Release Week: Brent Weeks, Kameron Hurley, Adam McOmber, Olaf Stapledon, CJ Cherryh, and more

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Release Week: Brent Weeks, Kameron Hurley, Adam McOmber, Olaf Stapledon, CJ Cherryh, and more

Posted on 2012-09-12 at 14:07 by Sam

The second release week of September still shows no sign of Brandon Sanderson’s Legion, read by Oliver Wyman; but I’m sure it’s coming soon. Not that I’m hitting reload that often…

The Blinding Knife: Black Prism, Book 2 By Brent Weeks, Narrated by Simon Vance for Hachette Audio — Series: Lightbringer, Book 2 — Length: 23 hrs and 48 mins — I haven’t gotten to book one of this series yet, The Black Prism (narrated by Cristofer Jean) but have heard quite a lot of good things about both Lightbringer and Weeks’ previous series, the Night Angel Trilogy. Here: “Gavin Guile is dying. He’d thought he had five years left - now he has less than one. With 50,0000 refugees, a bastard son, and an ex-fiancée who may have learned his darkest secret, Gavin has problems on every side. All magic in the world is running wild and threatens to destroy the Seven Satrapies. Worst of all, the old gods are being reborn, and their army of color wights is unstoppable. The only salvation may be the brother whose freedom and life Gavin stole 16 years ago.”

 

God’s War: Bel Dame Apocrypha, Book 1 By Kameron Hurley, Narrated by Emily Bauer for Audible Frontiers — Series: Bel Dame Apocrypha, Book 1 — Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins — When Book 2 (Infidel) was released last week, I hoped it was a good sign that God’s War would also be coming to audio. On Jeff VanderMeer’s a dozen of the year’s best, nominated for a Nebula Award, a finalist for the Locus Award for Best First Novel, and winner of the Kitchies Golden Tentacle for best debut: “On a ravaged, contaminated world, a centuries-old holy war rages, fought by a bloody mix of mercenaries, magicians, and conscripted soldiers. Though the origins of the war are shady and complex, there’s one thing everybody agrees on - there’s not a chance in hell of ending it. Nyx is a former government assassin who makes a living cutting off heads for cash. But when a dubious deal between her government and an alien gene pirate goes bad, Nyx’s ugly past makes her the top pick for a covert recovery. The head they want her to bring home could end the war—but at what price? The world is about to find out.”

The White Forest By Adam McOmber, Narrated by Susan Duerden — Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins — concurrently in print from Touchstone/Simon & Schuster. “Young Jane Silverlake lives with her father in a crumbling family estate on the edge of Hampstead Heath. Jane has a secret - an unexplainable gift that allows her to see the souls of man-made objects - and this talent isolates her from the outside world. Her greatest joy is wandering the wild heath with her neighbors, Madeline and Nathan. But as the friends come of age, their idyll is shattered by the feelings both girls develop for Nathan, and by Nathan’s interest in a cult led by Ariston Day, a charismatic mystic popular with London’s elite. Day encourages his followers to explore dream manipulation with the goal of discovering a strange hidden world, a place he calls the Empyrean. A year later, Nathan has vanished, and the famed Inspector Vidocq arrives in London to untangle the events that led up to Nathan’s disappearance. As a sinister truth emerges, Jane realizes she must discover the origins of her talent, and use it to find Nathan herself, before it’s too late.” An early review: “A young woman can hear the souls of man-made objects, and they’re not exactly singing happy tunes in McOmber’s Victorian gothic debut.” (Kirkus)

 

Meanwhile, Audible Ltd has published three audiobooks from one of the early masters of science fiction, Olaf Stapledon. With Odd John (1935, Narrated by Nigel Carrington), Last and First Men (1930, Narrated by Stephen Greif), and Star Maker (1937, Narrated by Andrew Wincott) three books exploring both science fiction and the implications to humanity of those fictions are now in audio.

ALSO OUT TUESDAY:

EARLIER THIS WEEK:
  • The Whitefire Crossing: The Shattered Sigil, Book 1 By Courtney Schafer, Narrated by Andy Caploe for Audible Frontiers — Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins — Published in print in 2011 — “Dev is a smuggler with the perfect cover. He’s in high demand as a guide for the caravans that carry legitimate goods from the city of Ninavel into the country of Alathia. The route through the Whitefire Mountains is treacherous, and Dev is one of the few climbers who knows how to cross them safely. With his skill and connections, it’s easy enough to slip contraband charms from Ninavel - where any magic is fair game, no matter how dark - into Alathia, where most magic is outlawed.”
  • Lord of Mountains: A Novel of the Change By S. M. Stirling, Narrated by Todd McLaren — Series: Emberverse, Book 9 — Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
  • The Magus (1965) By John Fowles, Narrated by Nicholas Boulton for Naxos — Length: 26 hrs and 19 mins — in David Pringle’s Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels, and “a literary landmark of the 1960s. Nicholas Urfe goes to a Greek island to teach at a private school and becomes enmeshed in curious happenings at the home of a mysterious Greek recluse, Maurice Conchis. Are these events, involving attractive young English sisters, just psychological games, or an elaborate joke, or more? Reality shifts as the story unfolds.”

