In the land of the blind, the man with one eye is king. Or I guess in this case, in the land of the deaf, the man who can hear is king. Wait, no, still not right. In the land of the deaf, the man who can hear is forced into indentured servitude and crippled to make sure he doesn't get away. That's more like it.

There are some really excellent pieces of sensory deprivation horror out there, and A Quiet Apocalypse can be said to stand right beside them. I've put that label on it, but our main character is not hearing impaired, it's everyone else, and our story studies the degradation of society's following a virus that leaves most of the world's population deaf or dead.

There were a lot of elements present which reminded me of the great novel, The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The world goes to hell in a hand basket, bad stuff is going on all around us, but we're mainly focused on human relationships: the good, the bad, and the ugly. I'd like to take a moment also to commend Dave Jeffrey for the sensitivity and care he uses to write about hearing impaired (pre-apocalyptic) individuals. It comes across in spades that this is a personal subject to him.