Broken Nights

By: Matthew Davenport, Michael Davenport

Narrated by: Carson Beck

Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

In the wake of their mother's death, Jason and Amy Night tried to get on with their lives. While Amy buried herself in her work and taking care of their ailing father, Jason took another path. He donned a mask and became the protector of Darden Valley. He became The Guardian. When Darden Valley comes under attack from more than just crooks and thugs, the siblings will have to lean on each other to protect their family and defend their city. Does the Darden Valley Guardian have what it takes to protect his city while his family is under attack?

©2016 Matthew Davenport and Michael Davenport (P)2016 Matthew Davenport and Michael Davenport

Doesn't have Oliver Queen's swagger.

I received a free copy of the audiobook from the author in exchange for an honest review.

I like the narrator. He uses enthusiasm and different character voices. However, the production needed a little better editing. In ch 8 the narrator makes mistakes and repeats himself, and he does the same thing a few more times throughout the book. I'd give him a 4/5 for his performance and 3/5 because of the editing.

Based on audible categorizing the novel as sci-fi, I was under the impression the protagonist had super powers. For anyone wondering the same thing, I'll go ahead and tell you he's just a normal person. The sci-fi portion revolves around the villain which we'll learn around half way through.

The protagonist is a discount batman, wearing amazon-purchased costumes and fighting crime with his mixed martial arts skills. If he was rescuing people from muggings and beatings, I'd like him more. However, all we see is him beating up people who robbed pawn shops and other stores without any violence. In return for his trouble, he gets shot. I think changing the intro scene to use criminals in the act of a violent crime would have been better.

Cut to his bruce wayne counterpart. Jason owns a hobby store and is approached by the attractive Stella Bernard who offers to purchase his property for double the market value. Because the store holds sentimental value, Jason declines the offer politely. That's when all hell breaks loose and the story takes a turn. One of the other reviews compared the story to the tv series Arrow which I think is a good comparison. It's a mixture of silly fist-fighting against criminals with guns while the fate of the world rests on a masked vigilante and his scooby gang. Where are the police, you ask? Probably having a coffee break. In the first and last chapters, the author switches between the present and the past multiple times, which I felt was really unnecessary and interrupted the action. There were a few things I didn't like in the plot. For one thing, why did Stella take such a special interest in Jason? Going through a "date" and threatening his family, weighing his value over the value of his sister. For that matter, why did Stella really need to buy up the town for her purposes? Plenty of alternatives which would have been much, much easier.

SPOILER:

For anyone who really wants to know the sci fi portion part of the tale, keep reading.








Stella has technology where people can download into machines and control other machines.

Wow

Loved it. The reader was fantastic and the story kept pulling me in. Awesome book

Very imaginative story

What made the experience of listening to Broken Nights the most enjoyable?

I enjoyed listening to this book. The characters are well developed in the story

Which character – as performed by Carson Beck – was your favorite?

He Did a great job on all

Any additional comments?

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

An adrenaline filled Superhero story

The story was filled everything I wanted, great story, twists and relatable characters. The journey was one I greatly enjoyed including the group dynamic of the main characters.

Great street level hero story!

Imagine that after the death of his parents, Bruce Wayne decided to become a masked vigilante. Not hard to imagine, obviously. Now imagine if Bruce Wayne wasn't rich, wasn't a child, didn't have unlimited resources, as well as years with which to train before he started fighting crime. That's the premise of this story, where an ordinary young man named Jason Night decides to start fighting crime after a personal tragedy.

When his mother is murdered in the family hobby shop in front of his eyes by a man who randomly killed her decides he wants fight crime. He takes MMA lessons, learns Parkour, and build himself a suit with off the rack components, consisting of a cowled mask, bullet proof vest, padded gauntlets, with kevlar sleeves, with tonfas for weapons. Stuff a guy who owns a hobby shop can afford. He then starts fighting crime in the local neighborhood, stopping break ins, stuff like that. When he runs across a break in at the local Chinese restaurant, with a group of guys just busting the place up, he stumbles across a conspiracy that he is ill equipped to handle, since these guys travel in packs, and are armed with guns. That bullet proof vest comes in handy, although getting shot still hurts a lot! This group is on orders, and Jason needs to find out who's behind the break ins that are terrorizing his neighborhood.

