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    Emergence: Dave vs. the Monsters
    Emergence: Dave vs. the Monsters
    Emergence: Dave vs. the Monsters
    Audiobook10 hours

    Emergence: Dave vs. the Monsters

    Written by John Birmingham

    Narrated by Mark Zeisler

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Dave Hooper has a hangover from hell, a horrible ex-wife, and the fangs of the IRS deep in his side. The last thing he needs is an explosion at work. A real explosion. On his off-shore oil rig. But this is no accident, and despite the news reports, Dave knows that terrorists aren't to blame. He knows because he killed one of the things responsible. When he wakes up in a hospital bed guarded by Navy SEALs, he realizes this is more than just a bad acid trip. Yeah, Dave's had a few. This trip is way weirder. Killing a seven-foot-tall, tattooed demon has transformed the overweight, balding safety manager into something else entirely. A foul-mouthed, beer-loving monster slayer, and humanity's least worthy Champion.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateApr 28, 2015
    ISBN9781490605203
    Emergence: Dave vs. the Monsters
    Author

    John Birmingham

    John Birmingham was born in Liverpool, United Kingdom, but grew up in Ipswich, Queensland, Australia. Between writing books he contributes to a wide range of newspapers and magazines on topics as diverse as biotechnology and national security. He lives at the beach with his wife, daughter, son, and two cats.

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    Reviews for Emergence

    3.5/5

    67 ratings13 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Dave Hooper is an oilman with a life in shambles. He's on his way to an oil rig when it's attacked by monsters....Dave gets lucky and manages to kill one and becomes super Dave making him our worst ever champion.A fairly good fun read with a slow build.
    • 1/5
      I see why this series is marketed towards people who love Kevin Hearne and Jim Butcher -- it's paranormal, it's fast-paced, in some ways it's a guys book.

      However, _I_ love Kevin Hearne and Jim Butcher because they write smart-ass, funny, dialogue, and their heros, while flawed, are also inherently lovable. They are always trying to right the wrongs, whether they caused them or not. I find Dave to be sardonic and self-hating, and I can't really fault him for that, because he's quite unappealing. I suspect that if I was willing to power through the first book he might gain some character, but I'm a couple hundred pages in and I have better things to do.

      Advanced readers copy provided by edelweiss.
    • 3/5
      Upon reread, I'm changing the review score to 3 from 4. There are hints that the author might be racist-ish and definitely a rightwinger. I just can't get behind that shit.
    • 4/5
      This is certainly an unusual book, whilst it has a common theme with other books, namely monsters fighting with humans, the execution puts it a step ahead, or perhaps outside of regular fiction. I found it to be closer to Pierce's Ass Goblins of Auschwitz than your regular fiction book. Is that a bad thing? For some readers perhaps, they may find it to be coarse and/or offensive, however I found it to fit the style of book and story telling quite well. It's certainly different to the writing seen in the Without Warning (The Disappearance) series, which was exceptional by the way, but again not necessarily different in a bad way, more laid back, fun and relaxed than the more formal writing in the aforementioned.Overall, a fun entertaining read if you're not bothered by some coarseness and graphic scenes.
    • 3/5
      This is a fast action military urban fantasy. Dave, a safety officer on an oil rig becomes an unlikely hero with an ax against monsters coming out from the deep to eat everyone on the rig. Dave isn’t hero material when we first meet him nursing a hangover from partying away his bonus on hookers and blow instead of trying to keep up with bills and taxes and taking care of his kids with his soon to be ex wife. But when he grabs an oversized ax and hits a lucky blow on one of the monsters something happens. Dave gets an info dump on everything about the monsters and somehow the ax becomes enchanted. He gains powers but they come at a disadvantage of constantly needing to eat. Things end with a battle that Dave stops by using some of his new knowledge to challenge the leader to one on one combat. The book a quick fast read and the plus for people wanting to know what comes next is the next tow care coming out in quick succession.


      Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss
    • 3/5
      There are two types of 'Emergence' in John Birminghham's first 'Dave Hooper novel. The first is the escape of the brutal monsters of the Hunn Horde, from the UnderRealms to which they have been consigned for many ages. The second is that of protagonist Dave Hooper, whose accidentally sucessful confrontation with Battlemaster Urgon Htoth Ur Hunn bestows on unexpected power and knowledge.

      Dave Hooper is the right-wing nerd fanboys wet dream hero. He is just like them. Our guy is a hardworking family man, approaching 40, and not the specimen he once was. He's estranged from his wife (not his fault of course). Working on the oil rigs as a safety officer involves long shifts away from the family. It's a tough and unforgiving life. And assuaging the loneliness with expensive hookers, hard drugs , junk food and hard liquor is almost a neccessity. So surely junk food fuelled super-strength, super-speed and sekrit lore are just the panacea for Dave's ills. He'll show everyone.

