The Vigiles Urbani Chronicles: Year One

Accession of the Stone Born, Dust Walkers, Shades of Fire & Ash

By: Ken Lange

Narrated by: Andrew Pond, Paul Clewell

Length: 24 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

Accession of the Stone Born Death doesn't always ride a pale horse.

Gavin Randall hasn’t been home in nearly thirty years. Upon his return, he steps into a world he never knew existed and awakens dormant powers to discover that he’s one of the rarest beings in the supernatural community - a Stone Born. Now his very existence is a threat to the established order.

A mysterious death pulls him in further, forcing him to face off against family and foe alike. Gavin must reconcile the past he knew with a strange world of magic, along the way encountering new creatures and dangers he’s never experienced.

Will Gavin discover the truth? Or will this new world swallow him whole?

Dust Walkers

When newly minted vigil Gavin Randall is summoned to a small town in New Mexico, the last thing he’s expecting is to have to fight a cartel of necromancers. Their undead horde tests the limits of his powers and shows him just how vulnerable he really is…and that’s not the worst of it. His enemies have spent centuries preparing for a war no one within the Archive has foreseen, and he has yet to learn to control his abilities or figure out his place in this ancient conflict. With time running out, will he be able to forge the alliances he needs to survive the coming storm?

Shades of Fire & Ash

After surviving an unholy horde in New Mexico, Gavin Randall didn’t think things could get much worse, but the world he walked into eleven months ago grows more dangerous with each passing day. A new threat has surfaced in the form of fanatics hellbent on destroying him, his friends, and the Archive itself. It’s his job to make sure that doesn’t happen, but these guys don’t play fair and have found a way to stack the odds in their favor. With the primordial fires of Muspelheim lapping at his heels, can he survive long enough to fulfill his destiny, or will the world be burned to ash?

©2019 Ken Lange (P)2019 Ken Lange

Excellent story and performance

This is a great audiobook. I cannot wait for the next book in the series.

BRAVO!

Let me begin with OMG. I listen to a hundred books a year. Yeah, I have a problem. lol. I got this book as a gift a few days ago and I almost never give written book reviews, especially after the first listen. I feel like a damn yelper when I do write one, because lets be honest, who cares what I think. So i finished my current listen, then began this book a couple days ago. Damn is it good! Hooked me in the first 5 mins and kept my full attention throughout the story. Great story with perfect narration. I am more into scifi, then fantasy but I think this book is extremely well written and has me wanting to listen to more of this genre. Im really glad I got the opportunity to enjoy such a great book. Ken paints a great picture in your minds eye and the narration ties it all together so well. Bravo! I will definitely seek out more books by this author now.

Great collection.

The first two books in this trilogy we’re good, but I wasn’t as fond of the narrator. The last book has the same narrator as the warden global books, and I enjoyed it much more. My principle complaint is that Gavin goes from getting his butt kicked frequently to having way too much power. I still like the series, and enjoy that it is set mostly in New Orleans. Just bought the next book in the series so obviously I am hooked.

This includes the first three books of the Vigilé

These books are one of my favorite Urban fantasy Series . I truly look forward to each new book in this expanding series. And I would recommend this whole series to anyone who y this type of genre .

first time

first time hearing about this author and this audio sounded interesting; it was better than I honestly thought it would be. I'll probably look into more from this author.

Excellent Urban Fantasy

So. I am completely awed by this author's ability to successfully combine so many worlds, while still managing to keep them separate. There is so much more depth than a typical urban fantasy, I want to take notes, so I dont miss something potentially important down the line. There are stories within stories, subplots, and even sub-subplots. It's an intricate and highly intense world. I can't stress enough how much I love this world. Looking forward to more from this author. And, while it was a bit weird to have the narrator change, I'm glad he chose to switch to the narrator from his other series. Especially with the reading order switching back and forth between series. I love both narrators, and am sad the change was necessary, but also glad it was. It seems more cohesive this way .

A different approach to paranormal

I liked the stories in this collection. A bit of a new spin on the genre. The narrators could use a bit more inflection in their own reading. especially the first but eventually you get used to it. It's nothing that distracts from the story but touches of emotion would enhance. I'll be checking out year 2.

Interesting

My husband suggested I give this batch of stories a listen-to even though he hasn’t listened to them, but is friends with the author. Here we go…

Right off, after reading the blurb on Goodreads, I have to comment it needs some work, space-wise. If the blurb needs work, I imagine the story itself also is lacking in that area. With physical or e-books, I’m all about looking for mistakes. Of course, I don’t want to find any, as it’s a bad sign, in my opinion. But I do have fun looking for them. On the other hand, with audiobooks, I have no clue if there are any issues unless the narrator says something questionable. So with the issues I can see, points (or stars) are taken away, whereas, no points are typically taken away in this (audiobook) case.

