The Hunted

Black Carbon, Book 1

By: A.J. Scudiere

Narrated by: Gary Bennett

Lights out. Keep still. Pray for morning.

Joule and Cage Mazur feel like prisoners in their home. With something new stalking the streets at night, their family’s only protection is bolting the door and embracing the darkness. And even though they manage to trap and kill one of the monsters, their locks won’t hold forever….

Dealing with rising panic and rage in the neighborhood, the free-spirited survivors hatch a plan to undermine the killers. But with the night hunters picking off everyone they can, Joule and Cage know time is ticking toward humanity’s extinction.

Can they kill the Night Hunters and reclaim the top of the food chain?

The Hunted is the first book in the fast-paced Black Carbon apocalyptic thriller series by a USA Today best-selling author. If you like resourceful heroes, world-ending catastrophes, and breathtaking action, you’ll love AJ Scudiere’s spine-tingling novel.

Buy The Hunted to battle the savage onslaught today!

©2022 Griffyn Ink (P)2022 Griffyn Ink

interesting read

this story is very captivating. it also holds your attention. I can't wait for the next book

Who let the dogs out...?

AJ is a pretty decent writer. The story has some good moments, the main characters are little over the top, but not unpleasantly so. I had to laugh at the premise. Big bad CLIMATE CHANGE super quick-like created a species of wild hell hounds that eat people. The whole climate change silliness will keep me from reading on in the series. In my opinion, the climate change nonsense rivals the scamdemic for "science" being sold to the highest bidder. I am actually surprised people are still falling for it. Hey, maybe you'd like to invest in some Minneapolis Somali Day Care Centers, too, while you're at it?

It's not hard to imagine that AJ is a white, liberal, woman-power. "progressive."

had some really tense moments

good story. moved along in pace. had good moments of tense fearvthat we were gonna lose someone. had you thinking what you would do if you lived in that world. I was looking around my home about how I would barricade it. :)

Great book

This was a really good book. I highly recommend listening or reading it. I really enjoyed the flow of the storyline

What was that??

The narrator was rather decent and did the best he could with the material. Easy to understand and had enough variation in his voice to differentiate the characters. I wouldn't hesitate to listen to another book by him.

Now that I've gotten the one good thing about this book out of the way....

I try very hard to find the good in a book because I know that writing a book is hard. You have to add so much detail so that a reader/listener can visualize everything. And maintaining a cohesive narrative isn't as easy as it sounds. But this book made no sense at all!

Basically, something has gone wrong with the world and there are catastrophes everywhere - flooding, tornados, earthquakes, etc. And somehow, whatever happened made dogs into gophers or something. Mean gophers. In this community, anything living is their prey. The police can't stop them and always die trying. In order to combat this, everyone goes about their lives as if nothing is wrong. Kids still go to school, adults to work, home deliveries go on unabated, and even though these dogs are killing the community members, no one cares. Government isn't helping (even though there is no indication that the world has drifted toward anarchy), people aren't arming themselves - they just blithely notice less people around and say "oh well."

Two kids suffer tragedy and how do they react? They still go to school, plan for college, and decide that they will just stab all the dogs to death, one by one. Huh?

It seems to me that the author: never saw a dog, never researched how a pack of canines hunt, was never in a fight, doesn't know anything about which government agency would investigate large purchases of arrows (arrows? oh great goodness!), and doesn't understand how money works. Honestly, I feel like this book is trying to punk the reader/listener by being as inconsistent as it can. The ending of this story is bad enough (the "dog repellant" that they find), but the very end leaving this series open for more volumes is the scariest thing in the book. No drama, no tense moments, very very little excitement.

Edit: What was the deal with referring to the parents half the time by their real name and then half the time as mother/ father or mom/dad. That was so off-putting and inconsistent and nonsensical.

ONE SPOILER:

At one point, the two 17 year old twins and their weak father go out hunting these killer dogs that can't be stopped with bullets (only if they are fired by the police, but if one of the kids or a crazy woman fires a gun, the dogs will die - but only toward the end of the book). Now these dogs are tougher, meaner, bigger, and stronger than any modern dog. But these three somehow manage to kill a pack of 5 of these monsters that surround them. Seriously? I just can't think that the author is serious. I have played with a 50 lbs dog and they can be quick, sneaky, and can accidentally hurt you when you are playing with them. Make that dog 4 times bigger and 100 times more aggressive - no one is surviving that. Even with three inexperienced and "soft" people fighting, five killer dogs would dismantle them immediately.

I would recommend against this book. It's not the money, it's the time that you will give it - that one hurt the most.