The Extinction Cycle Boxed Set: Extinction Horizon, Extinction Edge, and Extinction Age (The Extinction Cycle, Books 1 - 3)

I started this series and it is so good that I cannot stop reading them. Each book is as good or better than the previous book. I get so involved with the characters into the story that I feel the pressures that they are under and the fear that they are experiencing while involved in this intense drama.I just can't stop reading this series of books. I purchased The Extinction Series Box set and it is a great way to get the first 3 books and save some money. I like the first three stories so much that I already purchased the first 5 books.This is one of the best series of stories that I have read for a while and I just want to move onto the next book. The books are well written and edited and the action and intensity of the story just keeps me on the edge of my chair. I honestly can't believe that someone has not purchased the rights to these books to make them into a film or into a TV series.If you are looking for a good story to read that will keep you awake at night then this is the one that you need to get. I highly recommend these books.

Well written different take on the zombie apocalypse theme. Very entertaining only slightly predictable. Couldn't put it down for seeing what comes next well worth the timd.

Great value for one of my favorite series out there. The Extinction Cycle leads the crowded post-apocalyptic field with the twist it brings to the zombie apocalypse. One can't describe this series with a single category. It fits into medical thriller, post-apoc, horror, and so much more, which is probably why it's so popular. The Extinction Cycle has a diverse cast and would make an amazing television series. The science, military themes, and characterization would make it the perfect fit for an HBO or Netflix mini-series.What I enjoyed most about these books were the characters. They are from all walks of lives, religions and nationalities. Author Nicholas Sansbury Smith is excellent at creating characters the reader loves and also those the reader will hate.Just a remarkable series of books and you can't beat this box set price.

Not your ordinary end of days series. What you thought this was a zombie series, wrong it is much more and better. This is a story of survival against creatures that make zombies look like puppies. Characters are strong and developed , Wait till you meet Apollo and Fritz, they are something else. Now why did I just mention those two, well I am Biased I like them. I like the others also but I just wanted to throw two out at you. There are five books in this series and you have to read them all and then give Nicholas some grief at the end because he ended the series. Just kidding Nicholas is great and he has moved on the Hell Divers . Enjoy the series .

You're missing out if you haven't started reading this series yet! The box set is your opportunity to dive into this thrilling adventure. These books are unlike anything I've read before and Smith has an uncanny ability to get you hooked. It's easy to get lost for hours in his books as the action and suspense never seems to end. I like these books because the enemy is gross and terrifying, the science the author uses to explain the threat is more than plausible, and the characters are lovable and feel like real friends. I'm 100% addicted to the Extinction Cycle, reading Smith's work is my drug of choice-- the adrenaline, nervous sweats and heart-racing is all too real!

Great series, problem was that I had already had bought book 1&2 separately after I bought the 3 books.

Another great series I fell in love with thanks to the great story telling. As a huge game of this genre I devour these books. If you are a fan of The Remaining, Surviving the Dead, WTF, V Plague, Arisen or day by day Armageddon this series is also up your alley. I've read all the others and love them too. Hadn't heard of this series but saw the 3 book deal and have it a go, couldn't put it down. Another great author to keep track of :)

Interesting cast, story is a little convulted and wraps up pretty quickly in some cases. Overall it's a good read and worth the price.

The first book in this series came out at the height of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which makes this series a terrifying what-if scenario of the consequences of scientists experimenting with bio-weapons, given that the premise is a bio-weapon based on the Ebola virus. Smith's writing is vivid, easily drawing the reader into the petrifying post-apocalyptic world of Beckham Reed, Kate Lovato, Team Ghost and the Variants, and you will not want to put these books down. You may also not sleep too well at night.Electrifying and gripping, a must read for post-apocalypse and zombie lovers alike.

