From Hell

Alex Hunter, Book 8

By: Greig Beck

Narrated by: Sean Mangan

Length: 12 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's Summary

In the thrilling new blockbuster from Greig Beck comes the most horrifying edition to the Arcadian collection as Alex Hunter must journey into the heart of a volcano and confront a hellish adversary more powerful than anything he and his team have ever faced before.

"Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light." (John Milton, Paradise Lost)

Pompeii, present day: archaeologist Maria Monti is working at a new dig site. Like hundreds before her she is investigating the night that Vesuvius erupted, consuming the ancient city with choking ash, scalding steam, and rivers of lava.

But she has just unearthed something that shouldn’t be there, something that makes her question everything she knows about the disappearances of that fateful event.

Several hundred miles away Alex Hunter’s family is holidaying in southern Italy when Mount Etna begins to shake, and ash begins to blanket the countryside. Figures are moving about in the smoke, hideous shapes, snatching people from the streets, and scans indicate they are being taken into the core of the erupting volcano.

Hell is rising, and Alex Hunter must gather a team of his most battle hardened HAWCs to take on an adversary from the very depths of hell. Nothing will stop him from rescuing Aimee and Joshua, not even the devil itself.

©2019 Greig Beck (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

We are a force of nature. We are the dogs of war.

“HELL”
By Greig Beck
“We are a force of nature. We are the dogs of war. We are the killers of killers!”

I read everything I can find written by Greig Beck. I’m a fan.

Greig Beck’s a rare animal. He’s nearly extinct. Each time I search for a writer like him I’m sure they are all dead and gone. Killed by climate change in the publishing world.
I search for books of the subject matter of my interest, and I find nothing. Fossils of by-gone greats. Edgar Rice Burroughs. Robert E. Howard. H.P. Lovecraft.
Dusty aisles of tomb-like book shelfs with no works by authors worth of the paper they’re inked on.
Then, by accident, I catch a single review.
I hunt down a name.
Usually it’s all reviews by children who are easily impressed by sparkly vampires or rotted zombies.
Finally, sometimes, I find the very rare of rarest animals.
The most elusive creature wandering the literary world; an action / horror writer, with a brain.

“We are a force of nature. We are the dogs of war. We are the killers of killers!”

The number one best thing about Greig Beck is his stories are written smartly. Greig’s books are not “dumbed-down” for idiot readers. He doesn’t pander to the lowest base crude gross pulp reader. He’s not writing to low IQ readers who don’t understand big words, or scientific concepts, or who voted for Trump. Yeah, you know, the dim-bulbs who give action / horror literature a bad name.

Number two; the second best thing about Greig Beck is his ingenious monsters. Greig Beck’s own creative take on classical legends and mythology is fresh, frightening and always unexpected. The only other author I’ve read who’s done this same re-imagining to great effect is H.P. Lovecraft.
( No one can ever say Lovecraft wrote about monsters everyone already knew and understood. )
Half the fun of a Greig Beck horror whomping action novel is discovering The WHO, the WHAT, the HOW, then solving the mystery and finding out if can they or it can even be stopped.

“We are a force of nature. We are the dogs of war. We are the killers of killers!”

Ok. I do have one bone to pick with Greig Beck.
Just one ( 1) in the story.
This one point in the story broke all the rules of reality for me.
It destroyed my suspension of disbelief.
I was stopped stone still in the path of the on going action.
I stood there, unable to think around this one impossible point in the story.
Here it is…
• What mother is so foolish as to think that going on a family vacation with-out bringing along the family dog would do anything but disappoint the son of said family to a point of almost insane-anger-inspired-catatonia?
• It would push any boy into the worst, longest lasting bad mood any prepubescent child could magnificently exhibit by the acting out of a complete and utter lack of all interest in absolutely anything.
• The boy would be so extremely reduced in the skills of parent/child communication that he’d only be able to utter monosyllable grunts as answers to any question.

