"I mean, come on, Gabriel: angels. ANGELS!"

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

This is not the first of a series but the opening part of a serial, basically setting the scene for further books to come.

Any additional comments?

The opening scenes to Defiance are exciting, rather mysterious. A well respected, retired army officer who fought in Afghanistan, is wrongly seized from his home and held on charges of terrorism. Shortly after, his wife and two children are kidnapped, again by an armed force, but this time it is by the group which had set up the husband. They are taken 'into protection' in an exotically furnished mansion somewhere unknown. Later, this same group rescues the ex-soldier and use the custody of his family to blackmail him into working for them. They are brutal and mean business, killing his best friend in front of him.
So Gabriel, the soldier, accepts the commission - to bring back the archaeologist who has been working on a recently discovered temple or, if this is impossible, her notebooks.

The story so far is certainly exciting with heavy supernatural elements..But, as previously mentioned, is only the first part of a serial and, therefore, incomplete. For this reason I cannot rate is more highly than three stars.

The narration by Meral Matthews is good, aiding the tension and somewhat soothing the confusion inherent in the early text. His voicing of the various protagonists is also clear and each is individual. It is his reading which, for this reader, brought the greatest realism to the story so far.

I received Defiance as a freely given gift from the rights holder, via Audiobook Boom. My thanks for that. However, without having heard the rest of this on going story, I am reluctant to recommend it without fully stressing the unfinished nature of this opening section of a serial.

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A tale of Good vs. Evil

Meral Matthews brings this tale to life marvellously, I don't think it could have a better narrator.

The story starts out with Gabriel being abducted from his family home, followed by his wife and family who are to be used to blackmail him into retrieving an archaeologist from Afghanistan, I didn't really enjoy the first part of the book as it involves too much beating of Gabriel (apparently by some government agency) but it picks up pretty fast, and becomes rather interesting when we're introduced to Othia (the archaeologist to be retrieved) and starts fairly racing along once Gabriel meets up with Othia in a cave.

This is only the first book of a series, and does end rather abruptly leaving you with the urgent need to grab book 2 and listen to it now, which is what I am doing as I type.

My only complaint is that the book is too short but that's not enough for me to knock off a star.

I received my copy free of charge from the author, in exchange for a frank and honest review, which I have given above.

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