Born of Night

A League Novel

By: Sherrilyn Kenyon

Narrated by: Kelly Fish

Length: 14 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Sherrilyn Kenyon comes Born of Night, the first book in her blockbuster series, The League.

In the Ichidian Universe, The League and their ruthless assassins rule all. Expertly trained and highly valued, the League Assassins are the backbone of the government. But not even the League is immune to corruption . . .

Command Assassin Nykyrian Quikiades once turned his back on the League—and has been hunted by them ever since. Though many have tried, none can kill him or stop him from completing his current mission: to protect Kiara Zamir, a woman whose father's political alliance has made her a target.

As her world becomes even deadlier, Kiara must entrust her life to the same kind of beast who once killed her mother and left her for dead. Old enemies and new threaten them both and the only way they can survive is to overcome their suspicions and learn to trust in the very ones who threaten them the most: each other.

©2009 Sherrilyn Kenyon (P)2009 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“Fish competently balances the pace of the story with the emotions of the main characters, letting their internal conflicts alter her temp and then expertly returning to a more measured delivery.” —AudioFile

“Narrator Kelly Fish brings new dimension to the story, finding a different accent for every character.” —Library Journal

“[A] publishing phenomenon…[Sherrilyn Kenyon is] the reigning queen of the wildly successful paranormal scene.” —Publisher's Weekly

the right voice for the right story or not

like everyone of sherrilyn Kenyon books, this story was fantastic!The way she writes about the places, characters and events in such perfect detail and yet find the perfect balance of detail and action so as not to bore you the too much detail always amazes me.... seriously feel like those places are real those places and people are real... Almost like I know them on a personal level. however, the choice of narrator, I felt, was not a good match. First of all, I think it is very important to read and really know the book. to become very familiar with it's people places and things so ask to do them to justice when reading about and for them. I mean no offense to the narrator. she was very well spoken but, clearly was not familiar with the places, people and events of the Ichidian universe. Her pronunciation of their names and voice quality and tone to use for different characters simply did not match them at all. I found that to be very distracting and irritating and sucked some of the fun out of listening to one of my favorite books by my favorite Author.

Poor Darling

Can someone explain why Kelly Fish decided that Darling should sound Cockney? The reader in the other books has a much better Darling.

need a different voice for male characters

loved the story but it need different voices for the male characters, the lady that does it doesnt show how the true hybrid voice was supposed to be

Love it

I love it so much , I finished it within a week can’t wait for the next book !!!!

Love the story. Narrator may be a bit of training.

I hate to complain because I've read and/or listened to Everything Sherrilyn Kenyon has written. This story is one of my absolute favorites and I've gone back to it repeatedly. However, the narrator doesn't control her breathing very well. Her performance is extremely on point but her quick intake of breath before she starts a sentence is distracting. Other than that, you MUST read this book and then the whole series. It's so worth it.

Loved it!

I love this book as well as the whole series! I can't wait for the next one to come out! There is so much emotion in all of these books. I enjoyed the audio version as well as the Ebook. This is a series I never grow tired of rereading and listening too!

It's a Great book just need a new narrator

Throughout the story, the reader is introduced to the Sentella, an organization of assassins who possess principles and heart. These good men and women have brutal pasts, but they're like one big family and often engage in banter. The author, Kenyon, emphasizes the brutal pasts and banter instead of simply allowing the reader to understand that these assassins are good people. Despite this, I enjoyed learning about the characters' personal pasts and how they are loyal to Nykyrian. It was gratifying to care for them.

However, I disliked how their pasts were revealed, especially Nykyrian's. Kenyon provided too many easy solutions to the questions surrounding the assassins' backgrounds. Kiara, a character who is sometimes naive and sometimes self-righteous, acts as a human version of the serum of truth. When she starts asking questions, everyone spills their personal drama, ruining the story for me.

Moreover, Kiara is a contradiction. One moment she's open-minded, but when the plot demands to be moved forward or the reader needs information about a character, she becomes self-righteous and condemning. She whines and places herself in danger because she doesn't think. Although her past as a victim of assassins justifies her hate and resentment towards them, she should have been smarter about building a stronger survival instinct.

Despite these flaws, Nykyrian stands out as a redeemable quality. He's a bit of a Gary Stu with a tragic past, mad skills, and a golden heart. However, I believed that he was as tormented and unloved as Kenyon told me he was. His awkward reactions to going into a relationship with Kiara were endearing and kept me engaged. Their complicated relationship was entertaining to watch spin, but the impossible succession of chance meetings was implausible and nearly laughable.

In the end, Kenyon defied all laws that govern happy endings and delivered the cheesiest, most sugar-coated Hollywood package finish I've ever seen. However, emotionally, the story kept me active, reactive, and engaged, which is hard to achieve these days. Although I won't be repeating this experiment, I'm sure there are readers who enjoy wish-fulfillment storylines.
I think the book could benefit from a new narrator. The current one falls short in bringing out the characters, unlike Fred Berman who does an excellent job.

sci-fi bodice ripper

light on the sci. heavy on the fi. i would mention the size of the plot holes, but the size of the plausability holes are much larger. the tension is allowed to build nicely before blooming into a few adult interludes. not crass, more NC-17 than X. the story was well crafted and excelently paced. the characters were also well rounded and quite believable. i enjoyed the narrator here and thought she did a good job. overall it was a fun diversion. predictable and shallow, but somehow that's what made it such fun.

Really good story

Good story! Loved the narrator !!! I listened to a library copy and had to own it just so I could listen to it again. Love the characters !!!

Loved the voices!

Would you consider the audio edition of Born of Night to be better than the print version?

I've read the book a good five times now, and I like doing this after reading the book. Once you've read the book a couple times it's not a big deal if you miss a couple words here and there if you get distracted. And in my head, it's very difficult to hear these different character's in different voices, so to hear a narrator doing the vastly different accents, it's really cool!! Although, I doubt that Darling has a cockney-type accent in the book, and Hauk didn't sound quite deep enough. However, I preferred the female voice actually being female so that made up for it. And Kelly Fish did Nykyrian's voice amazingly well. Overall, I will probably still read the hard copy books, but I definitely want to listen to these after.

What did you like best about this story?

The hot gorgeous men, the playful bickering between the males. I just love these books, I am so excited for Born of Defiance.

Have you listened to any of Kelly Fish’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

First time, so I can't compare to anything else, but I enjoyed it.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

I seriously hope that they make a film of this series, it would be like a dream come true. Anyways, tagline... Um?

Don't Judge a Man by His Past
The Most Feared Assassin in the World and A Tiny Dancer, Who Would've Thought It?

This is not my forte, haha.

Any additional comments?

I doubt this will ever happen, but if someday they could have a make do all the male voices, and a female do the female voices, that would be perfect. But, I don't know how much this type of thing costs so I am doubting that to happen. But I would love them more if it could!