The Enigma Rising

By: Charles V. Breakfield, Roxanne E. Burkey

Narrated by: Derek Shoales

Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's Summary

When a Brazilian industrialist hires the R-Group, the world's most elite information-gathering unit to track the disappearance of his daughter - a dangerous - but quiet hunt begins. But just finding her doesn't mean all will be well. The team in Switzerland follows the leads from South America to Mexico and the Caribbean, but the data trail is leading nowhere. Sometimes the most important clues come from unlikely sources.

By chance, two members of the elite team vacationing in Mexico cross paths with Carlos and Juan's fly-by-night operation. Cloaking their "moving business" from satellite surveillance, their unique talent for relocating drug lords targeted by the Mexican authorities, along with their cash, gold, artwork and other assets, was legendary. These are Bad Boys, so-called entrepreneurs, whom even the most generous observer would question the legality of their business model.

Can the R-Group assemble the pieces of the puzzle without international consequences? Will the brothers stop running outside the law long enough to do the right thing? Can you hide from your past and still enjoy the present? Is the heiress hiding in plain sight or gone forever? And can the brothers rein in their contempt for societal rules and leave behind the sweet deals long enough to save a life?

The Enigma Rising continues the award-winning Breakfield and Burkey's series, overcoming opportunistic cyber-crime in the high-stakes world of information brokering in the 21st century. With its strong cast of characters, this engaging techno-thriller of lost-and-found - and lost again - will take you on an incredible journey into the dark side of technology.

©2017 ICABOD Press (P)2017 Enigma Series LLC

Thriller but not technothriller

The R-group is hired this time to find the daughter of a powerful man. Petra and Jacob travel to Mexico and there they meet Carlos and Simone, which rapidly becomes Petra’s friend. But Carlos and his brother Juan are mixed in some dangerous stuff.

I really enjoyed the previous book, so I was looking forward to this one. Even though this is the second book in the series, it is not a continuation of the previous book and could be read standalone. If the previous book was very technology centered, the same does not happen with this one, which is something I missed.

We get to know better Jacob and Petra, but even like that they didn’t feel fully fleshed to me. Petra started a sudden friendship with Simone that felt completely artificial to me. The conversations the girls had did not feel natural at all, so I disliked this part.

It was an entertaining thriller, but for me not at the level of the previous book. It felt slowly paced at some points, and the girls’ conversations were definitely skippable.

This book is narrated by a different narrator than the first book. Derek Shoales does a good job with accents and voices, but the book is so loaded with accents that it becomes a bit tiresome after a while. Not Shoales fault, he did very good a differentiating characters and keep things consistent.

I received a copy of this book in audio format from the producer in exchange for an honest review.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

A well conceived combination of plot and players.

This being my first book in The Enigma Series to read, I found the main characters, their talents and dynamic relationships to be superbly established very early on. The frequent contrast of friends, family, combined with a seemingly common moral compass operating in very high-performing and clandestine professional associations and situations made for a very exciting book. Very often so many sub-plots would be unfolding simultaneously in multiple global locations I would find myself constantly assessing the personal relationships of the players and assembling their professional interrelations as the multiple opposing objectives continued to develop and ultimately coalesce into a grand climax. Before re-reading this book, I felt compelled to read the first book in this Enigma Series, Enigma Factor, to better understand how the cyber-crime fighting organization itself came into being in the first place. I was not disappointed. This is but one great book from a great series.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Lots of fun!

I really enjoy this book and look forward to next one! The search for certian people was very realistic to me. I loved all the tech too, but I dont want to spoil anything for future readers!

I was given a copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Fascinating book

I also love the narrators who can place emphasis where it needs to be.  One of my pet peeves is a monotone, dull narrator that drives me nuts. Shoales does a good enough job to grab your attention and bring you into the story. Shoales grabs your attention enough to follow the story and invest in each character. His pacing and emphasis added to the depth of the characters.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

An education in smuggling

I love, love, love this series and am learning so much.
They have taken smuggling to a whole nuther' level
Pour little Laura I am pulling for her, when she leaves her fathers umbrella of protection to pursue a modeling/acting career she finds out how grimey the real world can be.
Kept me on the edge of my seat.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Interesting, complex, funny and worth your time

