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AudiobookReviewer

DeathDay

DeathDay - William C. Dietz ABR's full DeathDay audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

Long and Tedious. Makes you wish the aliens would finish off the humans quicker.

I am a science fiction fanatic and have read hundreds of scifi books, from Jules Verne to the present. I wanted DeathDay to be good. I listened carefully to all 16 hours hoping for something worthwhile to happen. I paid close attention to the mostly plot driven story, but finally reached the end more than a little disappointed.

The overarching plot is pretty simple and way over used: Aliens attack the earth because they need a new home. They kill billions of humans and enslave the rest (Battlefield Earth). The aliens have a hierarchy where the darker the skin, the higher their status. They force this upon the surviving human slaves too. That is an interesting premise, but quickly devolves into idiot skin heads killing black and brown people with abandon. Really? After half the human race is exterminated, that’s how humans would react. It just didn’t sound realistic.

The aliens are insect-like creatures that are hard to kill and can jump really high (Starship Troopers, Ender’s Game); except not on their own ships, because those are built by a super smart race of alien slaves who somehow forget to conquer their inferior masters. The aliens immediately learn English, can track every human, and continually squabble. They have very human-like emotions and are often more human than the humans. Sometimes, I found myself rooting for the aliens more than humans, though most of the time I just wanted everyone to die quickly.

This rambling story is narrated by Luke Daniels who has a smooth deep voice. His character voices for the aliens and human females were quite good. Unfortunately, all of the male humans sounded the same, like East-Texas ranchers. This distracted me from the story. Why did the black governor of Washington state sound like Hoss Cartwright on Bonanza? But otherwise, Daniels did a good job.

This is book one in a series of unknown length. The story didn’t end or even wrap up a little, it just seemed to stop at the end of the last chapter. There is no way I would sit through another 16 hours to find out what happens to all these two dimensional characters.

Audiobook provided for review by the publisher.