Release Week: Chuck Wendig's Mockingbird, Adam Christopher's Seven Wonders, and Lee Battersby's The Corpse-Rat King

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Release Week: Chuck Wendig's Mockingbird, Adam Christopher's Seven Wonders, and Lee Battersby's The Corpse-Rat King

Posted on 2012-08-29 at 14:29 by Sam

Monday’s haul easily crossed the threshhold to put together the “earlier this week” releases, including several Stanislaw Lem novels (including Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age), the much-lauded self-published sf series Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1 - 5) By Hugh Howey, and Briarpatch By Tim Pratt (narrated by this blog’s own Dave Thompson). Meanwhile it’s a big Tuesday (August 28, 2012) for Angry Robot on Brilliance Audio.

Mockingbird By Chuck Wendig, Narrated by Emily Beresford for Angry Robot on Brilliance Audio — Length:9 hrs and 4 mins —after Blackbirds earlier this year, reviewed very warmly by The Guilded Earlobe. Here:Miriam is trying. Really, she is. But this whole “settling down thing” that Louis has going for her just isn’t working out. She lives on Long Beach Island all year round. Her home is a run-down double-wide trailer. She works at a grocery store as a check-out girl. And her relationship with Louis - who’s on the road half the time in his truck - is subject to the piss and vinegar Miriam brings to everything she does. Still, she’s keeping her psychic ability - to see when and how someone is going to die just by touching them - in check. But even that feels wrong, somehow. Like she’s keeping a tornado stoppered up in a tiny bottle. Then comes one bad day that turns it all on her ear.”

 

Seven Wonders By Adam Christopher, Narrated by Nick Podehl for Angry Robot on Brilliance Audio — Length:14 hrs and 37 mins — after his debut novel Empire State: A Novel early this year, Christopher takes another look at superhero fiction with his follow-up: Tony Prosdocimi lives in the bustling Metropolis of San Ventura – a city gripped in fear, a city under siege by the hooded supervillain, The Cowl. When Tony develops super-powers and acts to take down The Cowl, however, he finds that the local superhero team Seven Wonders aren’t as grateful as he assumed they’d be….”

The Corpse-Rat King By Lee Battersby Narrated by Michael Page for Angry Robot on Brilliance Audio — Length:11 hrs and 19 mins — Page is the award-winning narrator of (among many other titles) Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora and here takes on:Marius dos Hellespont and his apprentice, Gerd, are professional looters of battlefields. When they stumble upon the corpse of the King of Scorby and Gerd is killed, Marius is mistaken for the monarch by one of the dead soldiers and is transported down to the Kingdom of the Dead. Just like the living citizens, the dead need a king - after all, the king is God’s representative, and someone needs to remind God where they are. And so it comes to pass that Marius is banished to the surface with one message: If he wants to recover his life he must find the dead king. Which he fully intends to do. Just as soon as he stops running away.”

 

Yeah, I mentioned it Monday, but once more with feeling: Briarpatch By Tim Pratt, Narrated by Dave Thompson — Length:10 hrs and 9 mins — “Darrin’s life has been going downhill ever since his girlfriend Bridget walked out on him without a word of explanation six months ago. Soon after losing her, he lost his job, and his car, and eventually his enthusiasm for life. He can’t imagine things getting worse - until he sees Bridget again, for the first time since she walked out, just moments before she leaps to her death from a bridge. In his quest to find out why Bridget took her own life, he encounters a depressive (and possibly immortal) cult leader; a man with a car that can drive out of this world and into others; a beautiful psychotic with a chrome shotgun; and a bridge that, maybe, leads to heaven. Darrin’s journey leads him into a place called the Briarpatch, which is either the crawlspace of the universe, or a series of ambitious building projects abandoned by god, or a tangle of alternative universes, depending on who you ask. Somewhere in that disorderly snarl of worlds, he hopes to find Bridget again.”

Also, there’s a new GraphicAudio title out this month that catches my eye. It’s The Highwayman, the first installment of The Saga of the First King by R.A. Salvatore, with part 2 coming in September and part 3 coming in October:

ALSO OUT TUESDAY: EARLIER THIS WEEK: See Monday’s release day roundup, including several Stanislaw Lem novels (including Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age), the much-lauded self-published sf series Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1 - 5) By Hugh Howey, and Briarpatch By Tim Pratt (narrated by this blog’s own Dave Thompson).

