Only things is, the place Ares is is called Hades! It's a place that many Hell Divers have dived into but none have returned. When The Hive receive an SOS call from Ares, they have no choice but to go to the coordinates they sent. They dive down and retrieve power cells to keep the ships afloat. A team of people known as Hell Divers, are the only ones who can scavenge things from earth. The 2 remaining airships, Ares and The Hive, are outdated and held together with items that they scavenge. Hundreds of years later and humanity is barely hanging on.

There is only a wasteland there that is radioactive and uninhabitable. They relentlessly search the globe for somewhere they can inhabit and rebuild but the world as we knew it is gone. Years after World War III poisoned the planet, the remaining humans all live in air ships floating above the ground.

How the hell this book was sitting with five stars when I spent my credit on it is a mystery to me so take my advice, don't waste your time or money on this. The worst part about this book is there are some good ideas hidden away behind all the tropes but the execution sucked.

I didn't enjoy any of the characters in this book, nothing they said connected with me and nothing they did excited me. None of the dialogue is really good and the characters saying said dialogue are all flat, boring and for the most part unlikeable. Now, 80s action dialogue I can handle with just the right amount of cheese and self deprecation but this book takes itself way too seriously which unfortunately sucks all the tension out of scenarios and replacing it with a few audible groans of despair. Once you get over that edgy hurdle you then come to the dialogue which has a flair of 80s action movie to it. That's his name, I'm honestly being serious, unless of course on a mission where he prefers to be referred to as Commander X. For starters the main character is literally called 'X' for well over 90% of the book. Despite its exciting premise Hell Divers never manages to grip you, the first chapter really sets the tone for the rest of the book clichéd and cringe worthy. I've never reviewed an audiobook other than the standard star system but with this one I felt the need to share my thoughts.

Hell Divers by Nicholas Sansbury Smith