Broken Nights

by Matthew Davenport, Michael Davenport

How do you defend your city from itself?

How do you fight an enemy that knows your secrets and can predict your moves?

In the wake of their mother's death, Jason and Amy Night tried to get on with their lives. While Amy buried herself in her work and taking care of their ailing father, Jason took another path.

He donned a mask and became the protector of Darden Valley. He became The Guardian.

When Darden Valley comes under attack from more than just crooks and thugs, the siblings will have to lean on each other to protect their family and defend their city.

Does the Darden Valley Guardian have what it takes to protect his city while his family is under attack?

Genres: Fiction, Superheroes

206 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 7, 2017

About the author

Matthew Davenport hails from Des Moines, Iowa where he lives with his wife, Ren, and daughter, Willow.

He puts up a new chapter every Wednesday on his Patreon. http://patreon.com/matthewdavenport

You can keep track of Matthew through his twitter account @spazenport.

Matt updates his blog from time to time at authormatthewdavenport.wordpress.com

Reviews

[Montzalee Wittmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Broken Nights is a science fiction/super hero book I requested and the review is voluntary.
I thought this fit well in the teen/young adult catalog. The sci-fi aspect was a bit far fetched from the rest of the book but that and a w/o so ending are my only complaints. Fun characters and reasoning behind the boy wanting to be a super hero. Good action, adventure, good vs evil, corporate greed, and good dialogue.

[Michael Robbins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two Thumbs Up

I enjoy Super Hero books. It is a guilty pleasure of mine. Since Amazon came along its easy to find a lot of these books but it's not easy to find real good Super Hero story's. Well here is a real good story
I'm the type of reader that if I'm not drawn into the story by the end of the first chapter I'll just stop reading. Broken Nights got me hooked by the first chapter and every chapter after. I've had to many books where you have an excellent beginning and end but the middle is just some junk to take up space. Not so with this story. Each chapter just carried you along to the next.
I thought this was a cross between Green Arrow and DareDevil. I could expand on this but I don't want to give away some of the plot.
If your looking for an Action Hero book with good characters, a good story, and a lot of action, this is a must read. I hated when I came to the final page and I really, really hope there will be a series of these books coming soon.
So get this book, find a comfortable chair, and enjoy a good story.

[S. Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

The concept for this book was great! It is a vigilante adventure in the vein of the Punisher or Batman. We have a regular person, some martial arts training, and gadgets against the bad guys. As is expected, he’s got a chip on his shoulder for criminals.

I wanted to be Jason Night when I was 23! I watched a couple parkour video and practiced jumping from stuff and somersaulting. I took all sorts of martial arts classes. I even have a tie just like Jason’s only tie in my closet right now! It too, was from a wedding a few years ago.

I received a free audible code in exchange for a voluntary review. I get freebies often and don’t review them all. I do give them all a try, but if I can’t finish the book, I don’t leave a review. Sometimes the writing is poor, other times the tone is pessimistic. Because of this most my ratings are four or five stars. I finished this book, thought it was a fun adventure, and would even listen to a sequel, but two recurring elements forced me to think this book earned only three stars.

First, for a comic style adventure, I found the pace of storytelling slow. By that I do not mean a fight scene to story building scene ratio. I mean that the frequent use of passive voice pulled me out of the happy pretend land between my ears to figure out the Subject Verb Object sequence of the statement. Another pace problem was restatement. The story goes here, then confirms that it went there. As if I didn’t understand what was just stated. The prose also had tons of unnecessary that made sentences over long. Changing points of view within one scene also distracted me and if found most of the POVs were unnecessary. If Jason night observed Amy’s expression and implied what she was thinking, we would not have popped out of and back into Jason’s head to learn that Amy was worried. Word choice also jarred me. The word tire was used four times in one paragraph. It happened again and again. At one point some bad guys were described as horses because they were pulling something, but the word horses recurred so often in the scene that I wondered if Jason was fighting animals. Don’t worry PETA, they were people.