Overall, I found this series very interesting. I liked the variety of characters we’re introduced to, especially those types of supernatural ones that I’d never heard of, like Gavin and his “Stone Born” title. When the second bad guy group was introduced, I was worried that it was going to get confusing, but it wasn’t. They had different goals which allowed me to easily keep them separated.

My only issue, story-wise, with this batch of stories is the “romance” part or lack thereof. I get not everyone is interested in having a romantic aspect included in their stories. So, with that in mind, I wish the author wouldn’t have included what little he did regarding the growing romantic relationship between Gavin and Heather. Couldn’t they have stayed as friends? Since they were “supposedly” dating, and living together, later on, it just didn’t work for me. Just because a couple of characters are in a romantic relationship doesn’t mean the story has to be focused on it. But the fact whenever they’re… I’m not sure how to describe what I’m trying to say but essentially their interactions (other than those of friends) involved kisses on the cheek, a shoulder bump, and… that’s pretty much it. I felt like their budding relationship was strong in book 1, fizzled out completely in book 2 (as Gavin was in NM and didn’t bother to check in with Heather or anything), then suddenly in book 3, they’re living together. It didn’t work for me. Had I been a beta reader, I would have suggested ditching the romantic aspect between those two characters and just keeping them as friends. Simple.

The narrator for book 1 and 2 was interesting to me. His regular speaking voice had me automatically thinking of Patrick Bateman (American Psycho). Was it just me? Or the twenty-five-year-old pilot that takes Gavin… somewhere… sounded like Bill Clinton. Or even the Cajun, fat man that tried to kill Gavin outside of his uncle’s house had me thinking of Elvis or at least someone with a country accent (not Cajun). I’d listen to him again though. He did a good job with the character voices, so it was easy to tell them apart.

When I got to book 3 and found out there was a different narrator, I just about had a heart attack. Why would whoever was in charge of acquiring a narrator go with a different person, especially when the stories were combined into one audiobook? That’s pure craziness, in my opinion. BUT! I give points to this narrator because I think he did a pretty good job. I don’t if he actually went back to get in an idea of how Narrator 1 did the character voices and therefore went that route (or tried to copy him) so it wasn’t too different for the listener, but that’s what I think he did because he was pretty on-point there.

Narrator 1 had a thing with the word “glowering.” He’d say (or at least that’s how it sounded) as “gowl-ring,” two syllables. That was just an example of the randon things that will stand out to me. I also felt some of the pauses between chapters (one chapter ends, pause, next chapter begins) were too long. There were several times when I thought the story had ended because of how long the pause was. I didn’t notice that issue with Narrator 2.

Questions/Comments:

Near the beginning, Gavin gets up and is ready to “wind down his evening activities and start the day…” at 2:45 am. Wouldn’t you usually go to sleep after winding down from your evening activities, not automatically start the next day? Anyways, he showers and goes into the kitchen fifteen minutes later, so it’s 3 o’clock. He makes breakfast and Andrew comes in. They eat and talk for a bit, then Andrew tells Gavin that they need to get ready for the funeral, and suddenly it’s after 8 ‘o clock. Did it take them that long to eat and get dressed? I pretty sure there was an issue with the timeline there.

There’s also the part when Andrew tells Gavin about his “special” clothing that he has made and says he’ll get some clothes for Gavin made as well. He tells Gavin that by the end of the week, he’ll have a new outfit. Yet, when Gavin thanks him, he says something along the lines of how he’s going to have a new wardrobe by the end of the week.

I believe it is in book 2, near the beginning when the reader/listener is informed that Gavin is getting harassed by the police captain and how he’s gone to Gavin’s place three times in the last three weeks (something like that). Why would Gavin have allowed that to happen in the first place, especially if the cops were destroying his house? Why would the neighbors have been calling the police in the first place thinking he was a criminal?

There were a lot of characters at different times “chewing on” their lip(s). Had this story been in e-book format, I would have looked to see just how many times. I felt that action was overused.

Really good urban fiction

Lange writes an action-adventure junkie's pure shot that will either take you to higher places or kill you with awesomeness.

The characters are gritty and realistic, at least within the context of the story, and the twists and turns of the story are everything a mystery loving urban mystery fan could ever want. The book includes over the top choreographed fight scenes that have a generous sprinkling of the mystic and magical.

The narrators do a great job narrating the story giving the characters plenty of character while adding lots of context to the reading causing the action scenes to be more actiony and the suspense scenes to be more suspenseful.

All in all it's a great series that deserves your token.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Loved the story but disappointed with final book

I enjoyed every moment of the first 2 books but then they changed the narrator for the 3rd but and it made it so I couldnt listen to the last one