Those Who Walk in Darkness

This story needs brutal editing, it sounds like it was written on deadline and fueled by caffiene. A good editor would hack out huge chunks of redundant, mind numbing stuff. I found my mind wandering as the story went down the same roads over and over again. Some of the interesting plot lines were thrown away too quickly. Interesting characters and events in the story were abandoned, in favor or more useless atmosphere and scene setting.

Ms. Floyd's dramatic reading is the principle saving grace of the book. Her acting ability brought some depth to characters, that would have otherwise been flat. She gave a professional performance to material that really did not deserve her talent.

Too much focus was given to the wrong characters, we should have spent more time with the "bad guys" who were all much more interesting than the protagonist, Soledad. Too much meaningless atmosphere. Too much repetition in the narration -- like Mr. Ridley thought we would forget the motivations of his characters if we didn't hear them repeated often enough.

Trim it down, then sell it as a graphic novel or a TV movie script. It doesn't work in this medium.

I finished the book and just now found the audiobook for it.
This is a good book for people who grew up reading X-Men. It is a good source book for those who play role-playing games like d20 Modern. The twists in the story are good, though perhaps expected. It doesn't go into details about the biology of the mutants. But it does go deep into the relationship of police officers and how their work affects their life. I look forward to the sequel.

What a waste of time! Xenophobic, fearful, and a general horror. The plot is a twist on the old X-Men "fear of mutants" conceit, from the POV of an unbelievable mutant hunter. Mutants have been banished to Europe and anywhere else "not USA" because of an 'uprising' which makes them sound like an unruly underclass, not supermen. Those mutatns who remain are hunted and killed. This premise is simply given without any effort to make it plausible. There is little character building. The plot is carried almost exclusively by action, or by the voice of a narrator. Dialogue is faux 'street tough' and laughable in it's efforts to be current, as if it it was lifted from MTV interviews with Snoop Doggy Dog. An additional treat is that the narration of this audiobook is atrocious. The reader has one 'voice' and that one is not conducive to reading dialogue, which this book relies on heavily. The publisher calls this dialogue 'gritty' but I would call it 'illiterate' or 'dim' or just bad. I did not like the three hours I endured.

This is a well-written novel, which manages to achieve the very difficult--make us root for an unlikeable, broken character.
The narrator, Patricia Floyd, is also very good. However, whomever mixed and edited this audiobook (I'm assuming it wasn't Ms. Floyd, as I doubt anyone who obviously puts so much effort into her narration would do such a sloppy job on her edits) did a horrible job. Quite literally the worst editing in an audiobook as I'd ever like to hear. You'll catch every mouth noise and stomach gurgle.

Very good idea, interesting story, but the ending leaves you hating the protagonist. This book could have had great potential for a positive ending, but ends up being racist (towards the super-powered) and lets the protagonist not work through her issues and become a more scarred, hating victim. Sad.

This was narrated like a poor 'I'M GONNA GET YOU SUCKA' immitation. It sounded like an urban authur narrated by an educated lady that tries to sound like a gheto urban reader. I would rather chew on tin foil - save your credits.

I should point out that I haven't listened to this audio book. Maybe the reader is simply atrocious. I did, however, read this book in paperback and enjoyed it quite a bit. The "uprising" another reviewer mentioned wasn't really what happened though that is sort of the impression given early in the book. Later more details are given and the underlying reasons for the animosity toward the mutants comes out - the normals are really ticked at themselves for putting all their faith in the mutants. And when the good guy mutants failed to save the day the normals got ticked. They, IMO, overreacted (and I think that's part of the point the author intended) but once the details are understood, the results make more sense.

For anyone who was disappointed with the audio book, I'd recommend picking up the paperback. It still may not be your cup of tea but at least you won't be put off by a poor reader (which, from the sounds of it, this one has).

I agree that the plot is somewhat slim and something of a knock off of X-Men in some ways - but, then, it'd be hard to do anything related to mutants these days and not have it compared to the X-Men in some way.

I downloaded this title hoping for an action story filled with superhero derring do and conflict. Instead I was bored. This book failed my 'listen to 30 minutes or delete rule.' Quite frankly Boring. I'm disappointed I wasted a credit on it. Also the narrator wasn't that hot. Listen to the sample before purchasing.