Release Week: Nalo Hopkinson's Midnight Robber, and Libba Bray's The Diviners

Release Week: Nalo Hopkinson's Midnight Robber, and Libba Bray's The Diviners

Posted on 2012-09-19 at 13:58 by Sam

The middle of September brings a few audiobooks of interest, but my first thoughts on the week are 1. that I was at first incredibly excited when I saw the new Tad Williams urban fantasy novel The Dirty Streets of Heaven: A Bobby Dollar Novel, Book 1 listed — but then it turned out I wasn’t logged in, so Audible was showing me titles not available in my country, and now I have only the horrible, awful knowledge that the audiobook I want to listen to exists, and yet cannot be sold to me. And 2. That my “seen but not heard” list below includes Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff as well as, more mysteriously to me, Steven Erikson’s Gardens of the Moon, which is out in physical media from Brilliance Audio. First world problems, I know. Still, a long-missing audiobook from Nalo Hopkinson and an anticipated new YA audiobook from Libba Bray make for a week worth listening to. Update: Via @MrsTad I have learned that the US audiobook is in production! Hooray!

My pick in adult sf/f releases this week is Midnight Robber By Nalo Hopkinson, Narrated by Robin Miles for Audible Frontiers. Published in 2000 by Aspect / Warner Books, the book was a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and PKD Award, as well as a nominee for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award: “It’s Carnival time and the Caribbean-colonized planet of Toussaint is celebrating with music, dance, and pageantry. Masked “Midnight Robbers” waylay revelers with brandished weapons and spellbinding words. To young Tan-Tan, the Robber Queen is simply a favorite costume to wear at the festival - until her power-corrupted father commits an unforgiveable crime. Suddenly, both father and daughter are thrust into the brutal world of New Half-Way Tree. Here monstrous creatures from folklore are real, and the humans are violent outcasts in the wilds. Tan-Tan must reach into the heart of myth and become the Robber Queen herself. For only the Robber Queen’s legendary powers can save her life…and set her free.” Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins.

Meanwhile in the “Teen SF/F” listings is the latest from Libba Bray, with her own audio introduction. The Diviners is narrated by January LaVoy for Listening Library: “Evie O’Neill has been exiled from her boring old hometown and shipped off to the bustling streets of New York City - and she is pos-i-tute-ly ecstatic. It’s 1926, and New York is filled with speakeasies, Ziegfeld girls, and rakish pickpockets. The only catch is that she has to live with her uncle Will and his unhealthy obsession with the occult. Evie worries her uncle will discover her darkest secret: a supernatural power that has only brought her trouble so far. But when the police find a murdered girl branded with a cryptic symbol and Will is called to the scene, Evie realizes her gift could help catch a serial killer.” Length: 18 hrs and 14 mins.

• The Well of Tears: A Novel By Roberta Trahan, Narrated by Simon Vance for Brilliance Audio (47North) — Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins — “More than five centuries after Camelot, a new king heralded by prophecy has appeared. As one of the last sorceresses of a dying order sworn to protect the new ruler at all costs, Alwen must answer a summons she thought she might never receive.”
• The Curse: The Belador Code, Book 3 By Sherrilyn Kenyon and Dianna Love, Narrated by Holter Graham for AudioGO — Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
• Red Hood’s Revenge By Jim C. Hines, Narrated by Carol Monda for Audible Frontiers — Length: 11 hrs
• Flu: Flu Series, Book 1 By Wayne Simmons, Narrated by Michael Kramer for Tantor Audio — Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins — I normally wouldn’t have noted a new zombie novel I haven’t heard much about, but being narrated by Michael Kramer (The Wheel of Time, The Alloy of Law, …) will get my attention.
• The Soddit: Or, Let’s Cash in Again By A. R. R. R. Roberts, Narrated by Mark Perry — Length: 4 hrs and 2 mins — you can probably guess what this is going for, without any particular map to Mordor…
• Teen: The Raven Boys By Maggie Stiefvater, Narrated by Will Patton for Scholastic — Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins — “There are only two reasons a nonseer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve,” Neeve said. “Either you’re his true love… or you killed him.”
• Teen: The Crown of Embers: Fire and Thorns, Book 2 By Rae Carson, Narrated by Jennifer Ikeda for Recorded Books — Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
• Teen: What’s Left of Me: The Hybrid Chronicles, Book One By Kat Zhang, Narrated by Kim Mai Guest for Harper Audio — Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins — “Eva and Addie started out the same way as everyone else - two souls woven together in one body, taking turns controlling their movements as they learned how to walk, how to sing, how to dance. But as they grew, so did the worried whispers. Why aren’t they settling? Why isn’t one of them fading? The doctors ran tests, the neighbors shied away, and their parents begged for more time. Finally Addie was pronounced healthy and Eva was declared gone. Except, she wasn’t…”
• Teen: Boneland: The Weirdstone Trilogy, Book 3 By Alan Garner, Narrated by Robert Powell for Naxos — Length: 4 hrs and 59 mins — “Boneland is Alan Garner’s continuation of the story thread which began in his first and enduringly popular fantasy children’s novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, published in 1960, it has never been out of print.”
• Mystery/Thriller: Fallen Masters By John Edward, Narrated by Edoardo Ballerini — Length: 16 hrs and 14 mins — author Edward is an “internationally renowned psychic” of a book billed as a cross between The Shack and Angels and Demons.
• Fiction: Winter of the World: The Century Trilogy, Book 2 By Ken Follett, Narrated by John Lee — Length: 31 hrs and 48 mins

