Children of the Deterrent

Halfhero, Book 1

By: Ian W. Sainsbury

Narrated by: Sam Phillips, Jaimi Barbakoff

Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's summary

The new novel by the author of the best-selling The World Walker series.

'My name is Daniel Harbin, and I'm a child of The Deterrent.'

What if a superhuman turned out not to be so super...or even human? Britain's superhero, The Deterrent, was unveiled to the world in 1979 and disappeared two years later. The truth about his origins has never been revealed. The rumours about his children - those that survived - and their mysterious abilities have never been confirmed. Until now.

Armed with a diary that reveals everything about The Deterrent's early years, Daniel Harbin - discovering powers of his own - finds himself dragged into the same secretive government department his famous father worked for. Can a halfhero be a better superhero than his father, or is Daniel making a terrible mistake? When the wrong people know what you're capable of, no matter how powerful you are, you're still in danger....

©2017 Ian Sainsbury (P)2018 Audible, Ltd

Critic reviews

"I've read it now, Children of the Deterrent that is and um...it's good. It's really good. Oh my days it's good.... From the opening page, I was seriously gripped. In fact, for the first time in years, I put my own work aside and pushed my deadlines back a bit to make time to read it. I even did that reader thing of going to bed early, just so I could get stuck back into it." (R R Haywood)

Awesome!

No sense in being lengthy here. This book is awesome. Period! absolutely fantastic sci-fi read!

Exceptional On All Levels

Sainsbury brings together an utterly unique story premise in a genre that I was certain no longer had the ability to surprise, captivate or satisfy. I devoured this audio book and for someone who listens to A LOT of audiobooks, that's saying something. Again ... unique, captivating, brilliantly narrated and deeply satisfying. On to Book 2!

Brilliant

So, how do I explain how much I enjoyed this story. I usually don't like it when they use multiple narrators to read a book, but the performances in this one were exceptional, and it really helps with all the time shifts from past to present. That can be difficult to follow sometimes without the book in front of you.
The story is very cleverly written, and exciting as it unfolds. I am going to be jumping right into the next one in the series.
Enjoy.

Really enjoyed

While it took me a few chapters to get into the book, and understand the rhythm of how it was written - once I did I couldn't stop listening:)
I liked the character (Chris, I think) who was reading us her diary of the events. She was a down to earth, funny character.
Definitely would recommend this book!

Good start of the series

The events are oddly arranged and that's the beauty of the book. The style is great and the narration is superb. Overall the author has written a great story, which develops a bit slow (sometimes you will hear information which is completely useless, like what kind of food is on the table), but the way the author describes stuff is very intoxicating. My only recommendation would be to speed up the story with about x1.5.

I'll definitely listen to the next books in the series. I've become keen on Sainsbury's style. It is truly different from most authors.

One comment on the narrators - while British narrators bring great feeling when listening, they also bring a bit odd pronunciation of some words and I was not able to catch some words now and there.

Overall - recommended!

A pretty gripping take on the SuperHero genre

I grew up a comic book fan. But I've grown pretty tired of this genre in the last 18 or so years as we've become increasingly inundated with superheroes on television, the movies and everywhere else. But I decided to give this a go based on my enjoyment of Sainsbury's World Walker series. I was very pleasantly surprised. Once again Mr. Sainsbury has taken a premise that you feel like you seen before and explores it in a novel and often surprising manner, creating mostly likable characters along the way.

I started this story on my kindle and then switched back and forth between "print" and audiobook. Something about the narration felt a little "off", but I couldn't really put my finger on it. So it could just be the difference between the voice you create in your head while reading the book and the voice of the narrators for the audiobook. I thought both of them did a good job. I just thought Sam Phillips could have brought a bit more "passion" to Daniel's passages. But this is a very minor quibble. I highly recommend this audiobook.

Good story and good narration...

Wonderful story. Looking forward to listening to the next book in this series. Keep up the excellent work Mr. Sainsbury.

Looking foward book 2

I became a fan of Sainsbury after reading the World Walker series. I enjoy his style of writing and am looking foward to book 2 in Children of the Deterrent. The narrators were excellent.

Enjoyable!

Rolled the dice on this one and am glad I did. I even put down the four other books I've been reading at the same time. To solely focus on this. I found this very entertaining, interesting, and original.

Everything Backstory Until Last Few Chapters

The concept was interesting but the actual book played out like a retelling of past events rather than have any feel of currency to it. The MC A-Boss was spoken of in third-person narrative until very late in the final chapters which, while providing most of the details of the person, portrayed him as some comic book super person, leaving very little connection between him and the listener. This was instilled even more so since the author portrayed him as man-child like. Most disappointingly was that there was no attempt to provide any rational nor irrational understanding of how he acquired his fantastical abilities nor an origin explanation.

Similarly, the only female that had a personal connection to the MC was mostly portrayed through her accounting of events from her personal diary and even there she was essentially an unimportant person to the MC's outcome other than establishing some vague personal connection to him during his formulative years.

The secondary characters were progeny from A-Boss and due to his unique DNA were able to acquire similar and some very different meta-human characteristics. However, even there much was left unexplained such as how an extremely corpulent adolescent off-spring could transform into a ripped teenager soon after reaching puberty. other than because ... A-Boss genes.

In all, there was a lack of any real connection between any of the characters portrayed and the listener.