Release Week: The Mongoliad, Tricked, The Dark Tower, Blackbirds, Robert Silverberg, and more

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Release Week: The Mongoliad, Tricked, The Dark Tower, Blackbirds, Robert Silverberg, and more

Posted on 2012-04-25 at 02:32 by Sam

Well, the release week for Tuesday, April 24, 2012 is not messing around. There are two dozen+ new audiobooks, including a pretty big list of big titles.

The Mongoliad: The Foreworld Saga, Book 1 By Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, Mark Teppo, E. D. deBirmingham, Erik Bear, Joseph Brassey, and Cooper Moo, Narrated by Luke Daniels for Brilliance Audio — concurrent with its print and e-book publication from Amazon’s 47North, this is the first novel to come out of the serial novel project “The Mongoliad”, of which I’ve been a subscriber but which I haven’t followed terrifically closely since about chapter 5 or 6. I’m about 3/4 of the way through the audiobook at this point thanks to receiving a review copy, and Daniels (with whom I am familiar after his world on the Wild Cards anthologies and Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid Chronicles) employs a wide variety of voices to bring the motley cast of Christendom’s champions to audio; from Hungarians to Italians and Irishmen, to Germans and onwards east to their opponents in Mongolia. The much-awaited “sword porn” — meticulously researched and choreographed martial combat — appeared in the form of an impressive gladiatorial contest about halfway through. I’ll have more thoughts on this fairly short (13 hrs and 17 mins) novel soon:

 

Tricked: The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book 4 By Kevin Hearne, Narrated by Luke Daniels for Random House Audio — speaking of Daniels’s work on Hearne’s series, here’s the 4th installment of the Arizona-dwelling Druid Atticus O’Sullivan, concurrent with its print and e-book release from Del Rey. Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins.

The Wind Through the Keyhole: The Dark Tower By Stephen King, Narrated by the author for Simon & Schuster Audio — billed as “Book 4.5” of King’s The Dark Tower series, it’s another shorter audiobook at 10 hrs and 29 mins, and one which has already been reviewed quite positively over at The Guilded Earlobe. Here’s the publisher’s pitch: “King has returned to the rich landscape of Mid-World. This story within a story within a story finds Roland Deschain, Mid-World’s last gunslinger, in his early days during the guilt-ridden year following his mother’s death. Sent by his father to investigate evidence of a murderous shape-shifter, a “skin-man”, Roland takes charge of Bill Streeter, a brave but terrified boy who is the sole surviving witness to the beast’s most recent slaughter.”

 

Blackbirds By Chuck Wendig, Narrated by Emily Beresford for Angry Robot on Brilliance Audio — 8 hrs and 7 mins — yet another non-doorstop-length novel, also already reviewed, and also quite positively, by The Guilded Earlobe. (Bob, do you ever sleep?!) Publisher’s pitch: “Miriam Black knows when you will die. Still in her early twenties, she’s foreseen hundreds of car crashes, heart attacks, strokes, suicides, and slow deaths by cancer. But when Miriam hitches a ride with truck driver Louis Darling and shakes his hand, she sees that in thirty days he will be gruesomely murdered while he calls her name.Miriam has given up trying to save people; that only makes their deaths happen. No matter what she does, she can’t save Louis. But if she wants to stay alive, she’ll have to try.” Wendig is quite worth following on Twitter, by the way; his piece on Lady Gaga should be required reading for the new millennium. Update: Wendig wrote up his “Big Idea” (hint: “Everybody poops. Everybody dies.”) for Scalzi’s Whatever blog.

Lastly (well, above the fold at least) is the release of seven (seven!) audiobooks from Robert Silverberg, all out from Audible Frontiers, split between two narrators. First, the new audiobooks read by Stefan Rudnicki: Tower of Glass (8 hrs and 2 mins), The Stochastic Man (7 hrs and 13 mins), The Book of Skulls (8 hrs and 14 mins), and Dying Inside (7 hrs and 31 mins).

 

Second, the audiobooks read by Paul Boehmer: The World Inside (7 hrs and 51 mins), Up the Line, and Shadrach in the Furnace (10 hrs and 41 mins).

ALSO OUT TUESDAY:

OUT EARLIER THIS WEEK:

SEEN BUT NOT HEARD:

NEXT WEEK (May 1):

TWO WEEKS (May 8):

THREE WEEKS (May 15):

FOUR WEEKS (May 22):

FIVE WEEKS (May 29):

Posted in regular, Release Week | Tagged blackbirds, chuck wendig, kevin hearne, neal stephenson, release week, robert silverberg, stefan rudnicki, stephen king, the mongoliad