Jason also has to deal with problems in his real life. His father has Alzheimer's Disease, and Jason and his sister Amy have to care for him as he deteriorates further. Amy has dealt with the tragedies by diving into work at the tech company she works at, and has no idea Jason is moonlighting as the vigilante the news dubs The Darden City Guardian. As the pressure from these break in continues, and the danger increases each run in, Jason has to decide if he can continue. The fact a villain has discovered who he is and where his family is increases his doubt that he can continue as the Guardian, since it is endangering his family and friends.

What follows is a hard fought battle for Darden City itself, as the true power behind all the disturbances makes itself know in a quest to further their plans to take over the city. This includes an army of supervillains that Jason and his friends need to face in order to stop the insanity gripping Darden City, and someone will make the ultimate sacrifice to help stop the insanity, all leading to a pulse pounding, action packed ending you wont want to miss!

This is an interesting book, since while it is about a superhero vigilante, its also about family struggles, friendships and sacrifice. The characters are well thought out and come across as real people, with real problems and successes. They are people you can really get behind. The villain actually comes across as realistic, even in this setting. The master plot actually gets you sucked into the story, and is actually pretty original. The training flashbacks are really good, with his sister making fun of him for getting beat up in MMA classes, and his broken arm from his parkour accidents is handled a funny way as well. It is a very humanizing touch. The world building is well drawn out, giving you a first hand look into Darden City. You get a feeling of fighting crime on the streets. All told excellently done.

The narration duties are handled ably by Carson Beck.He brings a real warmth and is believable as the various characters. He really has a good pace, and his narrative voice is smooth and well paced. excellent work.

Any fans of comics should really enjoy this story, as should fans of writers like Drew Hayes, CT Phipps and Jim Bernheimer. I can't recommend it highly enough, and can't wait to see where book 2 goes!

Good story, atrocious audio editing!

While the story of this was good and the some of the ideas were really unique, I think it was the quality of the recording that let this down in a big way!! The narrator himself was OK, his male voices were varied but his female voices left a little bit to be desired. I found it hard to follow who was talking at any given time. For the narrator I'd give maybe 3 stars to but the quality of the audio would be 0!! I was left wondering did anyone listen to the full recording before putting it out there!! The narrator stumbled and repeated himself multiple times throughout. There were times when I thought I might have hit playback but I knew I couldn't have done it so many times. He also paused for what felt like minutes at a time during scenes. I found there was also some background noises sometimes, I think I even heard a dog once but I definitely heard music at one stage! It felt like he was recording it in an empty chamber at times too. Very kind of..... staticy and echoey. I went to put it aside plenty of times but continued on anyway.

Now onto the story itself. There was plenty to like about the book. I realy liked Jason! He is just a normal geeky boy doing a kind of "Batman" thing! He runs a comic book store during the day and becomes something else at night after his mother was killed. He buys his protective gear from Amazon and uses his mixed martial art to help him. It's not till he is seriously injured that he decides to include his sister in his scheme. With her on board, he is able to use her expertise to upgrade his equipment.

Initially, from the cover, I thought Zombies with a superhero with super powers, but it's not, which I quite liked. I liked the technology in the book, I liked that the females in the book were all capable and fairly kick ass. I didn't really like that we have a good few unanswered questions which left the story with an unfinished feel to it. I didn't particularly like that Jason went fighting burglars instead of actually going out and fighting real evil! The police could have handled the burglars but there was never any mention of them. The few times we see the masked vigilantly, he just seems to be going after the easy options. That's just me though, I always expect my superhero books to be super and action packed!!

Anyway, this has potential. I think it could become a brilliant superhero series because the bones of the story is great, it just needs a little more something.... It also needs to be heavily edited for the audio. It's a shame to not fix the bugs!!

