Tom Clancy’s The Division: Hearts on Fire

When Ubisoft's The Division first came out in 2016, people believed that it was simply another video game that allowed you to work as a special agent fighting back the apocalypse due to a virus. Yet, hindsight can be a pain, as post-2020, with its wealth of mass shootings, misinformation, and constant fear of the end times, made us realize that the world of The Division may not be as far off from reality as we once thought.

With that said, one does not have to be a fan or even have played the game in order to grasp what is going on. Because this book centers on the first wave of Division agents (you play the second wave in the video game), the author is kind enough to include the events of a virus happening before our eyes in the form of a montage. This can make for an excellent book to read if you are thinking about purchasing the game for yourself or even are away from the game for a time, and just want that post-apocalyptic fix.

There are also plenty of other things that make this book one of the best books I have read this year.

One of the best elements of this novel is the voice acting and production. No expense is spared as the voice actors go all out when needed. They properly show the emotion of leaving a family member behind or the thought of killing a random person on the street for survival. This coupled with the sounds and music from the game allows the listener to be fully engulfed in the world of New York at the time of The Division, making for an excellent atmospheric setting where you totally buy that this could happen in the not-too-distant future.

I also enjoyed the story. The characters are believable enough, and the voice actors are talented enough, that I didn't mind the slightly cliched story in the slightest. We have our main character, Melanie is recruited by the Joint Task Force (JTF) to become a sort of minute man of the 21st century. Another way to think of them is as a kind of sleeper agent who comes into action when all else fails to retain some semblance of law and order until help arrives. She hopes she will never have to use her skills until one day when a virus ravages the country, spreading all throughout New York City. She tries to get into contact with her family, including her sister, Johanna, a military veteran, now a cleaner for the city. But as the city begins to fall into ruin, both are called to separate sides of the conflict, and they both will have to fight for their lives, and what they believe is at stake.

The characterization here is very well done, especially Johanna's. She goes on the side of the ‘Cleaners', a group of former janitors, garbage disposal workers, and others who see the only way to cure the people of the virus is to ‘clean' up those infected by burning them, whether they are dead or alive. We see much of Johanna's characterization come right out of the 2020 Anti-government playbook, but it is made believable by the cast, and (truth be told) the reader's own imagination. This, coupled with the other actors helps to see her descent into madness, as Melanie tries to stop her. This makes for a fascinating story, regardless of if I thought the plot was a tad cliche or not.

As for issues with this book, well, there are just a few small issues I could not help noticing while listening to this audiobook.

One would be the plot. It is a bit of a cliche, as we see the two sisters fight on multiple occasions, with the final fight culminating in a showdown climatic battle where, if one fails, then many innocent people could die. This was something I noticed, but the production was so good, that I ended up not minding as much as I could have.

On the production note, I have a bone to pick with whoever did the sound design. The problem I have with it is how they made guns sound. If you listen to well-done sound design regarding guns in a game or movie, you should get a basic idea of what the gun is (handgun, rifle, etc.) and where it is in relation to a certain character. In the HBO series Band of Brothers, for instance, you quickly understand where what type of gun is positioned, and how it sounds in relation to what kind of environment it is in (a bunker vs outside in the open air, for example). For this series, however, the audio mixer failed in this regard. The gunshots here all sound the same, whether they were supposed to be a pistol or rifle, from far away or from our POV character. Normally, I wouldn't harp on this, but it seems like such a wasted opportunity, to have such great voice talent and environmental sounds mixed in with cheap gun effects.

Overall though, these are just a few issues that I had with the production, and the story dwarfs the enjoyment I had with this audiobook. If you are looking for something fun to read in between more serious books, then I would say that this would be a good choice. I give it a five out of five.