Jeanie and Ben are TSTL. Zou Zou and Günter are ciphers. Paris itself is more a real character than the people are. This is bog-standard vampire-plague stuff and that isn't my jam. I have other uses for my eyeblinks than another iteration of tis story...it's a lot like The Passage, only better written, and that isn't for me.

YMMV, as always. For $4.99 on Kindle, vampire-plague fans will have a treat.

At an earlier time I was excited to read this, but by the time I tried to pick it up it no longer interested me. Thank you for the early access though!

Thank you Ethan Reid and Simon & Schuster for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

THEY HAVE COME FROM THE STARS…

In this riveting apocalyptic thriller for fans of The Passage and The Walking Dead, a mysterious event plunges Paris into darkness and a young American must lead her friends to safety—and escape the ravenous “undying” who now roam the crumbling city.

Jeanie and Ben arrive in Paris just in time for a festive New Year’s Eve celebration with local friends. They eat and drink and carry on until suddenly, at midnight, all the lights go out. Everywhere they look, buildings and streets are dark, as though the legendary Parisian revelry has somehow short circuited the entire city.

By the next morning, all hell has broken loose. Fireballs rain down from the sky, the temperatures are rising, and people run screaming through the streets. Whatever has happened in Paris—rumors are of a comet striking the earth—Jeanie and Ben have no way of knowing how far it has spread, or how much worse it will get. As they attempt to flee the burning Latin Quarter—a harrowing journey that takes them across the city, descending deep into the catacombs, and eventually to a makeshift barracks at the Louvre Museum—Jeanie knows the worst is yet to come. So far, only she has witnessed pale, vampiric survivors who seem to exert a powerful hold on her whenever she catches them in her sights.

These cunning, ravenous beings will come to be known as les moribund—the undying—and their numbers increase by the hour. When fate places a newborn boy in her care, Jeanie will stop at nothing to keep the infant safe and get out of Paris—even if it means facing off against the moribund and leaving Ben—and any hope of rescue—behind.

Ah I do love a good zombie book!

Loved this book! Great characters, I will wonder what happened to Jeannie though....maybe more to come?

Zombie vampires in Paris. Sounds interesting. Only, it took me three tries to get into the story and finally able to finish it and even then I was struggling. The story just can’t seem to grab my attention the way I hoped it would and I had to abandon it a couple of times. While I find the plot and the setting quite interesting, I find it hard to fully like the way things played out in the story. It opened to a scene a few months into the aftermath of the apocalypse. Which is fine by me, if only it didn’t spoil the fate of the other characters. And though I am still a little intrigued by the story, it took away the surprise for sure. Add to that, the characters are uninteresting and I find it hard to connect to any of them. Not even Jeanie.

If there’s something I like, it is how the undying was presented. These zombie vampires are totally scary. They have this horrifying ability to access one’s mind and instill fear. And while the surprise is gone, there is still some fair amount of suspense. It is the first book of a series but I don’t think I’ll be picking up the next book. The writing is decent though, and in the end, it still turned out to be an okay read for me.

It had all the parts of a good one but no meat (no pun intended). If you liked the passage or the walking dead it claimed. Excuse me, are those the same, are they really even similar? 3 stars for me

Though the Undying wasn't 100% what I expected, it was more in a good way. A riveting read from the very beginning, this book is truly a page-turner. I enjoyed the flashbacks and forwards, and never found myself lost with where I was - not knowing our characters' whole story from the beginning is truly what added to the book for me. I loved how human the characters were, not a single one was perfect and that led to twists I, for one, wasn't at all suspected. I recommend for fans of post-apocalyptic fiction who don't need a romance, but do need a strong lead character who will to great lengths to survive.

Firstly, Ethan Reid is a very good author! Having completed The Undying I am dying (excuse the pun) to dive into the 2nd instalment which I downloaded the other day! The idea Reid implements is unique, with the "moribund" or living dead presenting something I have never seen before in a zombie type book, and whilst they aren't technically 'zombies', they are damn scary! Secondly, Reid makes it so you are really able to connect to the characters throughout the narrative, willing Jeanie to carry on and save the baby, whilst I was often scolding Ben for being such a coward. The action scenes involving the reanimated are excellent, and my only criticism would be that I wish there had been more! (Hopefully there are in the next instalment). Overall this is a very good book and I would recommend it to any horror lovers out there, just maybe don't read it alone at night.