I removed the second star because I feel there was a lack of research. Neurons are one example. A character describes “natural paths in the brain” instead of saying neurons. If neurons were better understood then a concept like have the knowledge of martial arts means automatically being a great martial artist would never have made it to print. It takes very little time to understand a martial art move, but constant practice to make the move work well. The reason for this is because neural networks grow each time they are accessed. They also shrink if not used often. That is why practice makes perfect. Some of the fight scenes gave me the impression that Jason did not have the training he claimed to have. Specifically “mma on the ground” or grappling and Jui Jitsu. One scene has him scissor sweep his opponent, stand up, position himself, and return to the ground to attack. A grappler would not return to his feet and get back down again. Instead he would use his chest to press the opponent flat to the ground and spin like a pin wheel. It’s a warm up drill in the mma classes Jason would have taken. It would be drilled into his instinct.

If either of the issues happened only a time or two, I would not have noticed, but they happened all throughout. Normally I would have stopped listening, but like I said at the top, I really did enjoy the book! Thorough editing could make this book a Best Seller. These are all just one person’s opinions. If you don’t fuss over writing style and martial arts, I’m sure you’ll think I’m being crazy. You’re welcome to that opinion, like I’m welcome to mine.

I think the authors brought a unique twist to the genre by going to great lengths to describe how every day attainable items that you or I could buy or already have, made up Jason Night’s arsenal. The phone app was my favorite.

[C.T. Phipps · Rating 5 out of 5]

BROKEN NIGHTS by Matthew Davenport is the first foray by one of my favorite Lovecraft fiction authors into the world of superheroes. It has the premise of trying to be a Heroes-esque "grounded" story about a guy who dresses up as a vigilante and fights crime but does it without Bruce Wayne's billions or years of study with Tibetan martial artists. There are actually people who do this in real life, for better or worse, but the Darden Valley Guardian has a lot more luck than the majority who get arrested or humiliated. Even so, it's realistic enough that the opening of the book is him getting hospitalized after trying to jump across rooftops and ending up in a trash bin.

The premise of the book is Jason and Amy Night have recently lost their mother to a store robbery. Darden Valley, Iowa is a tech-powerhouse town in the middle of nowhere with a rising crime problem due to the moving in of a powerful new corporation which is leveraging crime to lower property rates like OCP did in Robocop--also, Donald Trump in New York during the 1980s if you believe certain rumors. No, I'm serious, that's actually a real life rumor about him. I'm not trying to make stuff up.

The best part of the book is following Jason as he tries to figure out ways for a man on a middle-class budget to become a superhero via a mixture of Amazon.com as well as local martial arts classes. His efforts are stymied until he gets the help of a small team of his friends who know a good deal more about technology, the police, and other business which could be useful to a self-made superhero. From there, things gradually get weirder and weirder until he's dealing with a horde of nanotech zombies controlled by a malevolent A.I. I kind of regret the fact Matthew didn't stick to street level crime but I enjoyed it as a full-on Bronze Age comic book universe.

Jason is a likable enough protagonist and while he's more Spiderman than Batman, except without the pop culture quips, he's still a believable superhero. The fact he screws up and doesn't achieve his goals every time makes him more relatable. I also liked Amy a great deal because she's a supportive sister while also not entirely tolerating all of his crap. Those readers with siblings are likely to see a lot of their own relationships in the Night Siblings' own. Honestly, I wished she'd become her own brand of hero versus Jason's version of Oracle.

Stella, the villain of the piece, is a great antagonist who manages to remain just the right balance between corrupt corporate executive until she goes complete supervillain. The discovery of the benefits of nanotechnology are the kind of things which would excite the mind of even the most leveled soul so I didn't have a problem when she completely lost it. The fact she was also close to being arrested and panicking when her inner Lex Luthor comes out was also believable.

The first half of the story follows his actions against ordinary crime before shifting to a more science-fiction orientated plot regarding Stella's plans to use an Alzheimer's cure to become an omnipotent cybernetic god. This shift was a bit much and I can't help but think I preferred the more lower-key actions of the Guardian but still worked as a decent science-fiction villainy plot. I also felt Jason and villain Stella had decent chemistry.

The action was good, the characters were likeable, and the plot was decent. As such, I recommend Broken Nights to anyone who wants to enjoy a superhero adventure story as their next book. It's an extremely fun book and one of the better superhero books I've read in 2018. Which is a lot of them, I've got to say.