      The Hunn so (subtle JB) are the rightwing scuttlebug USians worst nightmare. Utterly pitiless, brutal and supremely powerful, they can appear almost anywhere without warning, bringing death and destruction with them. And they eat people. And enjoy it. (Oh and they have a rigid power structure, where the elite rule through right of strength, and ther undeclasses know their place)

      So the premise is beautifully set up for the audience. What the audience doesn't realise is that Birmingham is trolling them outrageously. This is the author who, in his 'Axis of Time' trilogy inserted nutjob Australian newspaper columnist and blogger Andrew Bolt as an SAS demoitionist, for the purpose of having him shot in the head (which would have made no difference to the quality of his columns or blogs!). So the text is littered with little nuggets of left wing 'messages', and snide remarks about Goorge W Bush and some key right-wing talking points. Mind you, there's also plenty of off-hand and casual sexism too though, so be warned.

      The story begins with Hooper's hangover hazed encounter with Urgon Htoth Ur Hunn, soon after the barbarous attack of the Hunn on the Hooper's Longreach rig workplace. The explosive beginning is followed by a long and intermittently tedious buildup to a climactic battle in the shanty towns of New Orleans. The interregnum is chiefly concerned with Dave coming to terms with, and learning to use the abiliies and lore which he has acquired, but also addresses his tense interraction with the military authorities who do not know just how to use this strange asset, and it seems might even prefer that he be made to dissappear.

      For me, there is a curious lack of tension though. I just know Dave must prevail. And it also seems that the Hunn, used in the past to terrifying primitive humans, might just be outmatched by any convntional military operation. Boiled leather armour is not likely to be much chop against depleted uranium armour piercing ammunition. The major threat of the Hunn is the random nature of their egress from the UnderRealms. They can do a lot of damage before superior force can be brought to bear. Questions as to why Dave is the chosen one are not addressed, nor the mechanism for power transfer. It is also strange that powers acquired from Batlemaster Urgon should be so superior as to enable Dave to prevail over Urspite Surgoth in the climactic showdown.

