Seven hours into an on-call shift with nothing breaking (suspicious, I know), I started Point of Proximity expecting background noise while monitoring dashboards. Instead I found myself actually pausing my terminal to catch dialogue. That's... not nothing.
Bottom Line: Worth your commute. Solid zombie apocalypse survival drama that doesn't reinvent the wheel but executes the formula competently. Chris Andrew Ciulla keeps the ensemble cast distinct enough that you won't lose track of who's betraying whom this chapter.
The Virus Release Was An Inside Job (And Everyone Knows It)
The setup here is basically The Walking Dead but for people who want their interpersonal drama served with a side of military conspiracy. You've got Alec blaming Elaina for the outbreak, Natalia's daddy issues, Will's trauma from watching his family tear each other apart—it's a pressure cooker of resentment trapped in a zombie apocalypse. The group dynamics are actually the interesting part. When they splinter and half of them find this "safe" town run by rogue soldiers? Yeah, you can see where that's going. But knowing the trap is coming doesn't make it less effective.
What works is that Max Lockwood doesn't waste time with exposition dumps. The virus is out, society collapsed, here's your survivors with baggage—go. At 7 hours 26 minutes, it's lean. No padding. I finished this in about 5 commutes, which is the sweet spot for this kind of thriller.
Ciulla's Lithuanian Tremolo
Chris Andrew Ciulla does something interesting with character differentiation that I didn't expect. There's this slight accent work—apparently drawing from Lithuanian roots for certain characters—with a tremulousness in his delivery that actually sells the fear and paranoia. It's not Ray Porter (need I say more about my narrator standards), but Ciulla's got this energetic phrasing that keeps the tension moving even during the slower character moments.
The ensemble here is substantial—Alec, Elaina, Natalia, Will, plus the sketchy soldiers—and I never lost track of who was speaking. That's harder than it sounds in audio. His emotional delivery during the infected-Elaina scenes hit different at 2 AM when you're alone in your apartment wondering if that Slack notification is production going down again.
No audio issues, no weird production problems, no background noise. Clean recording. The ROI on this audiobook is decent—you're getting competent genre fiction with professional narration.
The "Abandoned Town" Problem
Okay, here's where I have to be honest about the formula. Survivors find seemingly safe haven run by mysterious group? Evil lurking beneath the surface? Someone's going to die? This is post-apocalyptic fiction 101. The book doesn't subvert expectations so much as execute them well. If you've listened to any survival horror in the last decade, you know the beats.
But—and this is important—knowing the formula doesn't mean the execution is bad. Lockwood keeps the internal character tensions interesting enough that the predictable plot structure becomes almost comforting. You're not here for shocking twists. You're here to watch these broken people try not to kill each other while zombies try to kill everyone.
The mature themes warning is accurate. Violence, language, some sexual content. Nothing gratuitous, but this isn't cozy apocalypse fiction.
Perfect For: Train, Gym. Skip For: Deep Work
This is basically The Walking Dead for audiobook commuters who want something engaging without requiring their full attention. You can zone out during the action sequences and pick back up during dialogue without losing the thread. Perfect 1.5x listening—Ciulla's pacing handles the speed bump well.
Who should grab this: If you burned through Mountain Man, Arisen, or any of the other post-apocalyptic military survival series and want more of that vibe. Rise of Nine scratches a similar itch with its own take on survival under impossible odds. If you like ensemble casts with messy relationships under pressure. If you need something for a road trip that'll keep you awake through the boring stretch of I-5.
Who should skip: If you're tired of zombie fiction. If you want hard sci-fi that explains the virus mechanism (this isn't that). If you need your apocalypse fiction to do something genuinely new with the genre.
The Debug Report
Point of Proximity is a solid 3.5—competent execution of a familiar formula with good narration. It won't change your life, but it'll get you through a week of commutes without feeling like you wasted your time. Sometimes that's exactly what you need. Ciulla's performance elevates material that could've been forgettable into something worth the listen.
I'm probably going to check out the next book in the series during my next on-call rotation. That's the real test, honestly—did it leave me wanting more? Yeah. It did.
