REVIEW: The Fold (audiobook) by Peter Clines, narrated by Ray Porter

The Fold is a sci-fi mystery. I bought my copy via Audible.

Review:

Mike is a small town English teacher who would prefer to stay a small town English teacher forever. However, an old friend of his has finally found a project that intrigues him enough that he's finally willing to use the abilities he's locked away as much as possible.

Mike is sent to learn as much as he can about the Albuquerque Door project and report his findings back to his friend Reggie, so that an informed decision can be made about whether to renew the project's budget. Mike, with his high IQ and eidetic memory, is uniquely qualified to do this job - he can get up to speed faster than anybody else Reggie might have on staff. And one of the things Mike quickly figures out is that the Albuquerque Door folks are hiding something from him. The Door does exactly what it's supposed to do, allowing people to travel a great distance in just a single step, and the hundreds of tests that have been performed have all gone perfectly. So why is everyone so secretive and so adamant that more tests need to be run?

Ex-Heroes (audiobook) by Peter Clines, narrated by Jay Snyder and Khristine Hvam

Ex-Heroes is a zombie apocalypse book with superheroes. It's the first in a series. I got it on Audible during one of their sales.

Review:

I like superheroes and I like zombies – a book that combined the two seemed like a good fit for me. Unfortunately, I had some issues with Ex-Heroes, to the point that I ended up taking a multi-week break from it part of the way through. Had this been a library checkout rather than a purchase, I probably would have DNFed it.

The plot was fairly simple but took such a long time to get going that I feel like almost any synopsis I might write would give too much away. I will say that the basic setup should be familiar to any fan of zombie apocalypse stories: a group of survivors tries to continue surviving, hopefully find a cure, and maybe even forge something like a normal and fear-free existence. This particular group of survivors (really, enough people to count as a little town) just happens to be guarded by a few surviving superheroes.

One of those superheroes is St. George, a guy who can breathe fire and glide for a long enough distance that it looks like he can fly and who, more importantly, is completely invulnerable. Then there's Gorgon, a man whose gaze can suck the energy out of people and temporarily give him greater power. Cerberus is the name given both to an enormous armed mecha and to the woman who operates it. Zzzap is a man in a wheelchair who can transform into a flying being made out of energy. Stealth is mysterious, athletic, and coldly cerebral.

14 (audio book) by Peter Clines, read by Ray Porter

This post does not include a read-alikes list.

Review:

Nate lives in L.A. and has a dead-end minimum wage data entry job. He needs a more affordable place to live, so he's thrilled to learn about the Kavach building. An apartment with all utilities paid, only $565 a month! Yay! Maybe it's so cheap because it's infested with bright green mutant cockroaches. Or maybe something else is going on. Despite threats of eviction from the building manager, Nate and the other Kavach building residents begin exploring the building's many mysteries, which include highly individual apartment layouts, the mysterious padlocked Apartment 14, weird lighting in Nate's kitchen, and more.

I'm not sure what to call 14. Horror, I guess, but it's not the gory or scary kind. It's suspenseful, slightly creepy, and, especially near the end, downright weird. Aspects of the book struck me as being more silly than scary. Even so, it worked really well for me.