Dire: Born

The Dire Saga, Book 1

By: Andrew Seiple

Narrated by: Amy McFadden

Length: 13 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

No memory, no resources, no secret lair, and no time to find her feet: this is the story of a self-made villain, and her fall into strife. Fleeing from unknown enemies and an early death, she emerges into a city gone dark in the aftermath of a complete systems failure. Hounded by heroes, menaced by gangs, and helped by the most unlikely of allies, she claws her way up from weakness to strength and works to build a better future for those who deserve it.

To survive, she'll need strength to stand toe-to-toe against secretly supernatural foes, compassion to work with the dregs and outcasts of a broken society, and cunning to outwit intelligence beyond human kind.

The challenge is great…but she is Dire.

And Icon City will never be the same again.

©2015 Andrew Seiple (P)2018 Podium Publishing

Fun but still coming into its own i think...

I enjoyed Dire and like the whole set up for the story. A villain named Dire gets in over her head, gives herself a clean memeory wipe, which is where we come in. She now has to figure out (with what little scraps of societal knowlege she has) what she wants to do with her life and where she fits in the world. Great so far 👌 . So she finds herself a lil group of hobos that she decides to take under her wing and fight off the evil gangs threatening their peace. I really liked how Dire isnt afraid to get her hands dirty and do what needs to be done. Its always super annoying when characters in books act like killing cannot and will not defile their clean conscience, meanwhile after they let them live they escape and blow up an entire school full of children and its like "well that couldve been avoided if youd have just killed him in chapter 5..".. So that is very much appreciated.
Sounds like a winner all the way around, and like i said it WAS enjoyable BUT heres some of the issues i had with it. First off we didnt really get to explore much of the world beyond the little camp Dire claimed and a few excursions out to gather supplys so we kina feel in the dark as to the world at large. This could be due to the fact that Dire is supposed to be in dark on such things, her being mind wiped and all and id get that. There are some explanations regarding how super powers came to be and lil excerpts before each chapter of some rando talking about some such event or another so that gices us some insight but it just felt a little limited IMO. The biggest beef i got with this book is the super heros and how Dire is vilified in the first place. I REEEEALLY hate when books do this kina thing. Make certain groups of people (some of which who are supposed to be "geniuses" btw) blindly and willfully ignore all reason and evidence contrary to what the author wants to happen.... its obvious he wanted to have an Anti hero as his MC but still be loved by the audience and the way he made that happen was pretty much make the heros useless arrogant pigheaded nieve people who hold some useless moral code over actually helping people and saving lives.... some of that could be reasoned away but at the end of the book
**SLIGHT SPOILER AHEAD**
when the supposed super insanely smart doctor quantum is tryna blame Dire for some crap that anyone with half his intelligence should be able to figure out she had nothing to do with... it was just ridiculous and annoying. If you wana read a book about both proper villains AND heros and how theyd be able to interact with each other without making anyone facepalm read the "villains code" books by Drew Hayes. Perfect example of lovable villains that you can root for without having to dumb down the heros.
Ima give the next book a try and see how he progresses the overall story and characters to see if itll be worth continuing.

Another good listen in this series.

An interesting twist on the post-apocalypse narrative. Struggled at times with the narration and characters... but a good listen.

Amazing

I never write reviews, but this book is completely awesome give it a try

Amazing story, but the performance didn’t mesh.

This is one of my favorite books. When I saw it had come to an audiobook. I was really excited. I love how audiobooks breathe life into all the characters in the story. however, I felt like the performer really did not do DIRE well.  they gave the doctor too much emotion too much tone, in the wrong direction, making her weak, tremulous, and uncertain, instead of confident, brash, and powerfully shouty. I don’t normally like too much sound engineering in my books, but this is one particular book, where, properly modulating and synthesizing, Dr. DIRE’s voice would’ve been a long way into making the performance much better. Still one of my favorite stories.

A Kayfabe tale

anti-heroes are my favorite heroes and Dr Dire is a really likable, believable and entertaining one. look forward to seeing what she does next to bring justice to a broken world.

binged entire series

loved this whole series all the way thru
glad I randomly listened to the first part of it.

it's worth it.

enjoy.

Superbly done.

The writing overall, the narration in every way. Purely superb and worth picking up immediately.

great story, highly recommend

fun recast of the super hero genre. lots of action, fun and crestive characters. highly recommend.

Not bad

Overall pretty interesting story but I don’t think I will continue. There were quite a few directions that the author took in this story that I am not a fan of and it will probably only get worse the further along in the books one would go. Those directions would be great for others not so much for me.

loved the character ...

loved the character and the way she Brings them <book> to life ...hahaha a great read and even better listen ^>.<