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Wormwood  By  cover art

Wormwood

By: Micah Ackerman
Narrated by: Kevin Pierce
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Publisher's summary

For Nate Wilder, anxiety is nothing new. Regularly suffering from panic attacks triggered by news reports of world catastrophes, he can barely handle his everyday life even when, rationally, the events should not affect him. Nate becomes a prepper to help him cope with the anxiety, stocking a makeshift shelter.

So when nuclear disaster actually strikes home, Nate must employ truly heroic courage or fold to his fears. But in the aftermath of the bombs, it quickly becomes apparent that surviving the attack is just the beginning - there is far worse yet to come.

Wormwood is a taut, post-apocalyptic thriller told from the perspective of three main characters: flawed hero Nate; Jeanette, his beautifully flawed love interest; and Simon, the unstable leader of their survivor community.

©2015 Micah Ackerman (P)2015 Micah Ackerman

What listeners say about Wormwood

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

An interesting Post Apocalyptic read.

Any additional comments?

I didn't know what to expect when I first started listening to this but I didn't expect to enjoy it so much! It grabbed me from the start and didn't let go.

I'm not going to summarize it in case I inadvertently spoil something so I'll get right to my thoughts.

I always love reading about a flawed character, it makes it more relatable because in all honesty, nobody is perfect! Well Nate was an awesome character. He suffers from Panic attacks while reading and thinking about catastrophes in the news. He is almost paranoid in his thinking. The latest news isn't good and Nate has a feeling that things are going to be bad. He decides that he needs to get ready in case the worst does happen and becomes a prepper. Little does he know that he may just need to use his prepping skills!! As I said, I love flawed characters, and boy is he flawed. He is nervous, doesn't have any friends and is a quiet withdrawn man.

Jeanette is Nates' co-worker and secret crush. He has had a crush on her for ages but is too scared to ask her out. When the bombs drop Nate finds himself at work with Jeanette and has no choice but to take her to his bunker. I really liked her character too. She was a strong woman and a good partner for Nate.

The first half of the book deals with the fallout of the bombs and the struggles of Nate and Jeanette to survive in the bunker. I enjoyed the first half because we see both of the characters change and become stronger. Nate is no longer a shy guy but has had to become a leader of sorts. He takes control and makes sure both of them survive. I loved the character development and was rooting for Nate from the start.

Then we have the second half of the book. And boy what a second half!! Nate and Jeanette find other survivors and end up living with them. You would think this was better but with so many different types of people and an egotistical fanatic leading them, it's much worse!!

Anyway, I flew through this book and couldn't get enough. It's well written and developed. The plot was well thought out and executed. It's also plausible and quite frankly, kind of scary!! Each character is well written and the character development was phenomenal. Each character grew throughout the story, which I loved!!

In all, Wormwood was not only an action packed book, it's a story of surviving, of finding love, of being all you can be despite everything else. From it's interesting characters to it's engaging plot, this is a must read! I loved it and hope to see more from this world.

The audio of this was fantastic. Kevin Pierce brought the story to life and while listening to it, it played out like a movie in my head. He breathed life into each character and even made Simon more scary than he already was ;) Definitely a narrator to check out.

*Received in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.*

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15 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

The story is built up very slowly

Nate Wilder lives in eternal fear of environmental disasters, anxiety gets the best of him, and he lives obsessed by the daily news. After hearing about a new international threat he decides to get prepared and starts gathering supplies for the imminent apocalypse. He finds a suitable basement at the blood test facility where he works and starts to stash things away in the most secretive way, because he can’t face to be unprepared, but he can’t either face the fact that he might be overreacting.

Jeanette works with Nate at the blood test center, and she is lucky enough to be with Nate when the disaster happens. Both take refuge at the blood test center basement and find that Nate was right after all.

The story is built up very slowly. The first third of the book is just character introduction and how the disaster happened. We are presented with many political details that might have been overlooked, since they do not add much to the story. Also, in that first third of the book there are no dialogues, which makes it a bit dull.

Luckily after the bombs were dropped we start to see some character development and real things happening. There are several characters in the book but only three: Nate, Jeanette and Simon, are really developed and evolve with time. The rest of characters are plain and one-dimensional.

For me there is something in the rhythm of this book that does not completely work. While the beginning is very slow, the end feels rushed. One hour before the end I was convinced that we were going to be left with a cliffhanger leading to a second book, but the story is closed just at the very end. I would have expected and enjoyed a longer and more difficult trip of Nate and his six companions, and I even expected the reunion to happen in a second book. It just felt a bit anticlimactic and rushed.