SEEN BUT NOT HEARD:

LATER THIS WEEK:
  • Legion, by Brandon Sanderson (August 31, Subterranean) — while I’m unsure if the audio will be released simultaneously, I know the recording is “in the can” from Oliver Wyman
  • Collection: No Sharks in the Med and Other Stories by Brian Lumley (Subterranean, Aug 31)
  • Teen: Zeuglodonby James Blaylock (Subterranean Press, Aug 31) — “set in the world envisioned in James Blaylock’s The Digging Leviathan”
  • Clockwork Angels by Kevin J. Anderson, read by Neal Peart for Brilliance Audio (Sep 1) — Peart reading the novelization by Anderson for Peart’s concurrently releasing Rush album
  • Collection: Near + Far by Cat Rambo (Hydra House, September 1, 2012)
NEXT WEEK (Sep 4):
  • The Dirty Streets of Heaven: Volume One of Bobby Dollarby Tad Williams (Sep 4, DAW Hardcover) — one of my favorite authors for his fantasy series “Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn”, Williams turns to urban fantasy and is getting rave reviews:  “When I heard that Tad Williams was writing an urban fantasy novel, I got all tingly. Now I’ve read it, and it’s even better than I’d dared to hope. It’s snarky, fast-paced, and above all, original. You should be tingly, too.” (Patrick Rothfuss, New York Times bestselling author of The Name of the Wind) — no audio news, sadly
  • Monstrous Beauty by Elizabeth Fama (FS&G, September 4) — “Fierce, seductive mermaid Syrenka falls in love with Ezra, a young naturalist. When she abandons her life underwater for a chance at happiness on land, she is unaware that this decision comes with horrific and deadly consequences.”
  • The Kingmakers by Clay and Susan Griffith (Pyr, September 4) — the conclusion of their Vampire Empire series which began with 2010’s The Greyfriar and 2011’s The Rift Walker — book one came to audio earlier this year from Buzzy Multimedia, read by James Marsters, and the remaining books will be coming along eventually
  • The Fractal Prince by Hannu Rajaniemi (Tor UK, Sep 4, 2012) — Tor US release in October
  • Non-Fiction: Punk: An Aesthetic by Jon Savage, William Gibson, Linder Sterling and Johan Kugelberg (Rizzoli, Sep 4, 2012) — this “heavily illustrated” book is not a good match for audio, but it’s on my list anyway, well, because Gibson and punk. So there.
  • Short: Two Ravens and One Crow: An Iron Druid Chronicles Novella by Kevin Hearne (Del Rey, Sep 4)
  • Teen: Origin by Jessica Khoury (Razorbill, Sep 4)
  • Teen: Blackwood by Gwenda Bond (Strange Chemistry, Sep 4)
  • Ashes of Honor (October Daye, #6) by Seanan McGuire (Brilliance Audio, September 6, 2012)
  • Anthology: Dark Faith: Invocations edited by Maurice Broaddus and Jerry Gordon (Apex Publications, September 6, 2012) — the second anthology in this series after the well-received Dark Faith
  • The City’s Son by Tom Pollock (Flux Books, Sep 8 — originally published in the UK by Jo Fletcher Books in August) — a PW-starred review urban fantasy set in modern London
TWO WEEKS (Sep 11): THREE WEEKS (Sep 18):
  • The Forge of Darkness by Steven Erikson (Tor, Sep 18)  — begins a new trilogy “that takes place millennia before the events of the Malazan Book of the Fallen and introduces readers to Kurald Galain, the warren of Darkness.”
  • Midst Toil and Tribulation (Safehold) by David Weber (Tor, Sep 18)
  • Collection: Beautiful Sorrows by Mercedes M. Yardley (Shock Totem Press, Sep 22)
FOUR WEEKS (Sep 25):
  • Alchemystic by Anton Strout (Ace, Sep 25) — Book One of The Spellmason Chronicles — “Alexandra Belarus is a struggling artist living in New York City, even though her family is rich in real estate, including a towering Gothic Gramercy Park building built by her great-great-grandfather. But the truth of her bloodline is revealed when she is attacked on the street and saved by an inhumanly powerful winged figure.”
  • Bad Glass by Richard E. Gropp (Del Rey, Sep 25) — winner of the Del Rey/Suvudu Writing Contest from the author of the powerful 2011 short story “Filling up the Void
JUST ADDED TO THE LONG-RANGE RADAR:

The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson (Tachyon, November 1, 2012) — a short novel / long novella set in the same world as Sanderson’s novelElantris.

Posted in regular, Release Week | Tagged adam christopher, angry robot, chuck wendig, graphicaudio, RA Salvatore, release week, the corpse-rat king