*I received a copy of this from the author for review. This does not affect my thoughts.*

loved this!

average Joe turned modern day hero! do yourself a favor and give this book a read, you'll be glad you did! I won't be surprised when this is turned into a movie or is picked up by DC and/or marvel comics.

Batman on a budget!

Any additional comments?

The concept for this book was great! It is a vigilante adventure in the vein of the Punisher or Batman. We have a regular person, some martial arts training, and gadgets against the bad guys. As is expected, he’s got a chip on his shoulder for criminals.

I wanted to be Jason Night when I was 23! I watched a couple parkour video and practiced jumping from stuff and somersaulting. I took all sorts of martial arts classes. I even have a tie just like Jason’s only tie in my closet right now! It too, was from a wedding a few years ago.

I received a free audible code in exchange for a voluntary review. I get freebies often and don’t review them all. I do give them all a try, but if I can’t finish the book, I don’t leave a review. Sometimes the writing is poor, other times the tone is pessimistic. Because of this most my ratings are four or five stars. I finished this book, thought it was a fun adventure, and would even listen to a sequel, but two recurring elements forced me to think this book earned only three stars.

First, for a comic style adventure, I found the pace of storytelling slow. By that I do not mean a fight scene to story building scene ratio. I mean that the frequent use of passive voice pulled me out of the happy pretend land between my ears to figure out the Subject Verb Object sequence of the statement. Another pace problem was restatement. The story goes here, then confirms that it went there. As if I didn’t understand what was just stated. The prose also had tons of unnecessary that made sentences over long. Changing points of view within one scene also distracted me and if found most of the POVs were unnecessary. If Jason night observed Amy’s expression and implied what she was thinking, we would not have popped out of and back into Jason’s head to learn that Amy was worried. Word choice also jarred me. The word tire was used four times in one paragraph. It happened again and again. At one point some bad guys were described as horses because they were pulling something, but the word horses recurred so often in the scene that I wondered if Jason was fighting animals. Don’t worry PETA, they were people.

I removed the second star because I feel there was a lack of research. Neurons are one example. A character describes “natural paths in the brain” instead of saying neurons. If neurons were better understood then a concept like have the knowledge of martial arts means automatically being a great martial artist would never have made it to print. It takes very little time to understand a martial art move, but constant practice to make the move work well. The reason for this is because neural networks grow each time they are accessed. They also shrink if not used often. That is why practice makes perfect. Some of the fight scenes gave me the impression that Jason did not have the training he claimed to have. Specifically “mma on the ground” or grappling and Jui Jitsu. One scene has him scissor sweep his opponent, stand up, position himself, and return to the ground to attack. A grappler would not return to his feet and get back down again. Instead he would use his chest to press the opponent flat to the ground and spin like a pin wheel. It’s a warm up drill in the mma classes Jason would have taken. It would be drilled into his instinct.

If either of the issues happened only a time or two, I would not have noticed, but they happened all throughout. Normally I would have stopped listening, but like I said at the top, I really did enjoy the book! Thorough editing could make this book a Best Seller. These are all just one person’s opinions. If you don’t fuss over writing style and martial arts, I’m sure you’ll think I’m being crazy. You’re welcome to that opinion, like I’m welcome to mine.

I think the authors brought a unique twist to the genre by going to great lengths to describe how every day attainable items that you or I could buy or already have, made up Jason Night’s arsenal. The phone app was my favorite.

Very imaginative story

I enjoyed listening to this book. The characters are well developed in the story. The story has very imaginative technology that is believable. The hero, his team, and the rest of the characters were well acted by the narrator. The ending was creative and the book overall was entertaining.

Pretty awesome and very enjoyable

This audio book was a very fun and entertaining to listen to. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it. The details were written very vividly which made it easy to submerse myself in the book.One I started I couldn't stop listening thats how much I enjoyed this book. The narrator also did an awesome job on the book as well. I am looking forward to another book in this series if there is one!

I received the audio book version free in exchange for an unbiased review.