The book is in general correctly written, but at times Ackerman uses repeated expressions like “Nate did this, Nate did that, Nate went”, that break the rhythm of the narration.

Kevin Pierce brought the story to life and it was an added value to the book. The audio production was correct.

All in all, I liked the story, and finding flawed characters makes it to become real. It is very interesting how they evolve, and Nate undergoes a heavy transformation from a very anxious person to somebody valuable for the community in the post-apocalyptical world.

Audiobook was provided for review by the narrator.

Please find this complete review and many others at my review blog

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10 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Just Shoot Me

Not a worthwhile character in the whole book. Painful to listen to. This book is unbelievable and depressing. don't bother.

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9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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Have Enough Respect For Auidence To Do Research

Would you try another book from Micah Ackerman and/or Kevin Pierce?

I have listened to many books which Kevin Pierce has narrated, and while he is limited in the amount of different voices, he makes up for this with heart, cadence, and just making anything he reads, enjoyable.

As for Micah Ackerman, he did not respect his audience enough to research much of what he wrote, so, no, I won't buy anything from him in the future.

What do you think your next listen will be?

Not sure.

Have you listened to any of Kevin Pierce’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Mr. Pierce, like always, did a good job.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Ho-hum...follow the bouncing narrative ...

Any additional comments?

Some of the most glaring fictions were related to firearms.

Take the scene where the main character is heading out of the basement for the first time. He tucks a Glock in his belt and at some point the trigger is pulled. Mr. Ackerman writes the safety was on, and stopped the gun from going off. Glocks do not have safeties of this nature. The only safety is a trigger safety which is not put "on".

Earlier the author discussed the much politicized AR-15, and often lied about firearm. He referred to the charging handle as a slide. A slide!? Really? Come one man.

On and on it went, a constant narrative which reflected ignorance and disrespect for those who would buy his book.

I know full well this is a book of fiction. Consequently I do not expect everything to meet with reality, it is fiction, after all. But the author missed too many simple things, that would not have taken more than an hour of research to learn about. This coupled with some stereo typical portrayals of "church goers", "right wingers" and firearms, caused me to not complete the book.

It felt more to me like a propaganda piece than an honest book idea. I can certainly handle, and have ready many books who's worldview, politics etc. were different than mine. But these authors at least took the time to get the details right. Mr. Ackerman may want to not depend on the Huffington Post for his knowledge in the future when writing fiction, because the book will be utterly void of fact.

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7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Too Unrealistic

I thought I was in for a real treat with all of the positive reviews this book received. It's rare to find an apocalyptic novel dealing with the harsh realities of a nuclear holocaust. I must admit that I'm writing this review while only 3/4 of the way through, however, I don't really want to finish it. There are just too many mistakes with this story to make it believable and worthy as a "how to survive" novel. It's apparent the author never handled a glock pistol, understands food storage, or understands construction. I know I may be nitpicking, but these things, along with others, eat away at the credibility of the author and this story.

Alas, Babylon was written over 50 years ago and it was far more realistic. Wormwood is a simple story about an average guy who's too uptight and pensive to speak to girls and instead lusts after his co-worker in a weird sort of way. Of course it takes a nuclear war for he and she to fall madly in love and get it on in the basement of where they worked. They survive the blast and eventually crawl out to observe the world around them. As if this fantasy isn't enough for the author, he introduces a character named Simon who's the obligatory fanatic fundamentalist christian that crawls out from his homemade bunker to impose his beliefs to this new world. Yeah, right. I guess this is an attempt to make this novel stand apart from the Christian perspective of other authors in this genre.

I could go on but I won't. There are better audiobooks out there if you like this genre.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A Good Nuclear Apocalypse Novel

I love apocalyptic novels of all kinds - zombie, biological, nuclear, and natural disaster. That said, I think the order I listed the sub genres more or less mirror the availability of novels in that genre. Zombie apocalypse novels went (as a long time reader in the genre) from maybe a couple a year to a couple a week. Nuclear apocalypse novels are still harder to come by, and are always a welcome find.

Onto the story itself, I found the premise for the apocalypse well thought out, and very very relevant and plausible. Sobering. The book covered the background and worldwide coverage of the apocalypse, but it didn't dwell on it. It was more focused on a main character, Nate, a troubled single man who comes out of his shell to become a great well rounded person, Jeanette, the flawed beauty Nate is infatuated with, and Simon, who frankly is an absolute nut. The parts of the story dealing with Nate and Jeanette are the best.