Many authors don’t know what to do when their heroes are too powerful. This is the problem with many superman comics. How do you challenge an protagonist that powerful? Well, a creative thinker like Greig Beck never runs out of significant foes for his characters. Even as they gain better technological weapons.armor, along with super human powers exhibited by various members of the immediate group, Mr. Beck always turns the heat up one more notch. Seems there are endless evil doers of endless levels of more and more evil powers with no end in sight for Alex and his hawks to go up against.

“We are a force of nature. We are the dogs of war. We are the killers of killers!”

Narrator-Heavy Breather Alert & Mispronounces alot

First this narrator has some major breathing issues. They're so awful I had to keep turning the volume down until it was not as gross.

As for Narrating the story I have to say that the British Narrators have been destroying the pronunciations of words most Americans would agree, just don't sound right.
1. Respiratory (adjective) pronounced as **res-per-uh-tawr-ee**
NOT...
*reees-peeer-uh-tawr-euh**

That's just 1 word of many. I forgot to mark them every time I heard them. Respiratory, was just the most blatant & irritating word, along with his heavy breathing, I almost had to turn the entire book off.
I get so tired of listening to books that the Narrator destroys by pronouncing English words incorrectly. It's like, they have to KNOW they're mispronouncing these words but don't care anymore? Why?

Good story, terrible performance

The story is engaging and fast paced, a quick read/listen with good character development and personalities. I mostly wanted to write this due to the performance of the narrator. Despite the fact that he sounds like he’s speaking with a bag of marbles in his mouth or half drunk, he apparently only pays attention to punctuation only half the time putting emphasis and exclamation where none exists or conversations flow without pause. This is also reflective on whoever is directing this performance. Very amateurish, very poorly produced.

Wow!!

Another awesome book! Thank you Greig Beck for can’t put down book!! On to the next!!

Big fan!

I do enjoy Greigs writing style. His character development makes the reader actually KNOW each character and care for them as if they were family. Keep it up! Now on to the next book.

Another great installment in the Arcadian Series

As usual, an excellent installment in the series. It was good to have Matt Learned back and actually working and fighting with the HAWCs.

I am especially into Alex's son and his abilities. Iaee some great story opportunities.

ONE NOTE I you not read at least a couple on the earlier books, wait to teadf this one.

Perhaps the best yet

I thoroughly enjoyed Beneath the Dark Ice, but this installment in the Alex Hunter series was just as good. With a monster similar to that found in The Siberian Incident, this book had everything I’ve come to love in Beck’s writing and then some.

Cliff hangers abound in this one, and I can’t wait for the next one...

Had to fast forward through a couple of parts.

I used to love Alex Hunter books. This latest offering is just too far fetched and annoying. Give it a miss.

I hope the Arcadian/HAWC series never ends

loads of fun as always. I always look forward to these books. I hope we eventually find out more about the process that created the Arcadian.

Awesome!

As usual, an ass kicking work of art; can't wait for the sequel to arrive!

Greig Beck does it again!!

As with all of Greig Beck's books I thoroughly enjoyed From Hell. The Alex Hunter books are non stop action from start to finish, so well written & Sean Mangan's narration skills have you completely absorbed into the characters & plot. Greig gives us the perfect mix of fact & glorious fiction & I can't wait for the next instalment from Cpt. Alex Hunter

More please

Good storyline, with a nice progression in the story arc. Not as much action this time but the story carried it well.

Another win for Beck and Alex Hunter

I've read all the Alex Hunter books, some of them multiple times and this is up there with the best of them I love the characters Greig Beck has created in this series and Alex Hunter is one of the best heroes in fiction now for me. Growing up I fell in love with the movies Aliens and The Thing and Grieg Beck has blissfully created a series of books that takes me back there. Creative monsters, a world of incredible caves and oceans teaming with deadly life and a protagonist with exceptional powers and skills in a constant battle with his dark inner self. I cant wait for the next one.
The narration of these books and performance by Sean Mangan is outstanding too. I've listened to countless audiobooks and Sean is the perfect performer to bring these books to life. Grieg Beck and Sean Mangan, a perfect symbiosis.