to the martial arts trained, well-muscled, hot male “stalker” zombie — left me wondering if this was written in the height of Twilight’s popularity. Hardest part was the narration — her speaking voice is fine but the dog & zombie sounds grated on my nerves. Several reviews complain about the dog sounds but I minded those a lot less than the attempt at “scary” Zombie sounds. The text being read will describe a howl or screech as “the most terrifying sound” and then the narrator consistently does something that falls between sounding like a mewling kitten or mildly pissed-off alley cat’s screech at worst. Ridiculous. And annoying. Geez if sound effects are that necessary add in some actual sound effects or don’t do them at all and let the text guide listeners’ imagination.

overall, pretty good start.

First the the audible version gets 3 stars for the narrator, while she wasn't terrible, I did not like the dog or feral sounds. So I will continue with the kindle version of this series not the audio. The male narrator at the end was great. The story overall was good not great, the female lead made a few choices that were questionable and while I liked Schrodie as her companion, the constant references to dog training and being a behaviourist were tiresome. I can't say I didn't like the female lead completely but she got on my nerves at certain points. Hopefully she improves in the next book and I do want to see how this trilogy ends.

Great Danes, and sometimes a zombie

It was mostly about Great Danes and being a dog trainer. The author must really, really love Great Danes and decided to write a zombie book about it. Because why not.

I definitely got tired of the constant references to being a dog trainer and how Great Danes do this and Great Danes do that and on and on. At least it wasn't always going on about go-bags and survival stuff...oh wait. There was that too, but at least less. Wasn't a huge fan of the narrator performing dog and zombie noises, either.

I did like the different zombie types and I think a dog that lives is always good.

Okay story, annoying dog sounds.

Perhaps I didn't notice that this is a YA book? The story is good not great. Performing the dog's noises was distracting & became annoying. I suppose the narrator did a fair job of it, but I definitely didn't care for it. I bought the first 2 books in this series together as part of a deal so I'll try to listen to the next one, but not beyond that.