Length: 8-11 hours, depending on the book
Author: Nicholas Sansbury Smith
Narrator: R.C. Bray

Another Audiobook series narrated by R.C. Bray. I am currently listening to book Nr. 5 “Hell Divers: Captives”. This series is based on the idea that a catastrophic world war has wiped out most of humanity and a handful of survivors are living in airships and have to “dive” to the surface in order to look for supplies in order to survive.

Publishers summary

More than two centuries after World War III poisoned the planet, the final bastion of humanity lives on massive airships circling the globe in search of a habitable area to call home. Aging and outdated, most of the ships plummeted back to Earth long ago. The only thing keeping the two surviving lifeboats in the sky are Hell Divers – men and women who risk their lives by skydiving to the surface to scavenge for parts the ships desperately need.

When one of the remaining airships is damaged in an electrical storm, a Hell Diver team is deployed to a hostile zone called Hades. But there’s something down there far worse than the mutated creatures discovered on dives in the past – something that threatens the fragile future of humanity.

Verdict

Old airships that are almost falling out of the sky, brave men and women who have to risk their lives to “dive” to the surface to find supplies where they constantly have to fight grisly mutated fauna and flora and later on a mad max / waterworld style horde of cannibals and even AI controlled terminator style killer robots.

The books where easy “daily commute fodder” and always kept me entertained. Even though the story is sometimes quite predictable it still is a lot of fun following the main character “X” through the (so far) 5 books of the series.

The action is entertaining and the menagerie of monsters gets more diverse with each book and the plot around why these monsters are there in the first place also gets more interesting with each book.

I could pretty easily predict who was going to be a “red shirt” and who was most likely going to survive but the author also has some surprises up his sleeve. Character development is minimal but just enough to make you care about the main “heroes” of the series.

And then there of course is the excellent narration by R.C. Bray. He turns a good audiobook into a great one. He’s so good that I have started to only listen to books where he is the narrator. So far this has worked out just fine : )

Check out other great books narrated by R.C. Bray here:

Infinite – https://geekjournal.ch/infinite-audiobook-review/

The Martian – https://geekjournal.ch/the-martian-audibook-review/

Commune – https://geekjournal.ch/commune-audiobook-review/