[Abyss]

Apt, on 22 November 2015 - 05:23 PM, said:

...the ship-raft thing is in the pacific suggests it is Asian/Oceanic survivors. Suggests we will have some heavy culture clashes.
...

I'm thinking we'll get an Aquaman/Namor type hero.

It seems like the sort of thing Clines would do next.


...anyone remember whether St George needs to breath (other than when he breathes fire)?
Dead Girl and Zzzzap probably don't.
Cerberus and the Driver would be useless on/in the water.
Capn Freedom and Stealth would be their usual selves.

[Abyss]

Kindle ed pre-order of EX-ISLE is on sale (at least the price is down from when i last looked)!
(for the Canucks among us, give or take a few cents for the exchange rate, Kobo is matching the price)

Feb 2 Feb 2 Feb 2 Feb 2 Feb 2 Feb 2 Feb 2 Feb 2!

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 21 December 2015 - 07:18 PM, said:

Kindle ed pre-order of EX-ISLE is on sale (at least the price is down from when i last looked)!
(for the Canucks among us, give or take a few cents for the exchange rate, Kobo is matching the price)

Feb 2 Feb 2 Feb 2 Feb 2 Feb 2 Feb 2 Feb 2 Feb 2!

IT'S OUT IT'S OUT IT'S OUT
GOT IT GOT IT GOT IT
HOLYZOMBIEFUCK

[Abyss]

Two chapters into EX-ISLE....

Non-spoilery spoilerses...

Spoiler

i think i have a crush on Dead Girl.


Holy shit, Stealth POV!!!!!!

I am so glad to have this series back. I missed it.

[Aptorian]

I reckon I'll pick this up Friday and try to read through it over the weekend.

[T77]

The bump to this thread reminds me I never posted my impressions from book one. I finished it a few weeks back and really enjoyed it. I'm already into the second book. He writes sort of like Glen Cook, who is my favorite author. I really the the characters and the setting,

[End of Disc One]

Maybe I haven't read enough Glen Cook because I'm not seeing it lol

[T77]

The characters, dialogue and the flow of the plot feel a bit Glen Cook like to me.

[Abyss]

Eight chapters in....

Spoiler

Awww.... George and Stealth are shacked up.

Ok cmon Zzzzap... that flotilla could not be more suspicious if it had a big sign that said 'SUSPICIOUS' over it.

Corpse Girl is so cute it kills me.

Zzzapp + water = bad. Barry going to place on the water = BADBADBADFORESHADOWINGLYBAD.

Wow, Danielle IS a mess. Agoraphobia, zombiephobia, AND she banged Cesar.

Mostly set up so far, good fun.

[amphibian]

I finished this and while I liked it as a story, it feels like Cline wanted to do more and didn't quite get there before deciding to push those remnants into the next book.

He's still very good at writing action and the characters are still wonderful.

I do think his habit of staying with now-dead characters for POV is a crutch/dangling remnant. But there will be a next book and we'll see how that resolves.

[Aptorian]

Finished it yesterday. Pretty underwhelming book. The author even seems to acknowledge this in his afterword.

The book doesn't move the world or the mount forward by much at all. Very little character development of the central cast. The encounter with the Lemurians does not seem to have any future meaning for the series.

All that aside it was just more ex-heroes which in and of itself isn't bad. You had super heroes punching super villains, zombies eating people, funny character interactions. The stuff we like is there. It's just all more of the same.

Spoiler

So what was up with Cerberus woman at the end? The way Clines wrote that last scene with the bandages getting revealed and her hiding them, suggests the zombie might have scratched her after all. But the ending of the book is just a happy ending on the water tower that suggests everything is A OK. Sooo...

But it was prefaced by a flashback of George transporting some infected person out of the mount years earlier.

I don't know what that was about. In fact all the flashbacks in that book were sort of pointless or poorly used.

Also, yet another book where somebody bad unleashed the army of zombies that just happens to be hidden in the basement/standing outside the wall. I mean not even is that played out already but Clines does it twice in the same book? Seems like he completely ran out of ideas in this book.

I really am frustrated by the way he writes their handling of Zombie logistics. I've mentioned this before but it's idiotic seeing these people constantly pushing or kicking zombies using fists or stuff around them, instead of just developing zombie head chopping utensils. Cerberus in this book should simply have been doing over the head "bonks" on every zombie or reaching out and crushing their heads in his grip one by one instead of this silly "throw the zombie away nonsense.

And why don't they have properly planned zombie protection plans at Eden? They say themselves that the best option is to gain the high ground so why aren't there multiple platforms or structures that the people just climb up on?

Why would they ever start working at Eden without securing the perimeter properly. A wire mesh fence is a silly safeguard.

And how the hell are these trained super marines this shit at shooting zombies. A firing line of 5-6 semiautomatic riffles should be able to take down way more than 3 zombies a minute.

Eh, I always complain about this stuff after reading one the ex-books.

This post has been edited by Apt: 07 February 2016 - 03:34 PM

[Abyss]

Won't go so far as to call it underwhelming, but it was certainly more straightforward than previous books. No major twists, no big revelations, fairly predictable two storylines and one un-memorable villain.