9/10

[Sue Raymond · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received an advance readers copy of 'Broken Nights'. The Davenport guys have done a terrific job of bring out the inner super hero in us all with their main male character Jason Night. The story is a fast moving story of a guy tired of the criminal element destroying the neighborhood in which he grew up. He hatched his well laid plan after his mother dies as a victim of a senseless robbery of their hobby store. He becomes the 'Guardian' of the night. All too soon his efforts entwines his brainy sister, Amy, and their friends in the fight against their unknown foe. This is a fight that Jason can not afford to lose. The stakes is their very lives and the one they love. The reader is drawn deep in the emotional conflict as they can identify with the despair and the need to right the wrong done to their love ones.

You can find Broken Nights at the following: http://amzn.to/1SccHUg

[BookLoversLife · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the story of this was good and the some of the ideas were really unique, I think it was the quality of the recording that let this down in a big way!! The narrator himself was OK, his male voices were varied but his female voices left a little bit to be desired. I found it hard to follow who was talking at any given time. For the narrator I'd give maybe 3 stars to but the quality of the audio would be 0!! I was left wondering did anyone listen to the full recording before putting it out there!! The narrator stumbled and repeated himself multiple times throughout. There were times when I thought I might have hit playback but I knew I couldn't have done it so many times. He also paused for what felt like minutes at a time during scenes. I found there was also some background noises sometimes, I think I even heard a dog once but I definitely heard music at one stage! It felt like he was recording it in an empty chamber at times too. Very kind of..... staticy and echoey. I went to put it aside plenty of times but continued on anyway.

Now onto the story itself. There was plenty to like about the book. I realy liked Jason! He is just a normal geeky boy doing a kind of "Batman" thing! He runs a comic book store during the day and becomes something else at night after his mother was killed. He buys his protective gear from Amazon and uses his mixed martial art to help him. It's not till he is seriously injured that he decides to include his sister in his scheme. With her on board, he is able to use her expertise to upgrade his equipment.

Initially, from the cover, I thought Zombies with a superhero with super powers, but it's not, which I quite liked. I liked the technology in the book, I liked that the females in the book were all capable and fairly kick ass. I didn't really like that we have a good few unanswered questions which left the story with an unfinished feel to it. I didn't particularly like that Jason went fighting burglars instead of actually going out and fighting real evil! The police could have handled the burglars but there was never any mention of them. The few times we see the masked vigilantly, he just seems to be going after the easy options. That's just me though, I always expect my superhero books to be super and action packed!!

Anyway, this has potential. I think it could become a brilliant superhero series because the bones of the story is great, it just needs a little more something.... It also needs to be heavily edited for the audio. It's a shame to not fix the bugs!!
*I received a copy of this from the author for review. This does not affect my thoughts.*

[Lelouch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a free copy of the audiobook from the author in exchange for an honest review.

I like the narrator. He uses enthusiasm and different character voices. However, the production needed a little better editing. In ch 8 the narrator makes mistakes and repeats himself, and he does the same thing a few more times throughout the book. I'd give him a 4/5 for his performance and 3/5 because of the editing.

Based on audible categorizing the novel as sci-fi, I was under the impression the protagonist had super powers. For anyone wondering the same thing, I'll go ahead and tell you he's just a normal person. The sci-fi portion revolves around the villain which we'll learn around half way through.

The protagonist is a discount batman, wearing amazon-purchased costumes and fighting crime with his mixed martial arts skills. If he was rescuing people from muggings and beatings, I'd like him more. However, all we see is him beating up people who robbed pawn shops and other stores without any violence. In return for his trouble, he gets shot. I think changing the intro scene to use criminals in the act of a violent crime would have been better.