Fast paced, believable and fallible characters. Well deserved comeuppance for the baddies - although I would have made it more drawn out and painful. Apollo is a good touch

As apocalyptic stories go this one isn't bad. But it isn't awesome either. It's kind of okay with some decent slices of innovation and a decent enough twist on the zombie theme, yet there are some pretty dreadful bits too.The good stuff: I like a decent read, a story with pace and structure and I find it hard to resist a box set, especially when it's end of the worldy. Smith does a decent job of building a world where the shizzle has hit the fan and mankind is facing the big end.His description of the enemy is sufficiently distanced from the typical zombie to be worthy of fear and to some degree admiration. After all, a new species evolves in a few hours/days/weeks is to be respected, even if the cause for said evolution is due to fairy dust and magic, not science, you know, cos science don't work like dat! And that's despite the weighty chunk of science in this story. Yes, I'm well aware of the fiction bit on the "science fiction" but seriously, there's a lot of science at work here and even then it requires a dab of magic to make it plausible.The actiony bits start off well. There are suspense moments, characters running whilst looking over their shoulders, shouting and shooting moments, plenty of epic will they just about make it out (again) alive or will the guy/girl we don't really know get ripped to pieces by the zombies, I mean variants.The characters are okay and there's some decent dialogue here and there, even if it does feel a bit copy and paste from similar stories, but that's not easy to avoid once an author announces the end of the world, introduces a group of plucky soldiers where the odds are stacked against them and says "Get go em! Hoora!"The plot ticks along quite nicely, escaping, arguing, banter, showing respect, getting in and out of tricky situations that would make mere mortals go cry in a corner. Every so often it grinds a little around the bend of Plot Street in order to direct the cast at the next clearly marked objective.Okay, so the bad stuff, or to be nice about it - "The stuff that got on my nerves but probably wasn't noticed much by many others."Two key phrases bugged me. "A beat" and "taking a knee." I get that instead of saying "after a moment" or "a second later" Smith thought that measuring that smallish period of time using a heart beat, or beat, would be worthwhile. Sure. Once, possibly twice. But it popped up 65 times! It got old really fast. 62 for the dropping or taking a knee thing.It sounds weird right? But little things like that bring me out of the story and question whether or not the author had someone check it over for repetition before hitting publish each time.The characters were a little 2D for my tastes with little in the way of dialogue nuances to tell any of them apart. I had to wait to be prompted by a "said Horn" to know who was speaking most of the time. I never felt there was the right level of threat at any point because it became very obvious who the main characters were and they wouldn't be dying anytime soon.Generic Delta Force Ghost Recon Call of Duty Spec Ops Baddass soldiers from good old 'Merica who happen to be permanently armed to the teeth, fueled with Banter Juice and always ready to dish out pain to the zombies, I mean variants. The core unit is a drop down menu of characters - choose your cliche hero - big guy with a big gun, injured guy who rocks the sniper role, a young cocky lad with an eye for the ladies, grizzled leader who thinks a lot about the subject of respect...and so on.Sometimes all three books in this set had a hard time figuring out what they wanted to be - action, thriller, military-political drama, science drama. I quite liked the swap and change between the gritty street level action, guns blazing, cocky tooled up soldiers sticking it to the bad guys, and the crisp clean lab scenes where science is done at the reader. I found it amusing that Kate whatsername was championed as the brains behind the sciency bits, but it's Ellis who does the majority of the hard work, the thinking and putting the pieces together for her.It's just that I never felt any of the characters, or me as the reader, were given a reason to fear for the important characters. It was easy to pick out the guys in the red shirts, the ones you know are going to be got. And it was easy to see the plot gears grinding away in the distance. After a while it all got a little...samey. And that's often a problem for longer apocalyptic series, plots get recycled as the situation gets generally a little bit worse with each installment.I almost stopped reading when the incident happens with the blood on the ship. And I'm like "Yep, that's him done. No coming back from that. Sad to see him go, but it had to happen. Shame, cos I kinda liked...oh, he's still alive. Hmm. And...the science is okay with that? Seems so. I'm not okay with that."Smith, as an author you can't change the rules when you feel like it without giving a damn good reason why. Especially when the essence of the plot is rooted in science.It looks like I'm ripping it to pieces when I'm not. There wasn't anything massively bad about the characters or the plot, and for a newcomer to the genre it's not a bad place to start, though it's fully biased toward 'Merica and how amazing they are at both killing and saving everyone at the same time.This was an okay box set, and despite the crappy bits and the somewhat flat plot and 2D characters, I'm still going to buy book number 4 because I'm a sucker for a series and I love to watch the world burn.