First off this is a long listen, Narrations are decent and you know what character is speaking. The storyline is a mix between soap opera / kardashian / real life.... involving major drug dealers figuring out how to make more money by being smarter and more efficient at the same time living their daily lives. You hear first hand how the characters use banking and secure communications planes etc.. to make it in the world (yes - offshore) at the same time still being funny throughout the book. Some areas had me laughing for awhile (still laughing). This isn’t a book for the little ones to hear, there are some parts that had me cringing. It is a complicated story and you can get lost in areas, more than once I had to back up and listen again, But that’s ok, it’s that good of a story. I think this will become a movie one day, the storyline is that good.
Overall...a good long listen, intriguing, funny and worth your time.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Fabulous narration

For a techno thriller, there wasn’t much tech and, IMO, the thrills were few and far between. The story lacked flow with all the different storylines and seemed forced in places, especially the dialogue between characters. I had a hard time staying with it and, if not for the narration, I don’t think I would’ve finished the book. Derek Shoales did a FABULOUS job with all the different character voices and accents. I hope to hear more of his narrations in the future. I received a review copy at my request and voluntarily reviewed.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Lacked aspects from the first book

“The Enigma Rising” is the second book in the “Enigma” series of books co-written by Charles V. Breakfield and Roxanne E. Burkey. The Audible narration is performed by Derek Shoales; who is a different narrator from the first book’s narration. Although this book is categorized as a technothriller, I would not place it is that genre. The first book seemed to excessively use technology where this book seems to go to the other extreme by lacked as cohesive blending of technology and thrill. Instead, I would put the book in the mystery and suspense category with some technology aspects thrown in for good measure. If you enjoy rater dark stories of drug runners, back stabbing, and deception, you may find that you enjoy this book. Even though I enjoy solidly written technical thrillers, I found this book departs too far from what I would have expected to fully enjoy it.

I thought the premise laid out in the author’s summary section was compelling, but I felt compared to the first book, this one missed the mark. I wanted to know more about the R-Group and understand the technology they utilized in more detail. For me, understanding exciting new technology and how it functions makes for a good technothriller, yet technology did not seem to be central to this book. Sure, there was suspense, mystery, and a little scheming, but I found the lack of focus on the technology made the book feel a little deflated for me.

I often found the book to be more confusing and overly complicated than the first book in the series. Apart from some electronic banking, satellite hacking, and some penetration testing, this story was less technology centric as it was character and event focused. I felt this story did not flow as smoothly as the first, and I would have liked to have had a bit more of a prequel section bringing the listener up to speed on the previous book’s events. Throughout the book, bits and pieces seemed to fill in some of the story gaps, but it just never reached that point where I felt a part of the story.

The book is vast and takes place over a number of location, some of them quite exotic, yet I did not get the feeling I was there. I did not feel the writing was overly descript, as I would have liked to have had some portions (mostly the technical ones) be more descript than they were. I want to learn something new and exciting about a technology I have not seen or heard of, but I found this never materialized for me even thought there were places I thought it would have fit perfectly.

I found the narration by Derek Shoales to be well done as there were many accents and a fair number of characters needing to be voiced. I found the audio levels to be consistent and the pacing of the book’s narration to be at an average speed. I do not recall any noticeable audio artifacts such as swallows, page turns or other background noise while listening.

For parents or potential younger readers, it should be noted that this book is not intended for younger readers as the language is quite vulgar along with direct and descriptive scenes of sex, many references to sexual innuendos, and a focus on the pornography industry. There is also a fair amount of quite graphic violence that would not be suitable for younger readers. Along with the above, there is a fair number of adult topics such as drug use, alcohol use, along with others. I would only recommend this book to mature audiences who are not offended by the above subject matter.

In summary, the book is really an action suspense story with a technology veneer. If you are a fan of technology thrillers, you may found yourself disappointed with the level of detail and actual technology used. Instead, if you like action and mystery books with some technology thrown in, you may enjoy this series.

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

Another Great Story in the Enigma Series!

This book had several different stories to follow. Each separate story would have been exciting on its own, but the way they are woven together is quite ingenious and becomes a story well told. The story line involves cyber activity, smuggling, drug lords and quite a few action packed sequences among many other things.

The narrator does a great job with the character nuances through different accents and inflections. There are quite a few challenges for the narrator with different parts of the world involved, but Derek Shoales is believable in the many characters.