Cut to his bruce wayne counterpart. Jason owns a hobby store and is approached by the attractive Stella Bernard who offers to purchase his property for double the market value. Because the store holds sentimental value, Jason declines the offer politely. That's when all hell breaks loose and the story takes a turn. One of the other reviews compared the story to the tv series Arrow which I think is a good comparison. It's a mixture of silly fist-fighting against criminals with guns while the fate of the world rests on a masked vigilante and his scooby gang. Where are the police, you ask? Probably having a coffee break. In the first and last chapters, the author switches between the present and the past multiple times, which I felt was really unnecessary and interrupted the action. There were a few things I didn't like in the plot. For one thing, why did Stella take such a special interest in Jason? Going through a "date" and threatening his family, weighing his value over the value of his sister. For that matter, why did Stella really need to buy up the town for her purposes? Plenty of alternatives which would have been much, much easier.

SPOILER:

For anyone who really wants to know the sci fi portion part of the tale, keep reading.

Stella has technology where people can download into machines and control other machines.

[Brian Crosby · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review will be audiobook specific.
First, I enjoyed the book. It was outside of the genres I normally read, and that is what I was looking for when I picked this up.
The story was fast paced, the characters engaging, and the modern setting was familiar. I am somewhat worried about how well it will hold up over time, with all the modern references, but then again, I never flew Pan-Am but know what it is every time it's referenced in a book I'm reading.
My only issue was, at one point I thought "why is the protagonist doing it this way, it would be so much easier to...". Fortunately, by the end of the story, it made sense to me.
Story: 4 stars "really liked it"
Setting: 3 stars "liked it"

I'm splitting up my scores, because my real issues, and they were enough that I've since gone and re-edited the audio myself, is the mastering of the narration.
The Narrator voices were good. I easily knew which character was talking by the different voices used. I have no issues with his performance. If I was rating performance alone, it would be 3 stars "liked it"
Where the problems come from I believe is in the editing and possibly the studio. Technical problems.
Frequently, when switching POV, there was very little pause and it took a moment to realise the perspective changed. These very short pauses seems only to happen when switching POV.
There were at least 4 instances where a few seconds would repeat. The first time I thought it might have been purposefully, even if it didn't make sense to me. Authors do thing sometimes I don't always readily understand. Then it happened a second time, and I re-downloaded the audio to be sure my copy wasn't bad. It was distracting.
Finally, I listen while at work, it's a noisy place, and I wear over-ear monitor headphones (Sony MDR-7506). During the last few chapters I lifted my headphones a couple of times because I thought I heard music, or some other low bass-y sound, only to realize it was coming from the recording. It didn't detract much, but it was a noticeable distraction.
Narration: 2 stars "it was ok"

All and all, I was happy with this book. I look forward to a second listen. It was quick, easy to follow, and kept me engaged the whole time. I was engaged so much, I even had a "oh, I can't believe they (the writers) did that" moment at the end.
Overall: 3 stars "liked it"

Small print:
I recieved a free copy of this audiobook in return for my honest opinion and review. Thanks.

[Chad Jansma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Average Man turns Vigilante Hero

After witnessing the violent murder of his mother Jason takes it upon himself to make sure this does not happen to anyone he knows. He gets himself trained in several different fighting styles and becomes a vigilante type super hero. (Which personally are my favorite kind) He is a store If owner by day and hero by night armed with an Amazon and EBay account he is able to get most things he needs. But he quickly learns he might not be able to do this alone. I loved reading this book I had troubles putting it down. It has lots of action and grabs your attention and doesn't let go.

[C · Rating 5 out of 5]

This audio book was a very fun and entertaining to listen to. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it. The details were written very vividly which made it easy to submerse myself in the book.One I started I couldn't stop listening thats how much I enjoyed this book. The narrator also did an awesome job on the book as well. I am looking forward to another book in this series if there is one!

I received the audio book version free in exchange for an unbiased review.

[Raychel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this story. Far from your average super hero story, in that the main character isn't super at all. He's an average Joe who wants to make a difference and ends up way over his head. There are a few grammatical errors, but the story itself is excellent and I felt like I knew many of the characters personally by the end of the book. I would definitely read a sequel.

[Bookwyrm Speaks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine that after the death of his parents, Bruce Wayne decided to become a masked vigilante. Not hard to imagine, obviously. Now imagine if Bruce Wayne wasn't rich, wasn't a child, didn't have unlimited resources, as well as years with which to train before he started fighting crime. That's the premise of this story, where an ordinary young man named Jason Night decides to start fighting crime after a personal tragedy.