My only "complaint" is the last sentence. :) I think it might indicate a sequel may be in the works. If there isn't no matter, this book, excluding the last sentence, forms a standalone complete story, with a satisfactory conclusion.

On the narration, Kevin Pierce did a fantastic job and was easy to listen to, and I found the characters all felt distinct and identifiable. I do have other books in my library narrated by him (oddly one of those is one of those rare-ish nuclear apocalypse novels, Through Many Fires), and doing a quick look at audible, he has an impressive collection of titles to his name. You can't go wrong with him.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

The devil is in the details

I really cannot recommend this book. The writing is not bad its actually pretty good. The dialogue is well written and the author is skilled. In fact he should put his ability to work on a story worthy of them because this story is really bad. Despite it being full of excellent and well developed characters. That was a neat trick.

Like so many of this survivalist end of the world stories it is based on a flimsy plot, bad science, a really bad understanding of international geo-politics and a view of society tainted by personal prejudices.

It actually baffles me how this book was written by an author so obviously capable of doing better. The one place this story diverged from the normal script is that the author seems to have little to no understanding of Christians and does not bother to offer any kind of counter balance to the extremist whack job portrayed in the book.

I had hoped for better but got a well written story so riddled with the typical survivalist view of reality that despite the skill shown in its creation it was not capable of holding itself together.

Add the above to what was one if the worst endings ever written. It was truly horrible. The author should be ashamed.


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    5 out of 5 stars
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Gripping tale!

Very good story and narration. This is not the end. Hope book 2 will be out soon.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

predictable post-nuclear apocalypse tale

Wormwood is a fairly standard post-nuclear apocalypse story. The bombs drop, and our protagonists survive. I liked the beginning of the story with Nate and his awkward romance of his coworker, Jeanette. Eventually they rejoin the survivors in the firehall of the city, and the focus widens. I was a bit disappointd as no other characters in the group really get any character development other than Simon. Simon is the religious fanatic with control issues and delusions of grandeur, who charms the masses and takes over as the defacto leader of the town. He seems to be purely evil, and a bit of a one-note character too. Nate and a group of the most physically able bike out to Maine to try to get help from the National Guard there. That journey was very interesting and introduced another big threat, the Black Swarm - a group of ruthless men that are terrorizing the groups of survivors across the state. Nate's group unwittingly put the Swarm on the trail back to the town, and now the need for official help is even more urgent. The ending of the book is rather abrupt, abd is left on a bit of a cliffhanger, so I guess you'll have to read the next book to see what happens.

As far as the plot - this is the usual PA plotline: disaster, survivors bond, are separated, then reunite at a time of threat. There are really only a few fully fleshed out characters: Nate, Jeanette, and Simon. The writing is great in some places but overall tends toward repeating the same things over and over, or saying that something is the case rather than showing it. For example, Nate's panic attacks and anxiety seemed unrealistic, as though he was overstating them, and they seemed to go away almost magically when the disaster happened. I guess I never felt the panic in the writing. It could use a good editor to tighten it up. There is a lot of detail to keep the reader interested in the immediate actions of the characters, and the effects of a nuclear attack seem well-researched. Unfortunately, the storyline feels predictable and doesn't offer any unexpected or unique twists to set this book apart form many others. It's an entertaining but ultimately pretty forgettable read.

The narrator, Kevin Pierce, does a good job or the narration. His voice is clear and even and he gets the pausing and pacing correct. His performance defintely added to the enjoyment of the book for me.

NOTE: I received a free copy of the audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

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    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

The End of the World, or Start of a New One

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Good read, good story. I liked it.

What did you like best about this story?

The characters were true to life. In adverse situations, how will people react? Who do you trust? How do you cope in a desperate situation?

What does Kevin Pierce bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Good narration. Even level all the way. Trusting voice. Good character emphasis, without over doing it.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Absolutely!

Any additional comments?

Disclaimer: This book was gifted in exchange for an honest review. As a reader, and recent fan of audio books, I know what I like. Among various genres you ask yourself, did you enjoy the story and voice performance, It was a well written and performed story, I fell right in line with it. When you see yourself as part of the story, then the author and narrator have done a good job of bringing it to life. The story itself involved an accidental nuclear war and the survival stories of the survivors. No zombies, no sci fi, no Mad Max. Just an abundence of the world has just gone mad, and we need to survive. Kind of like the Living Dead TV show, without zombies. The characters are people you can relate to. How do you survive after a nuclear war? One day at a time. A good read, and good narration. I will listen to this a second time.

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