Mediocre writing, and doesn't really stand out in a sea of dystopian zombie books

This review is for the ARC I have received courtesy of NetGalley.

Unfortunately, this just did not work for me. As many others have mentioned, that's not down to the writing, which in itself was actually pretty good! No, the issue was the characters - there was a complete mismatch between book and reader in this case, I suspect.

I read through in order to give an honest review.

This book had me on the edge of my seat. It was nonstop action from the first page til the very last. I can not wait until I can get my hands on the next book!

The Undying is an apocalyptic thriller and was sold as similar to The Walking Dead. Jeanie and Ben, two American tourists must get to the Arc de Triomphe as it's, supposedly, a rescue point. On the way, they find two of their friends and a newly born baby. 

The Undying could have been so good. The premise was what made me want to read it. I really did want to like it. I thought it would help me get over the awful apocalyptic book that is A Mathematical State of Grace. Unfortunately They Undying just didn't live up to my expectations. 

I enjoyed the first chapter, we were straight into the aftermath of an apocalyptic zombie style event. Unfortunately, the second chapter skipped back to before it occurred. I switched off a bit because I knew something bad was going to happen and I just really wanted it to start straight away. The characters introduced in the second chapter, were glaringly obviously missing in the first. Jeanie and the baby are clearly going to survive because they're present in the first chapter. 

I really enjoyed learning about the zombies, as much as our characters could when on the run. The zombies could get into your head slightly, they fed off emotions which was unique. They're also not The Walking Dead style zombies, they can be quick and they evolve and get stronger as the apocalypse goes on. 

Zou Zou, our resident Parisian was a walking stereotype. Plus, the characters kept speaking French. But in the middle of English sentences. I couldn't immerse myself in this world because I had to stop and try and translate the characters. I took French at GCSE, and I was struggling. Anyone who doesn't know any French would not be able to read The Undying properly.

As we follow Jeanie through her first day of the apocalypse, it flashes back to her losing her father to cancer. There's a slight analogy between the horrible things happening to Jeanie and the loss of her father. I understand there's a message trying to be conveyed. I just wasn't convinced to care about Jeanie, so I just didn't feel for her the way I think I was meant to. 

The baby in the story is an odd plot device. Even the other characters think Jeanie is stupid for taking the baby with them. The baby is meant to give Jeanie a reason to continue fighting and moving forward. But, it felt quite flat and a stupid decision made purely for plot furthering. I would have suggested the baby being Jeanie's or Zou Zou's to make it feel more genuine. I think making it a family relation or a close friend's child would have made it more obvious that Jeanie had to take the baby. 

The zombies or moribund were amazingly written. Unfortunately all the effort seemed to be towards making the perfect horror zombie. Therefore the characters and plot suffered. It would have worked so much better if the book didn't start at the end. We could have learnt to love characters and actually felt something when we lost them. The thriller aspect could have been improved upon if I thought the main character was actually at risk of dying.

Ethan has written a wonderful book... Engrossing to the very end. Deep and complex! The undying is about a girl who, after suffering the loss of her father, goes to Paris, and the unexpected happens. What happens along the way is poignant and shows that reaching into herself for someone else and come to grips with what has been lost versus what can be gained is the feel I got at the conclusion of the book. BRAVO

The Undying was a fun read. It is perfect for a day on the beach. It was a fast-paced thrill ride, and I didn’t want it to end. Jeanie was a great protagonist and I enjoyed watching her grow and the story progressed. I had to purchase the second novel to continue Jeanie’s story.

Thank you for the advanced copy.

This was an intense read. The whole pace was weird for me personally only because it was a slow building of epicness with a lot of action scenes, so thought the writing style demanding I take my time, my mind kept jumping whenever the Undying attacked or lurked nearby. It was mentally exhausting in one of the greatest ways. A lot of complex characters, one off them being the most complex despite how much I despised them as a person. One of the things this book taught me is how fragile the human mind can be, and how strong the heart is. Not everyone made it to the end and even though I don't like sad endings, this ending was still something that left me thinking about the world I just left. It's a thick read full of detail and chaos and I recommend it if you love this type of genre. I hope there's more where this came from.