When his mother is murdered in the family hobby shop in front of his eyes by a man who randomly killed her, he decides he wants fight crime. He takes MMA lessons, learns Parkour, and builds himself a suit with off the rack components, consisting of a cowled mask, bullet proof vest, padded gauntlets, with kevlar sleeves, with tonfas for weapons. Stuff a guy who owns a hobby shop can afford. He then starts fighting crime in the local neighborhood, stopping break ins, stuff like that. When he runs across a break in at the local Chinese restaurant, with a group of guys just busting the place up, he stumbles across a conspiracy that he is ill equipped to handle, since these guys travel in packs, and are armed with guns. That bullet proof vest comes in handy, although getting shot still hurts a lot! This group is on orders, and Jason needs to find out who's behind the break ins that are terrorizing his neighborhood.

Jason also has to deal with problems in his real life. His father has Alzheimer's Disease, and Jason and his sister Amy have to care for him as he deteriorates further. Amy has dealt with the tragedies by diving into work at the tech company she works at, and has no idea Jason is moonlighting as the vigilante the news dubs The Darden City Guardian. As the pressure from these break in continues, and the danger increases each run in, Jason has to decide if he can continue. The fact a villain has discovered who he is and where his family is increases his doubt that he can continue as the Guardian, since it is endangering his family and friends.

What follows is a hard fought battle for Darden City itself, as the true power behind all the disturbances makes itself know in a quest to further their plans to take over the city. This includes an army of super villains that Jason and his friends need to face in order to stop the insanity gripping Darden City, and someone will make the ultimate sacrifice to help stop the insanity, all leading to a pulse pounding, action packed ending you wont want to miss!

This is an interesting book, since while it is about a superhero vigilante, its also about family struggles, friendships and sacrifice. The characters are well thought out and come across as real people, with real problems and successes. They are people you can really get behind. The villain actually comes across as realistic, even in this setting. The master plot actually gets you sucked into the story, and is actually pretty original. The training flashbacks are really good, with his sister making fun of him for getting beat up in MMA classes, and his broken arm from his parkour accidents is handled a funny way as well. It is a very humanizing touch. The world building is well drawn out, giving you a first hand look into Darden City. You get a feeling of fighting crime on the streets. All told excellently done.

The narration duties are handled ably by Carson Beck.He brings a real warmth and is believable as the various characters. He really has a good pace, and his narrative voice is smooth and well paced. excellent work.

Any fans of comics should really enjoy this story, as should fans of writers like Drew Hayes, CT Phipps and Jim Bernheimer. I can't recommend it highly enough, and can't wait to see where book 2 goes!

[Kristi · Rating 5 out of 5]

For my tastes, I say don't judge the book by its cover. It's a great, illustrative superhero cover, but it isn't what I envisioned when I read the book.

I really enjoyed the explanation of how a normal person could be a vigilante. As my spouse put it, it's "middle class Batman". Explaining his skills through parkour, martial arts, apps that amplify sound and follow police scanners, etc. I loved seeing a realistic "superhero". He was a normal guy who wanted to protect his neighborhood.

The minor characters were all great additions to the story, especially the father when he joined in on the conversations. Although he has Alzheimer's, his lucid moments really show his amazing personality and wisdom.

I was a bit saddened by the antagonist using futuristic technology. Although it is the next step in human/technology relations, it is not yet possible. That took me out of the joy of a realistic superhero storyline. Also, an element in current movies that has begun to gnaw at me is the disregard for innocent life. In movies, it's the collapsing buildings and smashed cars. We don't see people, but in real life they would be there. This book has a type of mind control that is forcing people to act in ways they wouldn't normally and it leads to their harm and even death. Give me real villains and I don't mind their harm. But make innocents into goons and that doesn't sit well with me. Of course that is addressed and it just makes the reader hate the antagonist even more.

It definitely does end with the reader wanting to learn more about the characters future, but also ties the story up nicely. I always prefer companion novels over necessary sequels. I look forward to reading more!

[ee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent story. Similar to the movie Kick Ass with the main character being a vigilante crime fighter