The Immune: A Post Apocalyptic Survival Thriller by David Kazzie

The Immune: A Post Apocalyptic Survival Thriller Reviews

• 
  Checkman

  3.5 Stars
  
  A solid post-apocalyptic novel in the vein of The Stand, but minus the supernatural elements. There are other differences as well. In The Immune David Kazzie has written a PA novel that is aimed at the 21st Century reader. There are similarities to King's work (such as the civilization destroying event is a super virus), but Kazzie's work addresses the fears and concerns of 2015 rather than 1978 (original release of "The Stand"). He also gives more pages to the effect that such a catastrophe would have on the survivors, especially those who watch their families die while they standby helplessly. Another difference is that Kazzie shows that being a survivor wouldn't be as logistically easy as King portrays it in his classic novel. In Kazzie's book the survivors have to look for water and food, gasoline goes bad and traveling across the continent is more problematic than King's characters experience (though I'm a big fan of the two tunnel sequences in The Stand).
  
  The book is comprised of four sections. No surprise that the first two sections (the pandemic and the immediate aftermath) are the most involving. The second half is good, but the sickening (also a guilty pleasure) zap that is provided by the near end of Humanity is missing. In the second half the survivors are dealing with other problems and, as a result, the novel moves into more of the action-suspense field albeit one that takes place in an emptier world.
  
  I'm a lifelong fan of the PA genre. I saw The Omega Man in 1974 at the age of six. I call it a guilty pleasure. As a result, I've read many a book and seen many a movie that take place after the apocalypse. There is a formula involved and The Immune follows it, but it's not a bad piece of writing. It is also refreshing to read a PA novel that doesn't involve zombies/vampires and has heroes that are Human instead of super capable studs.
• 
  Scott

  What distinguishes The Immune from other post-apocalyptic stories is that at its heart it's about hope. Dr. Adam Fisher is searching through a devastated America looking for his daughter. That's what hooked me on this book.
  
  What kept me going was the Michael Crichton-style thriller simmering in the background. Combine that with some of the most interesting characters I've met in years and you have a fantastic page turner.
• 
  Belynda

  Appreciated a book without spelling errors or incorrect words/sentences (at least none that I noticed). It's a nice change. I could not put this book down. I read a lot of Dystopian and this was one of the better ones! A must read if you like this genre.
• 
  Jeff Waters

  Took a chance on this. Love the PA genre. Wasn't expecting much from an unknown author, but wow! The writing was crisp, the characters well developed, and thoroughly enjoyable.
• 
  Paul Liadis

  Interesting and likeable characters. Realistic, brutal, and non-zombie apocalypse. 500 pages and it went by too fast.
• 
  Mari

  3.75 ⭐
  
  This was a KU. Crazy rich guy decides the world needs changing and releases a virus to kill off 99% of the people.  Of course the crazy rich guy and his sycophant followers have taken a vaccine.  The story follows the few that were naturally immune as they struggle to survive while the crazy rich guy gets crazier.  I liked the story at first, the writing was good and the characters were interesting.  Then it just seemed to drag on and on and I began to lose interest.  I skimmed the last 15% of the book to get to the end.
• 
  Sarah

  brilliant
  
  I saw this advertised in a Facebook post and I was a bit dubious as so many books of this genre from unknown authors turn out to be poorly written and edited, but the reviews looked positive so I gave it a try. I’m glad I did, it had me hooked from the start!
  
  
• 
  Kathy Cook

  sexist bullsh**
  
  Was really enjoying the book until this “She’d be making sure the townsfolk were remaining calm, looking after the kids.” The she in question is a captain in the US army, a trained soldier, who the author decided to REALLY marginalize, and instead make his protagonist, a male obstetrician, his hero , in a post apocalyptic novel. 🙄🙄🙄 I stopped reading at that sentence. I won’t be reading any of his other books.
  
  The author wants writing books to be his day job, (according to his bio) hopefully he offends others as much as he has me and keeps his day job. Ugh.
• 
  Gabe Fitzgerald

  The Stand lite.
• 
  Stephanie Gonzales

  Fabulous, loved it!!
• 
  Jude Samson

  Narrator: not too bad but mispronounces a surprising number of pretty basic words.
  
  Lol how this guy wrote a book on how to write a book blows my mind. It’s best to use his writing as an example of what NOT to do. Perfect example: “a scratch scratched?” Lol what? It’s an ITCH scratched. In fact, for someone who keeps trying to write books and who is a lawyer where verbiage is pretty specific and carefully chosen it’s surprising how often he uses wrong words. When referring to the woman staggering from the field he says the number is burned into her arm and tattooed there. Which is it? A brand (burned in) or tattooed (ink gun). One denotes pain and harsh treatment even possible torture while another is far more humane but brings to mind the Holocaust victims being tattooed and kept captive. Burned and tattooed are entirely different things giving the reader entirely different images but the poor writing here by using both leaves the reader’s imagination muddled.
  