SEEN BUT NOT HEARD:

LATER THIS WEEK: NEXT WEEK (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)
  • Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff (Thomas Dunne, Sep 18 — Tor UK, Sep 1) — via Patrick Rothfuss: “honestly, you had me at ‘Japanese Steampunk.’”
  • YA: Adaptation by Malinda Lo (Little, Brown, Sep 18)
  • The Diviners by Libba Bray (Little, Brown, Sep 18) — audio coming Sep 25 from Listening Library
  • Collection: Beautiful Sorrows by Mercedes M. Yardley (Shock Totem Press, Sep 22)
  • Non-genre: Winter of the World (The Century Trilogy #2) by Ken Follett (Sep 18, 2012)
TWO 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.”
  • Crown Thief by David Tallerman (Angry Robot, Sep 25)
  • 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”
  • Dodger by Terry Pratchett (HarperCollins, Sep 25) — audio coming Oct 1 from Isis
  • The Wrong Goodbye by Chris F. Holm (Angry Robot, Sep 25) — sequel to Dead Harvest — “Because of his efforts to avert the Apocalypse, Sam Thornton has been given a second chance – provided he can stick to the straight-and-narrow.”
  • Bad Glass by Richard E. Gropp (Del Rey, Sep 25) — author of an excellent short story “Filling up the Void” in Daily Science Fiction last year, here: “Something has happened in Spokane. The military has evacuated the city and locked it down.”
  • The Mongoliad: Book Two (The Foreworld Saga) by Neil Stephenson, Greg Bear, Mark Teppo, et al. (47North, Brilliance Audio, Sep 25)
  • The Hallowed Ones by Laura Bickle (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Sep 25) — “Katie is on the verge of her Rumspringa, the time in Amish life when teenagers can get a taste of the real world. But the real world comes to her in this dystopian tale with a philosophical bent. Rumors of massive unrest on the “Outside” abound. Something murderous is out there. Amish elders make a rule: No one goes outside, and no outsiders come in.”
  • Fiction: The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling (Little, Brown, Sep 27)
  • Ecko Rising by Danie Ware (September 28th 2012 by Titan Books)
  • Collection: Don’t Pay Bad for Bad & Other Stories by Amos Tutuola (Cheeky Frawg, “late September”) — A selection of previously uncollected and rare tales by the Nigerian master storyteller. Blurbed by Nnedi Okorafor. Introduction by Tutuola’s son and afterword by Matthew Cheney. (E-book only.)
  • Space Is Just a Starry Night, a collection of short fiction by Tanith Lee (Aqueduct, September 2012)
THREE WEEKS (Oct 2):
  • The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente  (Feiwel & Friends, October 2, 2012)
  • Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow (Tor, Oct 2) — audio coming Oct 9 from Listening Library — “Trent McCauley is sixteen, brilliant, and obsessed with one thing: making movies on his computer by reassembling footage from popular films he downloads from the net. In the dystopian near-future Britain where Trent is growing up, this is more illegal than ever; the punishment for being caught three times is that your entire household’s access to the internet is cut off for a year, with no appeal.”
  • Ironskin (Ironskin, #1) by Tina Connolly (Tor, Oct 2) — audio coming narrrated by the wonderful Rosalyn Landor (Joan Slonczewski’s A Door Into Ocean)
  • This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It by David Wong (St. Martin’s, Oct 2) — coming to audio from Brilliance Audio — sequel to John Dies at the End
FOUR WEEKS (Oct 9):
  • The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture, #10) by Iain M. Banks (Orbit and Hachette Audio, Oct 9)
  • The Indigo Pheasant (Longing for Yount Volume 2) by Daniel A. Rabuzzi (ChiZine, Oct 9) — follow-up to 2009’s The Choir Boats — “London 1817. Maggie Collins, born into slavery in Maryland, whose mathematical genius and strength of mind can match those of a goddess, must build the world’s most powerful and sophisticated machine - to free the lost land of Yount from the fallen angel Strix Tender Wurm.”
FIVE WEEKS (Oct 16):
  • Only Superhuman by Christopher L. Bennett (Tor, Oct 16) — “2107 AD: A generation ago, Earth and the cislunar colonies banned genetic and cybernetic modifications. But out in the Asteroid Belt, anything goes. Dozens of flourishing space habitats are spawning exotic new societies and strange new varieties of humans. It’s a volatile situation that threatens the peace and stability of the entire solar system.”
  • The Twelve (The Passage, #2) by Justin Cronin (Ballantine, Oct 16) — sequel to The Twelve
SIX WEEKS (Oct 23):
  • Red Country by Joe Abercrombie (Orbit, Oct 23) — “Shy South hoped to bury her bloody past and ride away smiling, but she’ll have to sharpen up some bad old ways to get her family back, and she’s not a woman to flinch from what needs doing. She sets off in pursuit with only a pair of oxen and her cowardly old step father Lamb for company. But it turns out Lamb’s buried a bloody past of his own. And out in the lawless Far Country the past never stays buried.” (emphasis mine…)
SEVEN WEEKS (Oct 30):
  • YA: Ruins by Orson Scott Card, from Brilliance Audio, simultaneously released with the hardcover from Simon Pulse — continuing the story of 2010’s Pathfinder (Simon Pulse, October 30)
  • The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson (Tachyon, Nov 1)
Posted in regular, Release Week | Tagged adam mcomber, brent weeks, CJ Cherryh, junot diaz, kameron hurley, kristine kathryn rusch, michael chabon, olaf stapledon, release week