It was fine, but the issues Clines mentioned in the afterword are hard to miss and I hope he can plan his time a bit better. I want him to write other stuff... 14 was too good not to, but i want my epic cinematic superhero vs zombpocalypse stories to be epic and cinematic.

[Cause]

Spoiler

Underwhelming book, felt like we had two short stories sandwiched together rather than 1 actual book. Very little plot or character development.

I know stealth was not around but wow it took them a long time (never really) to figure out the guy from Hawaii who keeps going on about nukes might have been the one to nuke Hawaii with his own submarine.

The Coup d'etat plot would have been epic if real. Or just as epic if it was as revealed just a case of unfortunate secrecy but there should have been more too it. The non-soldiers trying to secretly knock off a few of them off, or send them into dangerous missions to try weaken them before the coup takes place only for the reveal to then happen. Instead we learn of the Coup and resolve it 5 pages apart! Maybe we were supposed to suspect agent smith again but I rejected that as too lame an idea immediately. Too soon for that villain to get a third book.

I do have to say that more and more I like the character of Zzzap. He just works. Without a doubt he is the strongest hero and yet his weakness is that he is too strong. He can't touch anything without killing it. He can't blast one zombie without maybe setting a whole city on fire. So even though he could quickly get too all the kids they could not risk it because if the kids are dropped he can't catch them. He can't zap Nautilus without maybe destroying the whole island. Anyway I like it. More so than even George he is the superman of the team but they manage his power with a much better weakness than kryptonite.

[Abyss]

Next book and next EX book news...
https://www.facebook...153635108871039

[Abyss]

Paradox Bound street date in Sept.
No word on earbook yet.

[End of Disc One]

Interesting. Any idea if that takes place in the same world as 14 and The Fold?

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 01 August 2017 - 06:04 PM, said:

Paradox Bound street date in Sept.
No word on earbook yet.

Cutpastings from the Reading thread....

Abyss, on 05 October 2017 - 02:43 AM, said:

Stalker, on 04 October 2017 - 10:21 PM, said:

Abyss, on 04 October 2017 - 06:15 PM, said:

Abyss, on 29 September 2017 - 07:40 PM, said:

PARADOX BOUND, Peter Clines.
3 chapters in... ...y'know... this guy is fast becoming one of my favorite authors., and I'm starting to enjoy his no EX-HEROES stuff more than that series.
He has a great talent for taking the ordinary, working in an element of the extraordinary, and then slowly but steadily building to crazy shit, as he did in 14 and THE FOLD.

Almost done... this book is SO GOOD.

Listening to this on audiobook and second Abyss. I like his non zombie books more than the Ex-heroes series at this point.

Just finished it. Let me state here for the record, PARADOX BOUND by Peter Clines is frikkin awesome.

Very different in tone and setting from his zombie and Lovecrafty books, but the sheer sense of wonder and headlong pace is all there and it utterly works. I have to give him credit... time travel is a difficult thing to write well and the setup he worked with here was far from easy, but he made it work. Even the hand waving of the occasional complexity works in the context of the story. Some may find it a bit MuricaRahRah at times, but I didn't think the book suffered for it at all. Far from it, I don't think many other countries would have worked for the story he wanted to tell here.

Great book, utterly worth your dollars and eyetime, the earbook narrator Ray Porter is brilliant if you go that route.

End of Disc One, on 05 October 2017 - 07:44 PM, said:

...
Also glad to see Abyss saying good things about Clines' new book. 14 was compelling as fuck, and I look forward to The Fold and Paradox Bound.

Now then...

End of Disc One, on 01 August 2017 - 07:48 PM, said:

Interesting. Any idea if that takes place in the same world as 14 and The Fold?

Why yes, i do have an idea.

[Abyss]

I forgot this thread existed and posted elsethread re the glories of last year's PARADOX BOUND and the sheer fun of recent earbook DEAD MOON. Those were both great and if you enjoy this author you should give him your dollars and get them.



Alas, i am posting this to note that in his blog a few months ago, which i missed, and more recently in his twitfeed, which i just started following, Clines states that the EX-HEROES series is dead. Not zombie come back from the dead dead, but actual sales too small on last book not worth the diminishing returns dead dead. Bummer.

From the blog:

Quote

2) Is Ex-Isle the last Ex book?

Not 100% sure, but... yeah, looks that way.
The truth is, every series has a limited life. Very few people decide to start on book three of a series—they go back and start at book one. So book one always sells the best for almost every series. Attrition says not as many people show up for book two, even less show up for book three, etc, etc. It’s always a downward slope heading for that red line where things aren’t profitable. None of the Ex-Heroes books have ever lost money (thank you all for that), but all the numbers say book six... Well, things don't look great for book six where that red line's concerned.
The nails aren’t all in the coffin (do they still nail coffins shut?). Any number of things could make the series surge in popularity and get the publisher interested in putting out another book or two. Depending on how things work out, I might even be able to apply a little leverage. But for now... Ex-Tension is going to stay on that back burner. Sorry.

Doesn't seem to be stopping him from writing at all tho', i'm happy to say. He's already got something else coming out this year, another 'Threshold' book if i recall correctly.