  When he’s not misusing words he’s abusing them. The sheer repetition, often times in back to back sentences, makes me feel like a skipping record. Has this guy ever heard of a thesaurus? Also, PLEASE LEARN ANOTHER WORD! The amount of times he uses “metastasize” just gives me a headache.
  
  it’s CANADA geese not Canadian. And it’s not a CLIP (for a gun) it’s a magazine. A clip is an tool used to help load magazines. You can’t empty a clip, you empty the magazine.
  
  I tried to just get started with this book a couple of times but David tries to cram so many needless words into the pages to stretch the thin story as far as it will go (and it really isn’t that far). And holy Batman the number of metaphors! I felt like we were on Oprah - you get a metaphor and you get a metaphor. I think David assumes the only way to build ambience or explain a setting is to just inundate the reader with metaphor. I kid you not - if you took out 75% of the metaphors (you’d wind up with a significantly shorter book) you’d still have 90% more metaphors than any other average book.
  
  I’m not sure if he just forgets what time has passed or doesn’t know how fast/slow things work in real life but there are instances where he states something has happened significantly off from the actual passage of time.
  
  Nonsense contrived tension! David even points out through one of the characters how few people in the US would still be alive plus spread out over the immense vastness of the country. Still, through plot contrivance, our main characters wind up connecting but not only that they run into an amazing out of bad guys. The citadel, which is stated to be “in the middle of nowhere” miraculously finds several women and one of those women magically finds our group. There’s no need to fight for resources at this point and no immediate threats yet this group keeps finding random bad guys who keep holding women (only) hostage and always need the big manly men to save them. The odds of finding survivors would be astronomical but then having almost all others be bad guys is just preposterous and just goes to further indicate how poor of a writer we’re dealing with because this is really the only tension/drama he can seem to think of and it’s already such a played out trope long before he wrote this.
  
  More contrived tension - are we supposed to believe that the evergreen people are going to believe the doctor set fire and is trying to destroy their way of life while the football player is literally holding two women hostage in front of them?!? (Also note, once again women being held at gun point AGAIN!) Holding someone wt gunpoint seems to be the only thing David knows how to write at this point.
  
  Why the nonsense page filler and just stupid time wasting for the survivors? They are going to empty the ups truck of gas and then empty the packages to go through them? Why not just put the people in the already gassed up ups truck and go through the boxes while driving? If David is ever in a real SHTF please don’t put him in charge because he wastes time and energy pretty regularly throughout the book.
  
  More poor page filler tactics is giving us minute details of actions that are so utterly unimportant to the plot. We don’t need to know he picked up the bottle, turned the cap, put the bottle to his lips, drank from the bottle, replaced the cap, wiped the excess drops from his lips. We all know what drinking from a bottle is like. Moreover, drinking does absolutely nothing to move the plot. So many pages are spent stagnating. The author is responsible for moving the characters - each scene should have some purpose to get the characters toward their end goal but david spends more time TELLING us every little thing rather than SHOWING us their journey.
  
  Anyone with common sense but especially a doctor would know not to let someone guzzle food and water so quickly and it expect it to come back up so the scene where they find the woman staggering from the field and they give her food/water and the actual doctor there allows her to chug them is stupid. There are so many instances like this throughout - things the character SHOULD know (and even pretty basic common sense knowledge) are not only ignored but contradicted. If you don’t know enough about the field then don’t make a character based on that field. Moreover, this is just lazy craftsmanship as it takes just a few minutes chatting with people in the field or a few seconds googling to have some working knowledge to add to the realism.
  
  He also misses obvious moments that could really help enthrall a reader or help them connect to the character. We’re given the impression one of the characters (can’t even remember her name because everyone is so forgettable) has a pretty serious broken leg but meanwhile he completely glosses over her being in the truck or carried - those movements would be incredibly painful especially since they can’t be set right. Every bounce of that truck would have her gritting in pain but david treats the whole thing like it’s just a sprain. He does nothing to SHOW his readers any of the moments we could use to connect with anyone and treats the whole “story” more like he’s giving a lecture.
  
  Ahhhh yes, women absolutely need a man to explain to them what a traumatized woman might need in order to feel safe. Whew! Thank god a manly man was around to explain it to those silly women. And, of course, a woman who is ragged and even a possible rape victim but this is a perfect time to have a man ogle and fantasize sexy thoughts about one of the women. Yep! Great timing.
  
