Zero Day

A Novel

By: Ezekiel Boone

Narrated by: George Newbern

The United States goes to war against the queen spiders that threaten to overtake the human race forever in this thrilling and horrifying finale of the “captivating, engaging, and completely terrifying” (My Guilty Obsession) internationally bestselling Hatching series.

The world is on the brink of apocalypse. Zero Day has come.

The only thing more terrifying than millions of spiders is the realization that those spiders work as one. But among the government, there is dissent: do we try to kill all of the spiders, or do we gamble on Professor Guyer’s theory that we need to kill only the queens?

For President Stephanie Pilgrim, it’s an easy answer. She’s gone as far as she can—more than two dozen American cities hit with tactical nukes, the country torn asunder—and the only answer is to believe in Professor Guyer. Unfortunately, Ben Broussard and the military men who follow him don’t agree, and Pilgrim, Guyer, and the loyal members of the government have to flee, leaving the question: what’s more dangerous, the spiders or ourselves?

Loved it!

I loved the characters! I found myself deeply invested in their progress emotional over their fates. I could hardly make myself put it down to do anything!

Really, REALLY Good, But Just Not Quite There...

ZERO DAY............

I didn't really look at my reviews of 'The Hatching' or 'Skitter' before I'm writing this, but I'm pretty sure that I mentioned either both or one of these two things in those reviews: it wasn't long enough and that certain scenes could've been more in-depth so that the book, although a normal size novel, could've been longer and given the reader that extra *UMPH* to take away after reading it. I feel the same way about this one; I might even feel stronger about it, because this is the final book in the series.

In this final installment, all the characters (still alive) are present and doing their thing while they wait for the possibility of a third wave of spiders. Shotgun and Gordo are perfecting their machine so that they can get it to work to track this mysterious signal being sent to these spiders from various locations not the globe.

Now, I am going to say that this book could've been twice its size and still had more story to tell. I DO NOT believe the Mr. Boone was just trying to wrap up a series and didn't care anymore. I think that's how he writes, because the same thing was wrong with the first two in the trilogy. Maybe I should be okay with this, but I find it to be incredibly frustrating and I really wanted more. MORE. MORE PLEASE!

It doesn't say who narrated 'Zero Day,' but I'm almost 100% sure it was the same gentleman as the first two in the series, George Newbern. As always, he did a spectacular job with the material. He had to jump around and portray so many different characters. Despite the book being written in a third person omnipotent sort of way, I felt like Mr. Boone wanted it to feel like a third person limited by going into the head of each character. It's almost like a third person limited, except with twenty different characters in which you are inside the head. Newbern was ridiculously good at this very difficult task. For narration, I'm going to give Newbern an A-.

As far as the novel goes, I'm going to do this one a little different than I normally do. First, I'm going to give the grade it would deserve IF Ezekiel Boone had written the novel the length and with the pieces that it needed to have. I'D GIVE IT AN A! A FULL A!!!!!!!!! It had all the pieces and, if this was Boone's first draft, that would make a lot of sense. He has the outline there and now he just needs to go fill the rest of that prose into the book. However, he did not do that and this is the extent of the novel (and series). Because of this, Zero Day receives a C+ from me. Now, people don't read reviews on audible by the same people a lot of times. They usually look at the book and read the ones below. However, if you have read the reviews where I use this grading scale, you know a few things. I do not give A's out very often. I don't even give A's out to books I think are really good. A's are reserved for pieces of literature that are above and beyond what you expect and you finish the book with either literal exhaustion, emotion, or other strong feelings. Also, a C+ is a decent grade, because, as you can see on the audible star scale, I gave it a 3. It's average with that extra little bit, which is exactly what I think this book deserves. Mr. Boone, if you ever read this review (I know, unlikely) just know that I am a HUGE fan of our trilogy! I just REALLY wanted you to go in deeper to these scenarios. I can't specifically say what exactly I think should've done, because I don't want to give away any parts of the ending or important plot points.

To people thinking about starting the series, DO IT! I don't want to discourage people from reading it, because of my review. I'm really harsh and Zero Day (plus the other two in the series) are a wild ride, but just know that there will be moments where you think there could've been just... a little more.

Satisfying end to the trilogy.

The narrator was great. The spiders were less present during this book, but even creepier in some ways.
The end came quicker than I expected. Probably because I didn’t want it to end.
If you like scary books and aren’t afraid of spiders, this series is for you.

Intriguing story!

Bought the first one by accident and I almost returned it, I decided to to listen to the first chapter and that was it. Even If you hate spiders you might want to check this book out, and if you love mysteries and apocalypse stories you should definitely read this, you won’t be disappointed.

exciting

Good story. Good narration. I enjoy exciting books that keep you interested the whole time.