Ashburn: An Urban Fantasy Novel

Ashes Still Burn, Book 1

By: M.W. Layne

Narrated by: Rhys David

Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

Last night, David Steele was an aging one-hit-wonder facing certain death. After he makes a deal with a powerful demon that answers his desperate call, he wakes up the next morning, alive and healthy in the Ashburn suburbs, but in someone else’s body.

His new identity comes with some nice perks at least - a smoking hot girlfriend, a big McMansion to call home, his own used bookstore, and a guitar made by a god.

Plus, well, he's also not dead.

The bad news is that his new body used to belong to a demon no one likes, his girlfriend’s a succubus with a taste for human hearts, and his dog’s a hound from Hell.

All David wants to do is rock and roll, but his new life carries a heavy price tag. He has to serve the next 10 years as Ashburn's supernatural enforcer - a prospect made all the more terrifying by the fact that a few hours into his new gig, people start dying...

©2019 M.W. Layne (P)2023 M.W. Layne

Ashburn!

So I live near here and found this even more entertaining since they were talking about roads and neighborhoods I am familier with. The storyline was entertaining and the characters were fascinating. There was the dark humor one would expect of the genre. The narrator did a great job too. Clear, concise and no weird tics or unpleasant tones.

Wonderfully entertaining with a great cast of characters.

This is a very entertaining story without any lulls and the narrator does an excellent job of bringing the characters to life (or death in some cases). Can't wait to hear the next in the series.

Other-worldly

Witty and ironic… making it hard to stop listening. This is storytelling done well, and a perfect explanation how suburbia, and the “people” who inhabit it, often seem so unnatural.

I always wondered if Hell was in Suburbia

Have you ever started listening to/reading a book and thought, "Hey, I feel like I've been there"? Well, I was initially drawn to this book because the title caught my attention. It turns out that I actually lived in Ashburn for almost a decade! It's an actual suburb, outside of Washington DC. Other than the author changing the names of some of the businesses (to protect the innocent, I figure), his descriptions of the area felt eerily familiar! More than once, while trying to find a back way to one of the main roads to work, I found myself lost in some random neighborhood (that looked like every other random neighborhood in Ashburn) and wondered how I ended up in this specially-designed suburb of Hell. Whenever a group of oddly similar angelic/demonic soccer moms jogged by, feet barely skimming the pavement in perfect unison, I might find myself wondering if they were possessed by spirits that kept the pace for them. If you're a fan of intellectual properties like Supernatural, The Dresden Files, or Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, I think you'll really enjoy this book--it's horror with humor that cuts the jugular. Also, a word about the narrator. I was not previously familiar with his work, and I thoroughly enjoyed his performance. His reading of the various characters was really consistent, and his comic timing was excellent!