  Are you serious that a new mother who was worried even before the baby was born if the baby would get sick but then let’s him cough for two hours with a possible fever and doesn’t say anything to the doctor that’s RIGHT THERE?!? Once again a woman needs a man to take charge and point out her kid is sick? Is this writer married or has he known any women in his life?
  
  So you’re telling us that pretty soon after the fall of humanity with only - I think David said about 5 million survivors scattered all across the country - that not only had they found 30+ women near the middle of nowhere to capture already but now the two women are purposefully, loudly, and openly trekking around within only 50-100 miles of the citadel and it’s been over 17 days and no contact was made yet? Did the citadel just stop looking? Do these women have special “don’t see us” super powers? If you’re going to make up BS odd such as capturing over 30 women in a wasteland of almost no survivors then use some common sense when contriving more nonsense and save the page filler jibberish.
  
  Odd that David makes a big deal wasting time celebrating Halloween but completely ignores the winter holiday season which means more to most people than Halloween. If you’re going to waste pages why not do it for the bigger holiday season.
  
  The whole scene with Mike towards the end is so absolutely contrived and nonsensical. Once again this just screams that David is incapable of creating genuine dramatic tension and just throws tripe at the reader. Not only was it absolutely pointless it was delivered so dryly the reader doesn’t even care. In fact, the reader doesn’t care about any of the characters even by the end because David hasn’t allowed anyone to connect with the reader.
  
  That was the most un-heartfelt boring detached separation of lovers I’ve read in so long I can’t even recall. In fact, the entire climax was so anti-climatic it felt more like a middle scene than a big finale.
  
  I’m sure if you weeded away the high school level storytelling nonsense there might be a decent enough story here. Clearly this is an excellent example of a novice writer making a single story into a multi-book series for no other reason other than they just don’t know how to tell a concise and engaging tale.
• 
  Bobby

  Above Average
  
  I read a lot of apocalyptic tales and this was better than most. The fighting at the end was a bit stilted and unbelievable but that's what fiction is sometimes. Never did understand the logic behind Chadwick's reasoning for ending the world but that's normal with psychopaths.
• 
  Heather

  Hands-down the best part of this book is being inside the various characters’ heads as they experience the end of the world as they know it. At its best, this includes details like Miles Chadwick actually freaking out a bit as he sets his final plan in motion, which is something we don’t normally see in bad guys. Normally this kind of material tends to be a little slow, but it really worked for me here. It was mildly marred by the fact that I was never entirely fond of Adam Fisher as a lead character. He was a little too much of an everyman, and yet simultaneously kept ending up in charge, which didn’t always feel right.
  
  The major negative is the bad guys. Chadwick starts out interesting, but he swiftly devolves into something more and more stereotypical. Also, while Kazzie’s great at getting into individuals’ heads, his ability to represent an organization suffers. The Citadel is a one-dimensional group of eevil folks. They have a logo they take the time to graffiti on places they raid, and tattoo on prisoners. (So, they happened to recruit a tattoo artist just to tattoo the prisoners they hadn’t originally planned on taking?)
  
  One complication that arises is that the 50 women have been rendered sterile by the vaccine–their ovaries have failed. Whoops! This triggers Chadwick to order his men to scour the countryside for women of child-bearing age, at which point, naturally, the plan is to impregnate the unwilling women. Umm, they have 50 perfectly willing women who volunteered for this. Why not harvest eggs from the survivors–something that requires a lot less cooperation than actual pregnancy–and have the 50 ‘chosen ones’ carry the babies to term?
  
  A small rebellion does arise within the bad guy organization, which had the potential to give the people inside some depth, but it isn’t carried far enough. And afterward, the bad guys devolve still further into stereotypes and mustache-twirling territory. There is one moment when someone’s about to reveal something important–and then it gets dropped. Totally. It’s never brought up or even alluded to again. Also, where do the bad guys get a super-sharp broadsword for seemingly unexpected executions? And how did Rachel know where that spare key was, anyway?
  
  This is a grim and gritty apocalypse in which people die horribly, not everyone comes out okay, and things never hold together for long. I didn’t find it too depressing, but that’s partially because I never got too emotionally attached to the characters. Some people might find it to be too much.
  
  All in all I’m not sorry I read this series, but I’m not interested enough to read more.
  
