Release Week: Tobias Buckell's Arctic Rising and M. M. Buckner's The Gravity Pilot

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Release Week: Tobias Buckell's Arctic Rising and M. M. Buckner's The Gravity Pilot

Posted on 2012-03-21 at 13:00 by Sam

It’s another packed week of audiobook releases, with the two biggest books for me both being previously released in hardcover from Tor, and both dealing with near/medium future ecological change: Tobias S. Buckell’s Arctic Rising and M. M. Buckner’s The Gravity Pilot.

ARCTIC RISING: Out in hardcover and e-book from Tor in late February, Buckell’s latest is an ecothriller set in a near future where: “Global warming has transformed the Earth, and it’s about to get even hotter. The Arctic Ice Cap has all but melted, and the international community is racing desperately to claim the massive amounts of oil beneath the newly accessible ocean.” Read by Carolyn Michelle Smith for Audible Frontiers, the audiobook for Arctic Rising comes in at just under 9 hours. It’s my first audiobook from narrator Smith, who thus far (I’m a little more than a third of the way through) has done a very solid job on the mainline narration and for the Nigerian lead, though her Russian and Inuit accents require a little more imagination, and she’s been quite clear and easily distinguishable with several voices for both male and female characters. It’s not my first fiction from Buckell, though it’ll be my longest story of his, after his novellas in both of the METAtropolis anthologies and The Executioness, and a very long list of short stories of his I’ve enjoyed.

 

THE GRAVITY PILOT: Out in hardcover from Tor in March 2011, The Gravity Pilot By M. M. Buckner is Narrated by Jay Snyder for Audible Frontiers. Coming in at 11.5 hours, it’s a title I have been looking for in audio for about a year, and I’m ecstatic that Snyder (among other titles: The Caryatids and Blood of Ambrose) was cast. “It is the polluted and gritty future, saved - sort of - by technofixes. Young skydiver Orr Sitka wants no more from life in future Alaska than he already has: a woman he loves and the chance to dive. When he makes a reckless, record-breaking jump that catapults him into celebrity, he’s courted by corporations that want to exploit his talent to make him a sports media star. The dangerous jump that wins Orr infamy turns out to be a breaking point for his loving girlfriend, Dyce, who is wooed away by a promising job in the thriving underground city of Seattle, a world media center in a crumbling civilization. Separately, Orr and Dyce are sucked into nightmare lives that take a terrible toll on each of them. When Orr learns that Dyce has become addicted to virtual reality, controlled by an eccentric media billionaire and his decadent daughter, he does everything in his power to rescue her. But is Orr strong enough to get through to Dyce and break them both out of hell?”

ALSO OUT TUESDAY:

