Vigilante: Into the Darkness

American Post-Apocalyptic EMP Thriller

By: Cliff Deane

Narrated by: K. A. Rood

Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

Vigilante: Into the Darkness pulls no punches when it comes to the horrific details of a worldwide grid-down situation, starting with the effect on the food chain and an explosion in the population of vermin. With so many dead, how do the survivors deal with rotting corpses, diseases, and villains? Will good triumph over evil? Maybe....

Levi Levins retires from the army and is off on vacation before starting his new job. He suffers a horrendous loss accompanying "lights out" and must find a way to help humanity in order to keep his own sanity.

He has no bug-out bag, no hidden weapons cache, no transportation. What does he do, and how does he do it? Levi will walk us through his path to survival. Perhaps it may also be yours....

This gripping tale takes us on a journey to try to stave off the New Dark Age brought on by a worldwide EMP apocalypse. Can government survive when no food is being trucked to the masses? Can our military survive without the tons of food needed for each and every meal? The answers are here.

©2017 Cliff Deane (P)2018 Cliff Deane

What it takes to survive

A CME hits Earth and we are sent back about a hundred years technology wise, and we need to survive and rebuild. I loved the mayor and the security officer, and how many times the mayor tried to get his friend and security officer to stay even though he made it clear he was leaving after a year.

My first audible, now I am hooked!

The first 7 minutes of narration we're very disturbing, but set the tone of the remainder.

Not too exciting

Kind of a weak story.
Line. I liked that the Character levi became a father

Entertaining story

An interesting and somewhat gritty post apocalyptic EMP audiobook that makes you consider turning into a prepper. Though some of the actions and emotions in the book are a bit unrealistic, it is still an entertaining story that managed to keep my attention. The narrator did a really good job of bringing the characters to life and making the less believable parts seem realistic. An entertaining story that did manage to make me wonder just how I would survive should an EMP disaster happen.

Excellent story!

This is a well written post apocalyptic tale. The narrator has great potential, but needs a bit more experience.

Decent listen

Over all I enjoyed the book. There are sadly no female characters in the story.

Kinda like a watching a car accident,

You don't want to see it but you watch anyway. Not sure if it was the writing or the narrative but it was painful and fun at the same time. And yeah I would buy the next one.

Disappointing...

What did you like best about Vigilante: Into the Darkness? What did you like least?

Overall, the story has good "bones," but the plot and characters were severely underdeveloped. In the end it felt like a self-indulgent Rambo fantasy being lived out through fiction. I was very excited to listen to this book, I enjoy this genre and thoroughly enjoyed John Matherson series by by William Forstchen, also a post-apocalyptic EMP thriller. But this one failed to impress.

What could Cliff Deane have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

There was no depth to the characters, the plot was never fully developed, and the scenes with language and gore failed to contribute anything to the plot so they ended up being more for shock value than anything else.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

No.

Any additional comments?

The narration was above average and executed well enough to hold my attention, but could've use more flexibility when narrating a variety of characters. But I would give this narrator another shot as I also didn't feel there was much to work with...***This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review.***

Really great

From beginning to end this book was brilliant. My favorite type of book. The story was fantastic and the narrator did a wonderful job bringing it to life!

Dystopian "not so" thiller

Any additional comments?

I am going to round up and give this a 3 for content.

I listened to "Vigilante: Into the Darkness", narrated by K. A. Rood on audible. This is a dystopian style story. The novel starts with a married couple out for a get-a-way trip together and hangs a "left at Albuquerque." Right at the start of the story it gets bad and we follow the MC through a series of events that nearly force our modern world into the abyss. What would happen if suddenly all aspects of our modern life came crashing to a halt?

Deane, nails the aspects of a post apocalyptic EMP caused future. He must have some experience in the world of "prepping" because this book almost lays out a "how to" survival guide for dealing with an 18th century style world. What do you do about food, water, health and safety? Would emergency services still continue to operate and would civility reign or would society breakdown into an every man for himself struggle? If you want an insight into the world of prepping and some ideas on what to plan for, then this story will feed your hunger.

If Deane, nails it on post EMP life, he misses it on the story telling. The characters are flat and fall into cookie cutter stereotypes. The dialogue throughout feels like a bad play with little intriguing interaction between characters. The scenarios that Deane proposes, are on the money, but our MC never struggles and the "good guys" always win. In this story all the "bad guys" are idiots that can't think or plan ahead. Lee Child is able to allow his Reacher character to succeed, but in ways that we love or feel are challenging despite knowing Reacher will always win in the end. In "Vigilante" our MC will always get a good deal, and everyone always wants to be his friend but it is way too easy.

K.A. Rood read this story and parts of it were painful. His normal reading voice is pleasant enough, but his character voices were challenging to listen to. Everything sounded sort of "vaudeville" like and over the top. I always listen at a faster speed and this caused one of his voices to sound like Screech from "Saved by the Bell." This does not happen for many of the other readers I listen to weekly. 2/5 for him because his normal voice was still pleasant.

I received this edition in exchange for an unbiased review.