Fantastic story. This has everything in it that I love in an apocalyptic book. I did have one complaint, and that was the epilogue. It's hard to invest yourself into characters that you know are going to die. I did enjoy Zou Zou, Farid, and occasionally that sniveling Ben, but knowing all would die made it harder to get more involved. Still, Paris was a great location, and the Undying were scary as heck. I'm looking forward to the next book in this series. Yep, I'd recommend this book and author. Thanks to Netgalley, and Simon and Schuster for the chance to read and review this book.

I'm struggling as to where I should begin. I did not enjoy this book. I really did not. It did not live up to the expectations I had and it in no way is comparable to The Passage. So what made it fail?

For one thing, the characters. They were so stereotypical. You need your whiner/pessimist, your comedic relief character, and the determined, courageous, selfless lead. The author didn't really do anything to make them unique as they acted just like these descriptions I gave you. I sort-of liked Jeanie because she had guts and was a go-getter, but I had no emotional connection to her. The way the characters spoke and interacted was stilted and emotionless, making it really hard to visualize. The whole baby idea sounded interesting in the premise but it was poorly executed; Jeanie is just handed this baby and within 2 seconds, she is all gaga about this child and having flashbacks and talking about how therapeutic holding a baby is. Seriously? There is a disaster going on, so you need to hustle and maybe you should be having some doubts about taking on this baby instead of just smiling and cooing at it. While that bothered me, what annoyed me even more was that as the story progressed, the baby became more of an object than an important part of the story. I mean, this story could have still worked without this infant thrown into it.

I did not like the writing style employed here. The prologue that was in the beginning was confusing, and turned out to be linked to the ending of the book. When I was reading the novel, I was unaware of this, so the prologue just made me confused, not intrigued. I also hated that the story kept flitting back between French and English; while I understand French (thank you to my french teachers all through high school!), it was frustrating to switch back and forth in the book and also to have Jeanie feel confused about what was being said as she translated things in her head. There were also too many pointless flashbacks. Literally every paragraph was followed by some mini-flashback to a tragic event in Jeanie's life. I get it, it is a sad thing, boohoo, now let's move on to the action! There are zombies and mutinies going on outside, and I really don't want to be spending my time reading about how sad Jeanie is that her father passed away. There were also short chapters that were flashbacks thrown right in at random points that did nothing to add to the plot and were a complete waste of time to read.

I really don't want to continue to bash this book. I know that the author must have put a lot of effort into writing this story, and I do acknowledge that. Suffice to say, it did not work for me on many different levels. It is part of a series, however based on my experience with this novel, I have no plans on continuing to read on.

I was initially intrigued by the plot of this book, but I think I made a mistake because I don't think this is the kind of book for me, or that I simply wasn't in the right frame of mind to appreciate it.

Its not a bad book, Its not badly written. I was interested in the main female character, but the events in the book were just too extreme for me, involving as it does, danger to women and children on a level I just couldn't handle.

I like horror but I'm also more than a little fed up with the tropes of zombie horror novels, where some lonely survivor has to make their way across a dangerous wasteland, of human, and zombie-like predators, to reach safety, while finding enemies and allies along the way. Or maybe I've simply reached peak zombie, and just don't want to think about the end of the world anymore.

Here's the thing, it features a compelling female character who is dealing with an end of the world/zombie scenario. Think the movie, 28 Days Later. If you enjoyed that movie, you may be just the person in mind for this particular book, although for "me", there was nothing especially extraordinary about the plot or the characters..

Although it's another zombie novel Max Brooks or M. R. Corey could have written, there's a certain type of connection Reid has with his characters and their circumstance which speaks of a relatable story - even though zombies are a thing of organic plant and tiny fish at our current scientific levels, mind you.

This book has a so so premise but consumes itself with endless detail that does not carry the plot forward. It attempts to thrill but instead dawdles on its way through what should be climactic scenes. The characters are fairly good but this is not enough to see a reader through.