The Long Night (Book 1)

A Family EMP Survival Thriller in a Grid-Down America

By: Alex Bueno

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

THE LIGHTS WENT OUT ON A DECEMBER MORNING. BY MIDNIGHT, AMERICA WAS A DIFFERENT COUNTRY.

For fans of One Second After by William R. Forstchen, Lights Out by David Crawford, and Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel — a relentless real-time techno-thriller about the day the grid died.

December 3rd. 7:00 a.m.

A coordinated cyberattack slips inside two American nuclear power plants. Three hours later, planes are falling out of the sky, hospitals are running on prayer, and President Thomas Lowell is being rushed to Mount Weather. By nightfall the United States is dark from coast to coast — and the people behind the keyboards are only getting started.

In Tampa, the Winter family is split in half before they even understand what's happening.

John, a Medal of Honor veteran turned defense contractor, takes his fifteen-year-old son Jack to a basketball game in Orlando — ninety miles from home. When the attack hits, every car on Interstate 4 dies at once. No phones. No power. No way back. Just a sick boy, an empty highway, and a country that no longer works.

Emily, one of the nation's leading authorities on power-grid vulnerabilities, is on Harbour Island with their seventeen-year-old daughter Sarah when the bridges go silent and the freezers go warm. The woman who spent a career warning Washington that exactly this could happen now has hours — not days — to hold her neighborhood together before panic does it for her.

In the West Wing, Lowell discovers the attack isn't random. It's coordinated. It's foreign. And it's only the opening move of something much, much larger.

For the Winters, the only way home is on foot. The only way to survive is together. The only certainty is that the lights aren't coming back tomorrow.

And it's still only the first night.

Book 1 of 3 in The Long Night Saga. Download now and start the journey.

Great new author.

Fresh take on EMP. A must read for military, preppers, and all those interested in preparedness.

Stands above the crowd in the genre

I’m generally not a fan of virtual voice, but I think it’s either getting better, or I’m getting used to it. Still the usual virtual voice issues of odd inflections are present.

A very good storyline. It was interesting and made me want to get the next book. The story is complex but not overly complicated, has characters who seem like individuals we would like to know, and I usually listen to audio books to help me go to sleep, but this one was hard because it was interesting enough that I would stay awake longer listening to what happens next, so it made it into the “must listen while awake” category, and at the end I was eager to listen to the next book.

And that’s where the virtual voice really threw me off; in the next book virtual voice is a black woman. I was expecting the same virtual voice. Then, I was thinking that it seemed that, if it is virtual voice, shouldn’t the user be able to choose options in the narrator? I prefer a male narrator, just easier on the ears in general. I’m sure I’ll get through on the story but I do NOT like the virtual voice of the narration of the next book.

Gripping!

Absolutely great! A must listen. It is great from beginning to end. Very thorough and well thought out.

virtual voice is awful

The story is decent, if a little disjointed. The dad has a kind of annoying hero complex.

The AI voice is painful... esp with heteronyms. Some odd phrasing and weird word emphasis that is distracting.

I might look for the 2nd book to read... but I'll continue to avoid AI narration.

I do not like the virtual voice.

The virtual voice isn’t right. It says words wrong and the cadence of speech is latent at times. Real narrators should be used!