EARLIER THIS WEEK:
  • Theft of Swords: Riyria Revelations, Book 1 (2011) ByMichael J. Sullivan, Narrated byTim Gerard Reynolds for Recorded Books — 22.5 hours — “Acclaimed author Michael J. Sullivan created instant best sellers with his spellbinding Riyria Revelations series. This first volume introduces Royce Melborn and Hadrian Blackwater, two enterprising thieves who end up running for their lives when they’re framed for the death of the king. Trapped in a conspiracy bigger than they can imagine, their only hope is unraveling an ancient mystery - before it’s too late.”
  • Zombiestan: A Zombie Novel (2011) ByMainak Dhar, Narrated byJohn Lee for Tantor Audio — 6.5 hours — I would likely have overlooked this title, but Lee as narrator gave me pause to look a little deeper — “It began with stories of undead Taliban rampaging through Afghan villages, and faster than anyone could have anticipated, the darkness spreads through the world.”
  • The Fourth Elephant’s Egg: The Hypatomancer’s Tale, Book 3ByRobert Reginald, Narrated byKirby Heyborne
  • The Zombie Combat Manual: A Guide to Fighting the Living DeadByRoger Ma, Narrated byKris Koscheski
  • Teens/Kids: Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener’s Bones: Alcatraz, Book 2 (2008) and Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia: Alcatraz, Book 3ByBrandon Sanderson, Narrated byRamon de Ocampo for Recorded Books — Ocampo reprises his role as narrator from the first book (Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians) in bestselling epic fantasist Sanderson’s series for YA/YR readers
  • Teens/Kids: Waking the Dreamer: Transhuman, Book 1 (2011) ByAndy Kaiser, Narrated byMaxwell Glick for Digital Bits Network, LLC — 3.5 hours — “Tyler Ford is a 13-year-old boy who’s on a family vacation, stuck with his odd and irritating parents and his cool older brother. Tyler meets Eena, a girl who Tyler quickly realizes hides a strange mystery. After a midnight meeting that doesn’t go at all the way he expected, Tyler realizes Eena’s secrets are not just mysterious, but frightening. They are dangerous and supernatural, and thanks to Eena, he is involved whether he wants to be or not. Waking the Dreameris the first book in the Transhuman series, and is for middle-grade and YA listeners interested in science fiction and fantasy.”
  • Teens/Kids: How to Slay a Dragon (2011) ByBill Allen, Narrated byTim Lundeen for Belle Books, Inc. — “Ruuan is a very large dragon. Twelve-year-old Greg Hart can’t slay a dragon. He’d be lucky to win a fight against one of the smaller girls at school. But now the magicians of Myrth have mistaken him for a legendary warrior, so they’ve yanked Greg into their world of sorcery and danger. Nothing will stop the people of Myrth from believing Greg will rescue King Peter’s daughter from Ruuan the dragon. After all, Greg has been named in a prophecy, and no prophecy has ever been wrong before. Until now.”
  • Mysteries/Thrillers: Renaissance: Assassin’s Creed, Book 1 By Oliver Bowden, Narrated by Gildart Jackson for Tantor Audio — 12 hours and 48 minutes — “ Betrayed by the ruling families of Italy, Ezio Auditore embarks upon an epic quest for vengeance. To eradicate corruption and restore his family’s honor, he will learn the art of the Assassins.”
  • Fiction: Parallel Stories: A Novel By Péter Nádas, translated by Imre Goldstein, and Narrated by Arthur Morey for Brilliance Audio — 58 hrs and 48 mins — “In 1989, the year the Wall came down, a university student in Berlin on his morning run finds a corpse on a park bench and alerts the authorities. This scene opens a novel of extraordinary scope and depth, a masterwork that traces the fate of myriad Europeans - Hungarians, Jews, Germans, Gypsies - across the treacherous years of the mid-twentieth century.”
MISSING IN ACTION:

LATER THIS WEEK:

  • The so very, very long-awaited Buzzy Multimedia produced audiobook of Clay and Susan Griffith’s The Greyfriar: Vampire Empire, Book One (Pyr, September 2010) is finally coming, read by James Marsters — reviewed quite positively here by The Guilded Earlobe’s Bob Reiss — official release date is March 22 
  • A Book of Tongues and A Rope of Thorns by Gemma Files, read by Gordon Mackenzie for Iambik — “Two years after the Civil War, Pinkerton agent Ed Morrow has gone undercover with one of the weird West’s most dangerous outlaw gangs-the troop led by “Reverend” Asher Rook, ex-Confederate chaplain turned “hexslinger,” and his notorious lieutenant (and lover) Chess Pargeter. Morrow’s task: get close enough to map the extent of Rook’s power, then bring that knowledge back to help Professor Joachim Asbury unlock the secrets of magic itself.” — The first two books in Files’s Hexslinger series, originally published in print by ChiZine, already available in digital audio directly from Iambik
  • Trash Sex Magic by Jennifer Stevenson, read by Arielle Lipshaw for Iambik — originally published in print by Small Beer Press, already out in digital audio directly from Iambik
  • Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood by Oliver Bowden, read by Gildard Jackson for Tantor Audio
  • Edge of Dark Water by Joe R. Lansdale (Mulholland, Mar 25, 2012) — no audio news

NEXT WEEK (Mar 27):

Posted in regular, Release Week | Tagged arctic rising, mm buckner, release week, the gravity pilot, tobias buckell