I would love to see this series made into a movie. Charles Breakfield and Roxanne Burkey really do a great job with believable technology dialog as well as exciting scenes that draw you on to the next chapter. The characters are so real, that you want to meet them in real life.

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

1 of 2 people found this review helpful

Good second book to this series!

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

As a second book in the series, it was just OK. The technology terms used in this book is not as overdone as it was in the first book, which was a big relief. The narrator has continued to be good too. All in all, the story was good, if a bit predictable, the characters were interesting and the plot kept my interest.

1 of 2 people found this review helpful

Not What I Expected

After reading the first book, I was interested to continue Jacob and Petra's story, especially since I loved all of the technology present in The Enigma Factor.

And while this book is good, I was slightly surprised that it didn't seem to be a continuation of the first, nor did it have the same amount of technology present. It seemed to be a side story. But don't let that make you think that the story wasn't good, it really was, it just wasn't what I expected.

I have a lot of the same comments with this book as I did with the last one regarding how forced the romance felt, however I did notice an improvement on character development with some of the background characters. A lot of the scenes carried more detailed descriptions which really improved the realisticness of the story; however the sex scenes (also present in the first book) also increased, which I certainly didn't care for.

So overall, I like the premise of the The Enigma series and so far I like the characters, but I'm not in love with it. The sex scenes present also repel me for enjoying it like I would've had they been left out. Because there are still 6 (almost 400 pages...) books left in the series, I'll likely not be finishing the entire series.

I received this audiobook from the author via AudioBookWorm for the purpose of this review. All comments and opinions are entirely my own.

This is a LiteratureApproved (.com) Review.

Getting Better!

Any additional comments?

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

I really enjoyed this book, and I much prefer this book to #1 in the series. It looked deeper into Jacob, Petra and Otto, as well as looking into the other members of the R-Group. As in book 1, my favourite part of the novel is the character development and the character interactions, which was excellent.

I did struggle with the plot a bit, because there was a lot of moving parts that I struggled to link together. It reminded me a bit of the Jack Reacher novels with all the moving parts of the plot. The tech aspects did again feel overdone, but not as bad as the previous novel.

An amazing techno-thriller

The amount of knowledge on display by the authors in terms of technology makes me wonder what these guys can do. That's not to say that this is a boring book that just talks about how things work. No. It's a thrill ride that you want to strap yourself in for. Amazing storytelling throughout from the descriptions of the situations and environment to the crafting of characters that you are on the side of and love to those that you really love to hate.
It's also packed with twists and turns, although not so many that your head is spinning - they all make sense in retrospect. It's got some great ideas in here but also it's easy to listen too. Which in itself is an amazing skill.
If you like an action novel with cyber crime, mystery elements giving you plot twists which is also really easy to get into then the solution is simple. Read this book!

Also the narration of the characters and the story is great. For me it drew me in from the start and really added to the atmosphere of the book.

This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review.

So cute when they become animated

The information gatbering R group searches for a missing heiress and also investigates the disappearing drugs lords and their accumulated assets. Along the way, it uncovers financial and identity laundering, pornography and fashion, friendship, sex and romance together with a host of colourful characters and a blurring of distinction between criminal activity and Bad Boy rogues. A slow action thriller which would benefit from reduction in length, densely filled as it is with meticulous conversation which is often unnecessary and sometimes feels stilted and, frankly, silly. This is, presumably, to reinforce character identity and authenticity but which for this reader became tedious. It is also somewhat patronising towards the female protagonists.

Narrator Derek Shoeles has a pleasant to hear voice and he reads well, with good pace and clear delivery. There is not much differentiation between voices, other than through myriad assorted accents, some sounding rather spurious, but this in no way diminishes the performance overall.

A good story is buried beneath the over-verbiage, however. A stand alone story, second in the series, which first introduced the Group and it''s cyber expertise as well some of the characters in book one. My thanks to the rights holder of The Enigma Rising for gifting me a complimentary copy, via Audiobook Boom at my request and without expectation of any return. This review is entirely my own.

fantastic reading!

I thought t h e narration was really good, applying accents and pitch to segment the characters.

being in IT, I thought the technical aspects were spot on. the level of detail was enough to carry the motion, but would not overwhelm a non-tech.

this being only my second in the series, I'm looking forward to the next!!

give it a go, it's enjoyable reading (listening), for sure!!