The Deep Enders
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3 Months Free
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The Deep Enders
Narrated by:
Dave Reardon
Buy Now for £12.33
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Narrated by:
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Dave Reardon
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By:
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Dave Reardon
His home destroyed in the attack on Pearl Harbor, Murph Turner stumbles into the exotic town of Broome, hoping for safe harbor. Instead, the troubled teen discovers a wild and lawless place brimming with espionage, treachery, and romance.
An outsider in a bewildering land of red dust and paranoia, Murph is quickly taken under wing by Banjo, a cheeky aboriginal scamp with a passion for pyrotechnics, and Micki, a beautiful teenager on the run from authorities.
But even as the Japanese armada closes in on the northern coastline, the trio is suddenly thrust into a murderous adventure - all set against the backdrop of a true WW II tragedy so brutal that it was immediately covered up by the government.
Praise for The Deep Enders:
“A gripping read that will have you on the edge of your seat.” (BookBuzz Magazine)
"An action-packed adventure filled with wonderful characters, life and color. The Deep Enders is a wild ride for readers!" (Leah James, film producer)
"There's only one word for The Deep Enders, unputdownable. It has adventure, mystery, gruesome villains, hidden treasures and a trio of friends you can laugh along with." (Aziza Green, author and media consultant)
About the author: Dave Reardon covered crime, politics, and crocodile attacks as a journalist for major newspapers before joining his wife Ann Reardon in producing one of the world's favorite online lifestyle shows with 500 million views on YouTube. Dave has ghostwritten numerous books, but The Deep Enders is his first novel.
©2016 Reardon Media Pty Ltd (P)2019 Reardon Media Pty Ltd
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Compelling story
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Phenomenal tale, well told
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First the only con was his reading as not too much variation in character voices, but as a whole just wow. I love the story it followed and never found a flat moment where there wasn't action. Character development twists and cliffhangers as the chapters changed kept me listening. I would pay good money to see this made into a movie.
Wowza
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Deep Enders, well worth a listen.
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Within the first 10 or 15 minutes, something felt off with the writing. It felt slightly amateurish. What it reminded me of was an English teacher telling her pupils to put lots of adjectives in to make the writing "interesting". This book is overloaded with strange adjectives and descriptions, not all of them used correctly -- at least in British English. For example, one of the characters is described as an urchin, but he's an old man with few teeth and a missing finger. Many just felt forced. For example, he says, "Murph looked back at the rabid retailer..." when talking about a shopkeeper. Really? I get the alliteration, but... No. Sorry. Not for me,
I had really no idea where the story was going for the first few hours, because what was mentioned in the Audible description (the troubled teen discovers a wild and lawless place brimming with espionage, treachery, and romance) bore no relation to what I was listening to. Espionage is only hinted at, with the Japanese residents locked up for fear they COULD be spies. Treachery and romance only rear their heads towards the end.
The story is that after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, Murph is sent by him mum to live with his dad in Broome, in north western Australia, where he befriends Banjo, an Aboriginal teen, and later, Micki, Banjo's Japanese-Australian half-sister. He's not long in Australia when the Japanese attack Australia and so all Japanese in the country are rounded up and put in prisons or camps. Australians are encouraged to do the right thing and report any Japanese they see, but of course, Murph doesn't report on Micki.
The Audible description then says, "the trio is suddenly thrust into a murderous adventure". This isn't true. First of all, it's not sudden, it's more than halfway through the book. Second, it's not a murderous adventure. They go looking for a Dutch man who people presume had got lost in the bush. There's a reward out for anyone who finds him, so the trio hope to get some money. They do discover a body, which they think is the Dutch man, but it's only on their way back from the bush that they put 2 and 2 together and realise that this was a different person who was probably killed by the man who co-owns Murph's dad's boat.
And that's the basic story. No espionage. No treachery. No romance. It's kids looking for a lost visitor, with a side story of the dad not having enough money and hoping to somehow buy out the co-owner of the boat.
Characters are drawn with very broad brushstrokes --- it being a book for children. People are most definitely good or bad, with only a little shading of grey. I felt Banjo was a little cliched. The larrikin Aborigine we've seen elsewhere who is always up to high jinks.
Thinking it was a book for adults, I had a big problem with the way the book was written. It felt simplistic and naive in tone, with language that felt wholly unnatural in places. That said, the story was fine, and the last 2 hours are quite tense as we wonder "if" the baddie will get his comeuppance. Also, it being a book for children, the language was toned down. No swearing. And no overt descriptions of deaths or murder, although these things do appear. And there is one death we might not see coming. So the author doesn't shy away from this aspect.
As a history lesson, I found it quite engaging. I'd never heard of this episode of the war. I knew that Pearl Harbour had been bombed, but had no idea Australia had received multiple attacks.
I quite like when a book is narrated by the author. If they are good, they give a performance with nuances that a regular narrator would miss. Inflections. Stress. They know exactly how to say something, However... I have a big problem with this narration. There are 2 problems, in fact. First, I don't think it was professionally recorded. It was recorded by the author and I get the impression he locked himself in a cupboard in his house. The sound is VERY echo-y. It's quite startling. Every time I started the story, it took me a few minutes to get used to it. I've never experienced this before and it was quite distracting. But apart from that, perhaps a bigger problem is his voice. There were MANY times when I wanted to tell him to get a drink of water and clear his throat. In some parts of the recording, there are many instances when his voice catches or it's almost like he's losing his voice. It's very disappointing because it really did take me out of the story.
That said, his style of narration is good. I imagine he was great reading bedtime stories to his three boys as they grew up. He knew when and how to inject tension, having written the book himself. And, to my British ear, his Aboriginal accent was good. But... the recording quality really isn't good at all.
Would I listen to another book by Dave Reardon? Perhaps, but not another in this series.
Would I listen to another book narrated by Dave Reardon? Unfortunately not. Not unless it was recorded in a professional recording studio and he had a sound engineer to tell him when he needed to take a break
Beware: this is a children's book
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