The Deading is a horror dystopian following a handful of characters living in Baywood; a small fishing town in California. Baywood has a passionate bird watching community and a successful oyster farm. The story starts when a horrific epidemic emerges through snails. This epidemic causes people to ‘dead’, in which they collapse and essentially show all symptoms of death, but then rise again almost like before. The small fishing town is then cut off from the rest of civilization by the government and the community has to figure out how to live in this ground zero. Things play out very similarly to what everyone, myself included, experienced during the real life pandemic of Covid-19. Hysteria, paranoia, isolation, rituals, beliefs, and people changing overnight, as well as lots of confusion on what to do and where to go to get information. Our main character Blas navigates the world as a high schooler the only way he knows, through birds. His mom and brother are infected and become ‘risers’, leaving him alone, and afraid. Blas eventually has to plan how to escape this infected town with other immune folks like him.

I liked this audiobook, the body horror starts off instantly in the beginning of the book. Snails are described in a way that I’m not sure if I will ever find them cute again. The beginning part of the story follows the overtaking and infection of the owner of the local oyster farm. I do wish there was more from this perspective, and more of the up close part of body/eco horror in the book. However, the horror feeling follows through the book.

The main person that the story follows is Blas, who has to grapple with the epidemic in his town and in his brother Chango, and mother Miriam. Blas has a huge passion as a bird watcher; this personality trait of Blas isn’t very beloved by his brother Chango and many other residents of this small fishing town.
The other character we follow is a friend of Blas, Kumi. Kumi is a fellow bird watcher and is more mature and thoughtful of her perspective. She also has to experience the horrors of the rituals of the ‘risers’, as she infiltrates their grotesque ceremony.

I do think that The Deading does talk about birds a little too much for my own taste of a horror book (especially when birds are not the source of horror). It was understandable as the characters the story most closely follows are bird watchers. Their escapism is birds, and who wouldn’t need an escapism in an epidemic. The story can be a bit confusing, but it did not bother me too much. I thought it was an apt portrayal considering the characters are cut off from all means of communication other than face to face. It would be very confusing to be isolated from the outside world by the government with absolutely 0 answers.

The audio part of the book was fantastic and had a pretty large cast with spot on voices for the characters. I really enjoyed it and it was quite immersive. My only critique would be that the enunciation of names was a little unclear, making it a little harder to follow along the POV’s.

I enjoyed this book, I thought it was a fantastic commentary on pollution, isolation, and how quickly a cult can form. The horror was skin crawling, with an unearthly and creepy atmosphere and a diversely flawed character cast. 4.25 stars

The Deading
Nicholas Belardes
I had great hopes for this tale, but it fell short of my expectations.
The Deading begins with sea snails attacking a local oyster farm. The snails attack anything beginning with wildlife, seascapes and people. The people collapse; they die. They come back to life, but they aren’t the same. The government isolates the town from the world.
The characters lack depth. The point of view is erratic. The plot doesn’t flow smoothly. This tale has too many characters. This is an eco-thriller but mostly it is confusing. The plot is confusing it jumps from here to here. In my opinion the author wanted to share his eco opinion and attempted to use this book as a means of educating the world. It just didn’t work.
Thank you NetGalley for providing a copy for review.

Fantastic premise, mediocre execution. I came close to not finishing this twice. I appreciate the full cast of narrators but they did not help me to connect to any of the characters.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of the audiobook "The Deading" by Nicholas Belardes.

Unfortunately, this absolutely was not the book for me. I'm giving it two stars, and frankly, that's generous.

The cover of the book was really cool, and the synopsis was interesting enough to make me think it'd be pretty good. And maybe, for some folks, it will be. But I'm not one of those folks.

As mentioned, I listened to this book in audio format, and I'll be honest. By the end of the book, I had absolutely no fracking idea what was happening. I can't even tell you how the book ended. Like, if you came up to me with a gun to my head and said, "Tell me how this book ended, or I'll blow your brains out!"

Well, I'd either have to tell a lie and hope it was convincing, or you'd have to blow my brains out. Because I have no clue what happened. I don't know if the "good guys" won in the end or if it went against the grain and had a non-happy ending.

Why?

Because I had completely zoned out.

