Hoods: The Beginning

By: David Wilson

Narrated by: Christopher James Mayer

Length: 4 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's Summary

San Valencez is a city with many levels. Near the barrio, on the south side of town, gangs rule the streets, and those that don’t find a way out tend to be sucked into the shadows and consumed. Not far away, near the border between the bad side of town and civilization, there are those standing up to the shadows. They aren’t superheroes, exactly, but they aren’t regular kids either. They have abilities, intelligence, strength, skill - and a desire to see their city become a better place. 

Four teenagers, Weaver, Cami, Shooter, and Combo, come together with a mutual desire to make things better, to help those who need it and punish those who deserve it. When Shooter’s old friend Mikey approaches them, concerned over his brother Dale’s connections with a gang called Los Escorpiones, they organize and become something stronger than their separate parts. The city is in danger from a threat it doesn’t even know exists. All that stands in the way of disaster is a group of “Hoods.”

©2020 David N. Wilson (P)2019 David N. Wilson

Awesome short adventure

HOODS: THE BEGINNING is a novella that is setting up what I hope to be a series about a group of Runaways-esque (the comic not the band) superheroes in the city of San Valencez. This is, for those fans of David Niall Wilson's other works, the setting for his Dechance Chronicles books. It is a San Fransisco-esque location with hidden communities of vampires, gangs, wizards, and now apparently mutants.

I really enjoyed this book as it introduced a quartet of interesting teenage heroes struggling to live their lives despite life being pretty hard. As they discover their superpowers, they all decide they want to be superheroes but it turns out that is a lot harder than it appears. Good lawyers immediately get their attempts to find evidence on criminals thrown out and their own identities are nearly compromised.

This is a very short but solid and entertaining book. I definitely think fans of superhero novels should check this one out. It was fun from beginning to end and I hope that it is just the start of an entire series. The narration is top notch as well.

9/10

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Lots of Potential

San Valencez has a problem. Gangs are overrunning the city and the cops are too corrupt to do anything about it. It’s not even safe for high school kids to get to and from school because every street seems to be the territory of one gang or another. Which sets up the action of the story…

Hoods is about four students with very low-level super powers who decide to band together and try and do something about the gangs. It’s a cute story—not particularly deep but with lots of fun action. Watching the superpowers get put to use is always enjoyable, although I wish there had been a little more time spent on character development. All in all, this is a simple origin story with the clear promise of more adventures to come.

As superhero stories go, I think Hoods ranks in the middle of the pack but has the potential to rank much higher with the next adventure. There’s just enough realism to ground the story in our world—no four color super heroic adventuring here. In fact, the four teens struck me more as low level batmen setting up their network to watch over their neighbors so they can sweep in to protect them. I couldn’t help but cheer for them so I’ll be keeping my eye out for volume two.

I got this book free from Audiobookcodes.com in exchange for an honest review.

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