Devel Django

A Dark Wave Journey

By: D.S. Quinton

Narrated by: Jonathan Johns

A search for answers. A horrifying infection. Enlightenment...or madness?

A rogue meteor storm brings a forgotten virus that decades ago left several people dying with "itchy voices in their heads." Brad and Cora are caught in the storm. One of them becomes infected.

Tracking the rogue storm is General Keller, a man warped from anguish over his own son's horrific fate, who will stop at nothing to discover what really happened.

As a breakthrough AI analyzes the infection, a startling discovery is made, proof of our origins - and evolution - lie within the infected.

As General Keller deploys all his resources to recover a sample - of storm debris, or anyone infected - Brad and Cora are thrust into his disturbed world and a deadly chase ensues.

Will the discovery be lost forever? Will they survive?...or will the general capture them alive?

Devel Django, a near-future thriller, whispers at the fundamental question of humankind - Where did we come from? - and gropes at the undefined space between science and religion. It is a unique tapestry woven with coarse threads of horror, hybrid metal synapses, and detailed with a fine, ancient brush from a long-lost palate of knowledge.

Combining elements of Phillip K. Dick, Stephen King, and Matthew Mather, Devel Django is a thinking person's thriller.

©2018 Duane Schafer (P)2019 Duane Schafer

Devel Django

This was a good story,once I figured it out.I was confused,backed it up a few times.I am not sure I got the whole story.Jonathan Johns was a very good narrator.I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.'

automated narrator

I chose this title because I absolutely adored the narrator of the Spirit Hunter series by this author. However, this narrator brought me to tears. I honestly could not finish this book. It sounded almost like it was a computer voice reading it. And maybe that was the point? But it didn’t work for me. Waste of a credit.

Unique and occasionally compelling...

I am somewhat ambivalent on this offering. Solid performance by JJohns and he does have some interesting material to work with. The story meandered a lot at times, and it clearly is setting up a series, which is fun but also left the story hanging.

I can recommend this with some reservations. I did receive this book for free from the author in exchange for this independent review.

I'm not sure what this was supposed to be

This book started off like a toddler taking it's first steps: a bit wobbly, but you were sure there would be success ahead -- that was my hope anyway as there were some interesting concepts at play. Sadly, this toddler fell flat on its butt, leaned to the side and rolled over a few times.

Pretty soon the book goes off course. Are we talking about advanced AI? An ancient tribe? An alien life form? An evil government conspiracy? A savior? I guess all of the above, but nothing ever really became the focus. We'd start down a path and then the author would take us off in another direction, seemingly forgetting the groundwork laid.

The most tiring was the whole hunting of our crew int he woods that seemed to be dropped right into the middle of the book. Was all of that really necessary to the overall plot? Not that there really was one, as by the end you wondered what it all was about anyway. Sigh.

The author introduced a good chunk of characters in this book and attempts to flesh them out with backstories. Since, like the main plot, most of that was pointless, it just became another distraction. How many times did we need to suddenly flashback into the past with one of our protagonists hiding in a culvert? Did we really need the nipple-tweaking oddball of a black web techno-geek? There's just so much that equals up to... nothing.

The narrator had a pleasant-enough voice, but he didn't really seem to get the characters or situations he was reading. Internal dialogue (of which there was a LOT) was often read in a hushed shout sort of exasperated tone. It often betrayed the words it was conveying. External dialogue wasn't much better. The general was one of the most jarring IMO.

In the end, I felt like I heard a small piece of a larger work, and I suppose that may be the case considering the subtitle "A dark wave journey", but sadly, I have no desire to continue on this journey.

This audiobook was provided to me free of charge. I voluntarily left this review. I regret that it could not be more positive.

Not sure where the journey is heading

I agree with many of the points that other reviewers have made. The plot seemed to take me in a particular direction but then it shot off into a different direction that I didn't enjoy quite as much. I don't want to get into spoiler territory here, but I think I would have liked a more straightforward plot, along the lines of an army cover-up of an alien biological agent/virus. And indeed, this may be where the next installment in the series ultimately goes, but as we got towards the end of this first book, I was becoming more and more perplexed about what the book is actually about.

The thing with multi-book series is that the author doesn't have to (nor should he/she) give us all of the answers in the first book of the series. Perhaps (hopefully!) the next book will provide more enlightenment. . That would be my biggest complaint about this book - I thought I was following (understanding) the plot, but then something would happen that would confuse me. The pacing and character development was fine, the writing style was fine, and I thought the narration was satisfactory as well. It's just the plot itself that left me scratching my head.

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