There were far too many characters to keep up with, and aside from the little old Asian lady (whose name I still don't know), not a single one of them was interesting enough for me to invest any real anything into.

And besides the overwhelming number of characters, the book was just boring. And I hate to say that (especially after the publisher was so kind as to grant me a FREE review copy), but my understanding is they really want our honest opinions, even when those opinions are bad.

And honestly, the book was hellaciously boring. A large part of it centered around (who I think was) the main character's hobby of bird-watching. And yes. It's just as dull as it sounds.

Now, I'm sure this is because I was completely zoned out and had no idea what was going on, but I never could figure out how the intense focus on birds and bird watching tied in with the devastating, apocalyptic event that was happening in the book. Just from how often they talked about it, I'm sure it was supposed to be some kind of allegory or parallelism with what was going on in the world, but I never could understand it.

The only reason I'm giving it 2 stars instead of 1 is because the narrator did an excellent job.

Beyond that, though, there's nothing about this book that led me to recommend it to anyone.

My apologies to the author and the publishers for not being able to give a more favorable review.

This is definitely a strange book! A small town is cut off from the rest of the world and super odd things start to happen. The people start to become infected and turn into “deaders”. There’s a lot of creepiness in this story! I did find some parts of the book confusing at times with the different point of views and characters. I listened to the audio version, so I’m not sure if that made it a bit more confusing?
Theres a lot happening with birds in this story, which I think was maybe a bit too much.
Overall there were some very interesting and entertaining parts, but it wasn’t one of my top reads.

Thank you to NetGalley for an audio copy of this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and RBmedia for an ALC in exchange for my honest review!

The quiet coastal town of Baywood has something sinister wash upon its shores, and soon after some of its population exhibits strange symptoms. The quarantined locals quickly become divided between those infected and those who are not, as social hierarchies crumble and a new death obsessed cult takes over.

The premise and so many elements of this book should have made a great eco-cosmic-horror story, but ultimately fell flat. The characters are not really distinct or memorable. Three of the main characters are bird watchers, which leads to too much time spent on talking about birds. The perspective changes become disorienting at times, making it hard to fully immerse in the story. At times I almost forgot that this was supposed to be a horror story.

Ultimately, I feel like this book tried to do/say too much in a short amount of time, causing its message to become garbled in the chaos.

The Deading by Nicholas Belardes was a unique book but it didn't quite work for me. I'd like to start with what I did like though. The narration for the audiobook was wonderful. This book had multiple narrators and each one did a great job at bringing their character to life. I picked this book expecting a horror story but it ended up being more about conspiracy theories and bird watching. There were several bizarre and creepy moments but it really lacked what I wanted in a horror novel. I think the endless bird watching and bird facts really slowed the plot down.
I wouldn't recommend this if you're looking for horror but I'd definitely recommend trying it if you're looking for a creepy story with a focus on government conspiracies, small communities, and a lot of bird watching.

Thank you to the publishers and netgalley for this alc in exchange for an honest review.

Well...
I dont know about this.
This book didn't hook me, at all, the only reason why i finished listening is because it was on 2x speed and i was playing Stardew Valley on the side.
And before anyone says that that's the reason I didn't like it, I do this with pretty much every Audiobook and i've loved plenty of them.

But this one...
I'll get into it deeper when i've finished my exams...

DNF at 42%. I really tried to make this one work, but I just couldn’t get into it. I realized when I started skipping one character’s chapters, I should just call it, because skipping them didn’t seem to impact the story at all. I couldn’t even remember any of the characters’ names, other than Blas, who was the only character who I was interested in. The chapters I skipped were the ones with the entitled teenager. Again, I can’t remember his name, but those chapters were like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. I think this book could have been done really well were it only done from Blas’ perspective, or even his perspective and a third person view of the victims. I don’t know. I just know it really wasn’t for me.

Huge thanks to RBmedia and NetGalley for sending me this ARC for review! All of my reviews are given honestly!

Thank you NetGalley and RBmedia for the ALC.
This wasn't for me. I wanted to like it,hoping it would get better but it didn't.

This was a really unique horror. It starts out a bit slow but that really allows the terror to build and build as parasite spreads. Also the multiple povs really adds to the ambiance of the story. Everything feels very real and very creepy.