The Breach

By: Patrick Lee

Narrated by: Jeff Gurner

Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

Thirty years ago, in a facility buried beneath a vast Wyoming emptiness, an experiment gone awry accidentally opened a door. It is the world’s best-kept secret—and its most terrifying. Trying to regain his life in the Alaskan wilds, ex-con/ex-cop Travis Chase stumbles upon an impossible scene: a crashed 747 passenger jet filled with the murdered dead, including the wife of the [resident of the United States.

Though a nightmare of monumental proportions, it pales before the terror to come, as Chase is dragged into a battle for the future that revolves around an amazing artifact. Allied with a beautiful covert operative whose life he saved, Chase must now play the role he’s been destined for—a pawn of incomprehensible forces or humankind’s final hope—as the race toward Apocalypse begins in earnest. Because something is loose in the world. And doomsday is not only possible...it is inevitable.

©2010 Patrick Lee (P)2010 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

"It's all here: brilliantly devious enemies; nifty, innovative gadgets and weaponry; hang-on-to-your-hat action; and razor-sharp plot twists aplenty." ( Publishers Weekly)

"Audacious and terrifying - and uncannily believable." (Lee Child)

The narrator sucks big time, BUT this is a fun bk

Love the story so much I tolerated one of those awful narrators that seem to come right out of HS drama class. Very cheesy, but the story was good and I'll keep going

I really enjoyed this book

It drew me right in. I really liked it. Look forward to the next book.

Unconventional, unexpected, entertaining.

I never expected what happened next. Especially when I thought I knew what was going to happen. A truly flawed protagonist, bordering on anti-hero. A woman who truly doesn't exist simply for romantic interest; Who is strong, smart, and capable in her own right. Unique and in depth world-building that is believable. The only truly lackluster thing for me was the voice-actor.

Potentially dangerous gifts through a portal

giving earth kings advanced technology never works. There is always an egomaniac wanting to rule. Also never trust artifical intelegences. A bit too much advanced science makes my mind glass over. Story first, then try to explain quantum thinking.

Simply Put; GOOD BOOK

I honestly didn't know what I was getting into when I picked up this book. I liked the preview and the price was right so I figured, why not. Well, it was a good decision in my honest opinion. I found that I was drawn into the book, mostly because of the way that the narrator, Jeff Gurner, conducted his performance. Couple that with a solidly well written plot, characters, and right amount of incitement for curiosity I found myself helpless in that I couldn't stop listening. The ending was Sixth Sense like in how I didn't see it coming until just before the reveal. The trip to that point was enjoyable. While I am not a fan of violence, and there are some very very violent passages in this book, I found that the way the author incorporated them was indeed a necessity for the story to be told. In the end, you are left to wonder if one person is worth so much. Had the choice of one person been different, thousands of people would have survived. It is, in the end, a book about what if's and why me. But for the grace of God go I.

Pass

Couldn't make it past the two hour mark. The blurb for this book sounded interesting. I have never read anything by the writer but I gave it a try. It would seem this is one of his first efforts because of the totally unrealistic plot. I could only make it through a couple of hours. The first lady is responsible for a highly sensitive and deadly project. So much so she fly's around with it. Her plane is not escorted. It has no devices for tracking it even when off radar. A one man hero comes along by chance and kills all the trained assassins and rescues the girl. And on and on like that.

Not very good

There's a certain hook in this story that's enough to make you go on in the trilogy to see how it resolves. Which is unfortunate, since the books themselves are not very good. I'm in the middle of the second book right now, and starting to hate every inch of it. My advice would be to stay out of that position.

In my limited experience, techno-thrillers like this are basically the same. You have a male hero called something like Hunter or, in this case, Chase. There's a female main character who, these days, is a professional as well as the romantic interest, but still needs to be rescued. You have Washington, D.C., and lots of WASP politicians. You have high tech ordnance. And you have some sort of high concept, with pseudo-scientific patter to dress it up. The fate of the world is at stake.

The "science" here is off enough to be irritating. (I hate it when writers get glib about things they don't understand, and then try to sell you on it. People should have more self-respect, or at least more respect for the reader.) Hitchcock wouldn't have made a big deal of it; he called the gimmicks that his characters chased after "MacGuffins," and audiences understood they weren't the point. In books like this they actually are the point.

The characterization, and the writing itself, aren't much better. For example, someone is tortured intensely for three full days while her father is made to look into her eyes the whole time, and then her father is killed in front of her. Does this slow her down? Not at all! As soon as the magic technology heals her wounds, which is very soon, she's right out there hunting the bad guys with Chase. Things to do, people to kill. If that makes you worry about a certain lack of empathy on the part of the author, you won't feel better later on, when one of the magic widgets induces the adults and children of Zurich to attack armed troops and be mowed down in wave after wave. There's some rote lip service to how this is really tough to do, but this is just color, and everybody seems to just forget about the whole thing afterwards, including the city of Zurich.

The narration is exactly what the book deserves. That is, it's punchy and cartoonish. Travis Chase (yes, that really is his name) speaks in a choked rasp that sounds like one of the voices Christian Bale rejected for Batman. One low point is an account by a physicist. It's plain that Patrick Lee has never met an actual physicist, and possibly not a scientist of any kind, and his guesses about how they talk aren't very close. A good narrator could probably underplay that enough to make it relatively painless. But Jeff Gurner makes the scientist sound like a buck-toothed nerd with a pocket protector. Most of the rest of the voices are like that, for example stock politicians and doctors. The narration as a whole is self-important and melodramatic and tries to make everything sound urgent, whether or not it is, and after a while you feel bombarded and wish it would stop.

As for wanting to find out where the trilogy ends up, probably not very promising, judging by the shameless way Lee tries to bluff his way through the Grandfather Paradox. This is starting to feel obsessive even to me.

Great listen...... Very entertaining.

I liked the fast pace and twist at the end. Narration was great. Going to listen to the rest of the series.

Well written & performed, but.....

I could have liked this story, except there was soooo much gratuitous & graphic violence against innocents & or good guys.
The mental images were almost more than I could take. E.g. how Page was tortured, her Dad killed because Travis hesitated to act??And all the unsuspecting folks at the diner/motel blown away by the guy in the invisible getup, and hundreds if not thousands of Zurich citizens.....men, women, children.....were slaughtered by Page's team. Why didn't they disable the nuke first???? Or the hostages that were executed.
Waaaaay too much, over the top, all so unnecessary. It really left a bad taste in my mouth/brain.
And the Whisper evoked an image of the creepy clown in "It", the way it spoke.
I wish he spent more time with the rip or tear, and the things that came through. Would have been much more
interesting.
And the "duplicator."...how did it work? How did Travis duplicate himself? "Just duplicate all the weapons & ammo
you need" or words to that effect. Right 🙄
Missed opportunities to make it a really good story. I feel kind of disgusted by it actually.
But the narrator did a great job.

Yet Another Great Book By Patrick Lee

I absolutely loved this title. And without a doubt, Mr Gurrner has shown us again what a great narrator can do for a great book.