      Overall, worth 2.5 stars. Better than the 'Disappearance' series, but not up to the standard of 'Axis of Time'.
    • 5/5
      I originally borrowed the audio book from my library. Loved it so much, that I have now purchased it from audible.com.au.The main character, Dave Hooper, is one that you love to hate. He has a very cocky, chauvantistic attitude, but there is also a good compationate side, though it is not seen very often. I found the concept of the monsters very interesting and the battle that ensues.Sean Mangan, the narrator, does a fantastic job. I really like all the different flictions that he uses for the different characters. He isn't the best with female voices, but I found he did an ok job that did not detract from the story. I liked how the story was action packed with a good fight for humanity. It was a great 1st book for the trilogy and really helps set the scene for next book in the series.
    • 5/5
      Pulp fiction at its best updated for today. Dave is the most unlikely hero and yet you can't help but root for him. He has his faults. Probably more than his share, but when the Monsters break through he doesn't hesitate to step in. Even when he has no idea what he is doing. Book two is out already and book three comes out later this month. Count me in for reading them!
    • 3/5
      Hmmm. I'm really not sure what I thought of this. The story is either truly horrific or a fun romp (with lots of gore and ichor), depending on how deeply you deal with it. The protagonist is my real problem with it - he's a loser. He'd tell you he was a hard-luck man, but he makes bad choices, is contrite over them...and then makes the same (or similar) bad choices again. Loser, in my book. He hasn't yet seriously screwed up in his new life, he's only fretting about what he'd screwed up before (his marriage, including kids; the IRS; drugs and booze and hookers; etc). But my impression is that he's going to screw up in his new life too, it just doesn't happen in this book. Also neither he nor anyone else has any clue what is going on for 90% of the book - Dave knows all about the monsters (daemon), but that doesn't help with what's happening and why. Also the fact that he knows about the monsters is one of the big questions. And Lucille is another - what was with the attack of weakness? Dave has no idea how to handle the physical aspects of his change, let alone the rest of it. The book ends...not on a cliffhanger, but with only minor arcs concluded; it's not just set up for a series, it stops in the middle and the next book is necessary for understanding. I'm not sure, at this moment, whether I'll bother to read the next book, though. It is a step above most of the "men's adventure" stories I've encountered, though - Dave does try to control himself sexually. He's thinking about it, with both heads, but the rational one rules. So far, anyway. In this ARC - unedited - there are a lot of minor errors; most of them are punctuation or capitalization, though I think there was one missing word (a "not", unfortunately, which kind of messes up the sentence it doesn't appear in). Aside from that, nothing major, though non-capitalized names are a bit confusing. Hopefully they'll be caught on the final edit pass. Received through NetGalley in return for a review.
    • 5/5
      Dave's my man. Degenerate, depraved, drunken, drugged. So spaced out he doesn't really focus on the ogre in the room till he kills it. And that's when the trouble starts.This nicely balanced tale of Dave the Ogre killer and the people around him who are (mostly) believable and real, which is a refreshing change in a world of fantasy stereotypes.I received a review copy of "Emergence: Dave vs. the Monsters" by John Birmingham (Random House – Del Rey Spectra) through NetGalley.com.
    • 3/5
      i had no idea this was a science fiction monster book with Dave the super hero , i didn't want to finish it when i found this out , but it got the better of me and had to , way too far fetched with talking monsters from the deep and superhuman powers from Dave the rigging engineer and his talking weapon - different but wont be reading any more of this series
    • 2/5
      I guess John Birmingham felt that his previous work was insufficiently on the nose for the white male power fantasy market? If this book has a thesis, here it is: “Dave Hooper flew, and the city passed beneath him. Failed husband, absent father, wastrel, and asshole, he flew through the night air …. Beneath his boots slipped the rusted roofs of the shotgun shacks and cinder block apartments, some of them slumped and all but tumbled down, others maintained with the best of intentions in the face of the crushing, relentless weight that bore down every day on those millions of people, those countless millions, who lived at the bottom of the heap. Dave Hooper flew over them all.”The protagonist is a cheating jerk who spends his money, literally, on hookers and blow instead of supporting his two young sons or paying his taxes. He is also the chief safety officer for a drill rig drilling further under the ocean than anyone’s ever gone. When monsters invade the rig, he’s the only one who fights back, and in the process somehow takes on the lead monster’s knowledge, as well as gaining incredible powers of healing, strength, speed, vertical leap (63 feet!), and sexual prowess to go with his suddenly hot bod, such that blonde military nurses throw themselves at him. Although he was an abused child and can’t help thinking in racist, sexist terms, he knows that’s not okay, and fundamentally he is a good guy whose prowess is needed to save us all from monster invasion. (At this point even John Ringo may be saying OH JOHN BIRMINGHAM NO.) Also there are a lot of brand references I found distracting, though in fairness I don’t mind when Stephen King does it, so I could just be looking for icing on the cake. Many people react badly to Mary Sues; I occasionally do myself, when I’m not there for her. But give her credit: Mary Sue is rarely a tax-dodging bad dad before she enters the narrative and rearranges it to suit herself. (P.S.: Another book with the same title, David Palmer’s Emergence, is a highly enjoyable Mary Sue in which a pubescent genius survives the viral apocalypse and then saves the world. I loved it as a teen, though I suspect it holds up less well in adulthood, judging by my reaction to the 2008 sequel, which I recently tracked down.) I feel like there’s a material difference between older John Wayne type male power fantasies and ones I see now: the older heroes were isolated from society; they might have broken women’s hearts, but they didn’t present as ongoing failed attempts to participate in society the way guys like Birmingham’s protagonist do, or the white guy on The Strain (who was also failing his kid) or even John Travolta’s character in Face Off (likewise). There’s a lot to be said about the change from the fantasy “failing as a partner is okay because you are really a hero underneath” to “failing as a father is okay because ditto,” though I’m not sure I can say anything but that I find it depressing. If you can suppress your urge to guffaw, this is a briskly executed power fantasy, but I liked his earlier work better because it wasn’t so specifically directed at an id that is not mine.
    • 4/5
      Emergence is a darkly funny, action packed fantasy adventure from Australian author John Birmingham.An oil rig off of the coast of New Orleans is under attack, not from terrorists, but from a group of terrifying monsters who have clawed their way up from the deep. Dave Hooper, the rig’s safety engineer, is hungover and pissed when he finds a hairless, scabrous ape like creature that calls itself a Hunn snacking on the ribcage of his best mate and in a fit of rage crushes its skull with a splitting maul. Hours later he wakes in hospital and discovers his battle with the monster has somehow triggered super hero like abilities… and now Dave must save the world.Dave Hooper is an anti-hero, who works hard but plays even harder. He takes his job seriously but he spends his downtime partying with hookers and blow, dodging the IRS and calls from his wife’s divorce attorney. He is a lousy father with a crude vocabulary and politically incorrect opinions. Dave is not a man you could expect to count on, but the world it seems will have little choice.The fast paced, explosive action sees the military struggling against the frenzied attack of an advance troop of Hunn as they storm their way through the tears in the veil and set upon New Orleans unprepared citizens. It has been centuries since the Hunn last roamed the earth and they don’t expect any resistance from mankind so they are dismissive of what they encounter, for though armed only with primitive weapons and basic armour, the Hunn possess enormous strength, speed and thick hides. As New Orleans threatens to become overrun by the man eating demons, Dave is forced to step up and vanquish the Hunn back to the Underworld.Emergence won’t appeal to everyone but I found it richly imaginative, hugely entertaining and inappropriately hilarious. I’m looking forward to Dave Hooper’s next adventure in Resistance.