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  • Federal Underground

  • Penn Mitchell's Ancient Alien Saga, Book 1
  • By: Jeff Bennington
  • Narrated by: Andrew Tell
  • Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
  • 3.8 out of 5 stars (5 ratings)
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Federal Underground cover art

Federal Underground

By: Jeff Bennington
Narrated by: Andrew Tell
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Summary

Penn Mitchell vanishes from the NYU campus and shows up three months later on his mother's doorstep with a book screaming to get out of his head. When the FBI discovers the novel discloses top-secret information, they bring Penn in for questioning.

The interrogation goes sideways and Penn escapes into a subterranean world he thought was a figment of his imagination, a world where the US government is hiding, and at war with, an ancient race that has existed since the dawn of time.

©2016 Jeff Bennington (P)2018 Jeff Bennington

What listeners say about Federal Underground

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Listener received this title free

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Phew, that went a fast pace once you had been introduced to the main characters. I really enjoyed it, and it linked many concepts together with ease.
I found it very easy to listen to, and hard to turn off. I enjoyed the writing, I have looked at the other books written already, a put some in the wish list. Narration was an easy flow, and did justice to the writing.
I did receive the book for an honest review, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I will be purchasing more.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Teeth, telepathy and claws.

The concept of this book is such a good one: a young aspiring author is kidnapped, missing for three months, then mysteriously arrives back at his home with no memory of what had happened in the intervening time. But nightmares start him writing and he published his resulting book, Federal Underground, to great acclaim and success, a story of government complicity and betrayal of the people to an abominable alien culture living beneath the ground. When arrested and questioned by the FBI, he is astonished to learn that certain parts of his fictional story are verifiably true and not just from his immagine. Escaping, Penn is taken into the nightmare world he had thought was all in his head.

Great idea with an intriguing introduction. But then it rather falls apart. Although the writing style is good and easy to read, the book is not straightforward, with apparent side stories liberally littering the earlier parts before Penn, the author, is ever introduced. The constant switching between characters, place and time is both irritating and confusing. After Penn's escape from custody, the story line becomes more coherent, concentrating on what happened to him and what he saw. But here again, the description, though good, for some reason did not conjure up a coherent picture for this reader apart from some vague memories of certain Christian art, and it seemed inexplicable that, with all the powers ascribed to them, those beneath the ground could not do better. Ah, well....

Apart from that, main protagonist characterisations were reasonable, if not particularly sympathetic. It was certainly an action filled book, especially in it's second half, but even with all disbelief suspended, the amount of time simply spent running seemed unrealistic. My thanks to the rights holder of Federal Underground who freely gifted me a copy, at my request, via Audiobook Boom. The narration by Andrew Tell was excellent, with individual voicings for each protagonist and the text read clearly with understang, good pace and intonation. Without his input, I would have been hard pressed to finish.
The book is complete of itself but the ending suggests more stories to come. I am undecided if I would continue to book two. Yes, I am still intrigued by the author/book idea but not as it was presented in this version of Federal Underground.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Myth mixing with sci-fi conspiracy thriller

A university student vanishes for several months and when he returns he is having dreams that he needs to get out in the form of a fantastic tale that involves parts of the government colluding with an ancient subterranean race, but we soon learn that it is more than just a story.

This book is an interesting fictional take on the kind of ideas that crop up regularly in conspiracy theories that the author has used to craft a thriller with scifi trappings, besides the aforementioned Penn Mitchell, the most prominent character is FBI Agent Liz Ramsey who recognises one of the characters in Penn's book as her supposedly dead husband and wants to know more about where Penn got the information for his book.

The narrator of this book gave a good performance, nicely enhancing the overall story, giving the main characters suitably distinctive tones without going too far with them.

Overall, this book left things in an interesting position and I will look forward to seeing where the author goes in subsequent books.

[Note - I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.]

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A great premise well delivered!

I love the idea of a race living below us that our government have managed out of the history books that equally surpasses us in technology. I like our main character he;s innocent but with a moral strength that really comes out by the end. I like the book within a book type idea that we get delivered.

Great characters all round. A really decent bad guy in terms of the race of Nephilim and I also really like this very new idea of what they are.

I enjoyed the narration, a good voice giving decent pace to the story and identifying each character nicely.

Very, very enjoyable. It's very much a stand alone story with the ease of being the first book in a saga which I also like. I hate having to wait for the next book.

This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review

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