Higher Institute of Villainous Education: H.I.V.E., Book 1

Perfect listening for 10+ kids....the adventures of Otto Malpense - having been kidnapped and taken to HIVE, to be groomed as a world leader in villainy, kept us thoroughly entertained. I'm 43, my son is 12 and my daughter 10 but the differences in our ages didn't stop us all enjoying this book. Am definately downloading the next.

I listen to audiobooks in the car, it's what I signed up to Audible for, and I've been missing them when I'm driving about with my son in the passenger seat as well.



I bought this one with some trepidation - I actually bought my son the book some time ago and he didn't really get into it, and while I'd heard good things, I worried that maybe he wouldn't get into the audiobook either.



I needn't have worried - the story is excellent, although it's clearly borrowing the basic scenario (special child is surprised into going to secret boarding school for special people) from the Harry Potter books, it's very well executed and quite honestly I've preferred this so far. This could be down to the well-timed humour of Mark Walden's prose, or the great performance by Jack Davenport, whose German accent has me giggling every time, but either way, it's thoroughly enjoyable and means that telling my son we are actually nearly there causes much consternation...

My children aged 9&10 loved listening to this exciting story - it kept them rivetted all the way to Devon and back!
Good narration, excellent story.

Short, but perfectly paced and perfectly narrated by Jack Davenport, HIVE is easy to listen to, and ticks all the supervillain cliches without itself becoming cliche. I plan to listen to more books in the series.

I bought this in order to try to persuade my reluctant-reader son to read more. It worked! We all loved listening to it and once he was hooked on the characters he wolfed down the rest of the series in book form. He then, of course, insisted on downloading all of the others anyway!

Full of genetic tendencies to rule the world and hilarious clichés. It’s read very well by Davenport with various accents that bring the characters to life.

I bought the first book of the series for a long family journey and all of my kids then begged me to buy the next one and then the next one until I had bought all of the series. The whole have all listened to all of the books (at our own pace) and we are all waiting for the last book to be published. One great thing about buying it on audiobook is that all five of us could listen to the series at our own pace and I expect when the final one comes out I would otherwise have to buy five copies of the book!

First story in the "HIVE" series - where the "bad guys" aren't that bad (apart from the REALLY bad guys!). Great series - highly recommended for teenagers & their parents.

Made me want to read the next installments, you can see how that series is going to build. Jack Davenport is a great narrator and brings to life all the different characters.

We listened to this in the car with our 4 children and everyone enjoyed it. We didn't want to stop it when we had to get out the car.