  
  Original review posted on my blog:
  http://www.errantdreams.com/2018/11/r...
• 
  Rachel

  This book is an epic book for anyone who loves the post-apocalyptic types of books. If you are a fan of The Strain or Walking Dead, then this book is for you! I would love for this book to be made into a series or film. The character development is amazing, and you find yourself rooting and hating characters in equal measure along the way, as they scramble their way through life and fight to save, or find their humanity. This book is a riveting read, and although lengthy, it has enough in it to keep your reading right till the end. Very sad at times, thrilling and chilling in others, I would heartily recommend this book. A very good contender in this genre.
• 
  Marge

  was SO lucky to have been chosen to win this book!!!!!! Read 80 % of it in the first sitting!!!!! If you like Stephen King's "The Stand" you'll love this book. It's AWESOME. Worldwide disaster survivors fight bad guys and try to stay alive. I laughed, I cried, I fell in love with some of them and had a wonderful time immersing myself in this book.
• 
  Kristen Marino

  Great book
  
  I really enjoyed this book. I did feel like it was Stephen King-esque. Nothing wrong with that, but I felt like there were some ideas that were not original and taken from The Stand. Not that it was a bad thing.It worked for The story. The story was great, characters were great. I would definitely recommend reading this book if you enjoy post apocalyptic stories.
• 
  Paul G

  Outstanding surprise
  
  I wasn't expecting much from this story when I started reading it.
  That changed before the end of the first story....I read the omnibus... 😜
  SERIOUSLY OUTSTANDING story.
  Enjoy \m/
• 
  J.P. Cane

  A non-supernatural end of the world story with great realism, tension, and characters. If the world ends, what is there to live for? What kind of person would you be in a lawless land?
• 
  Karl Becker

  Trite and boring.
• 
  Beth

  DNF 85%. Just couldn’t force myself to read the last 15%. Really needed an editor to cut this down by at least half.
• 
  Jerry Mount

  Very good PA adventure story. I loved The Stand, and The Immune reads much like a modern version of The Stand. Not a copy or look-alike. No supernatural or religious themes here. But nearly all of the key events and characters in The Immune are paralleled in The Stand, with different timing and sequence. Most of the book is excellent.
  I was less impressed with the final section. The "bad guys" were shown as one-dimensional villains, with little explanation of their thinking and motives. The action climax is weak. Reads like a low-budget TV action thriller. Details get murky. SPOILERS: Empty guns seem to load themselves. The number of bad guys seem to change. The "good guys" turn into Dwayne Johnson / Jason Statham super fighters, while the "bad guys" turn into Imperial Stormtroopers. And the Big Bad engages in casual conversation, blabbing to the Hero exactly what he needs to know. Which was itself a plot hole. Why would the Big Bad have a fail-safe device (or Plan B), if his goal was to kill almost all of humanity? And why would he keep those things active after Plan A succeeds? This section was really unnecessary, and only used to trigger a character sacrifice and a "good guys win" conclusion.
  I really enjoyed the book overall. Just wish the last section had been redone.
• 
  Wendy K.

  “Human beings didn’t like change; now that these folks had lived through the biggest paradigm shift any of them would ever see, they’d assume that the winds of change had stopped blowing.”
  
  Before I get into anything about what my actual thoughts were on this book, I have to point out that there were no zombies. Zero! I don’t know where I got the idea that this one did, but I realized about halfway that there was not going to be any reanimating at all and was disappointed. I kept on reading though! And I still don’t know why I thought there were zombies other than maybe I confused it with another book. IDK.
  
  The book was actually pretty good. It is basically about a billionaire and people he hires who create a super virus that wipes out about 90% of the population while they try to create a Utopia. There are those who survive and the remaining 10% are naturally immune. This takes place in the USA with the POV of several different survivors stories until they come together while trying to survive. These are the characters who you follow for the majority of the book. This book definitely had some major emotional parts to it and you do develop an attachment to the characters and hope for the best. I will say that even though there were no zombies, this book kept my attention.
  
  I am glad I read this and would definitely recommend. I don’t think at this time that I will start the second one though anytime soon.
  
  This is New Author #4 for me for 2024.
  
• 
  Mark Von Rohr

  A solid post apocalyptic novel, that thank God, did not turn into a "prepper how-to" or zombies. I actually loved the fact that he spent some time with the start of the virus and then the horror it brought. I think it impacted the other parts of the book. The characters would good, and the plot was overall good. I found some of the inner-dialogue a bit long in the tooth in the second half of the book. I found myself skipping their inner musings just to move things along. I found Freddie's story to be a bit boring, which it shouldn't have been. He obviously is part of the plot, but again, his inner dialogue was kind of wasted on me. There were 3 key questions still dangling out there for me. Obviously, will any babies live? The second was on Rachel, and if I got the plot correctly, was immune because she got the antidote (it was a bit of a hectic week and don't quite remember all of the pieces). Lastly, then there was a "secret" held by the rebellion within Citadel that I don't believe came to light, especially after they were dealt with. This is enough to pull me back into book 2.