• Sirius By Olaf Stapledon, Narrated by Nigel Carrington for Audible Ltd — Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
• The Last Bastion of the Living: A Futuristic Zombie Novel By Rhiannon Frater, Narrated by Kristin Allison — Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
• The Legacy of Heorot By Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Steven Barnes, Narrated by Tom Weiner for Blackstone Audio — Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins
• The Stepsister Scheme By Jim C. Hines, Narrated by Carol Monda for Audible Frontiers — Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
• Dracula Cha Cha Cha By Kim Newman, Narrated by William Gaminara for Audible Ltd — Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins — I think this is book 3 in Newman’s Anno Dracula series
• Short: The Thing from Lover’s Lane By Nancy Collins, Narrated by Shandon Loring — Length: 1 hr and 2 mins — a Bram Stoker Award nominee

• Collection: The Shape of the Final Dog and Other Stories by Hampton Fatcher (Penguin/Blue Rider Press, Sep 13) — “Collection of 12 stories by the writer best known as the co-screenwriter of Blade Runner.” (Locus Mag)
• Collection: Engraved on the Eye by Saladin Ahmed (Ridan, Sep 13)
• The slant hug o’ time by George Drury Smith (Kitsune Books, Sep 15, 2012)
• Anthology: Tesseracts Sixteen: Parnassus Unbound edited by Mark Leslie (EDGE, Sep 15)
• A Pretty Mouth by Molly Tanzer (Lazy Fascist Press, Sep 16) — “Re-Animator meets The Secret History in this Tale of Sex and Science”
• Turing and Burroughs by Rudy Rucker (Transeal Books, Sep 16) — “What if Alan Turing, founder of the modern computer age, escaped assassination by the secret service to become the lover of Beat author William Burroughs? What if they mutated into giant shapeshifting slugs, fled the FBI, raised Burroughs’s wife from the dead, and tweaked the H-bombs of Los Alamos? A wild beatnik adventure, compulsively readable, hysterically funny, with insane warps and twists—and a bad attitude throughout.”
• The Painted Alphabet: A Mythical Story of Bali by Diana Darling (Sep 16, 2012)
• Midst Toil and Tribulation (Safehold) by David Weber (Tor, Sep 18)
• Anthology: A Book of Horrors edited by Stephen Jones (Sep 18, St. Martin’s Griffin)
• Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff (Thomas Dunne, Sep 18 — Tor UK, Sep 1) — via Patrick Rothfuss: “honestly, you had me at ‘Japanese Steampunk.’” No, literally, the Big Idea quote here is: “Telepathic samurai girls and griffins in a Japanese-inspired steampunk dystopia.” (This is the point where a sizable number of people say “Shut Up and Take My Money.”)
• YA: Adaptation by Malinda Lo (Little, Brown, Sep 18)
• Legends of the Dragonrealm: Shade by Richard A. Knaak (Gallery Books, Sep 18, 2012)
• The World of Might and Magic: The Ashan Compendium (Dark) by Ubisoft (Sep 18, 2012) — “The “Heroes of Might and Magic” compendium is a lavishly illustrated, hardback guide to the world of Ashan, the setting for twenty-five years of Might and Magic games”
• Non-fiction: Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit by Corey Olsen and The Art of the Hobbit by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Sep 18)
• Finding My Elegy: New and Selected Poems by Ursula K. Le Guin (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Sep 18)

• Collection: Beautiful Sorrows by Mercedes M. Yardley (Shock Totem Press, Sep 22)
• 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) — sequel to the first book in this series which began earlier this year with Giant Thief
• 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) — winner of the Del Rey/Suvudu Writing Contest from the author of the powerful 2011 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 Heart of Matter (Odyssey One, Book 2) by Evan Currie (Sep 25, Brilliance Audio) — sequel to Into the Black
• 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)

• 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
• The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde — out in print previously in the UK, coming Oct 2 from Brilliance Audio concurrent with the US print release.
• Teen: The Suburban Strange by Nathan Kotecki (Houghton Mifflin, Oct 2)
• Collection: Night & Demons by David Drake (Baen, Oct 2) — Drake’s first collection since 2007’s Balefires has some overlap, but also a few stories not appearing since their first publication (“Codex”, “Dragon, The Book”, “The Waiting Bullet”, “The Land Toward Sunset”), and considerable new words in the form of story introductions

• 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.”

• 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
• Father Gaetano’s Puppet Catechism by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden (Brilliance Audio, Oct 16)

• 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…)

• 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)
• Forge of Darkness by Steven Erikson — book one in a new prequel trilogy to Erikson’s Malazan series — published in print by Tor in September, forthcoming from Brilliance Audio which is also putting out the Malazan series in audio
• The Lion in Chains (A Foreworld Side Quest) by Mark Teppo (Brilliance Audio, Oct 30) — a “side quest” in the world of The Mongoliad
• The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson (Tachyon, Nov 1)

Posted in regular, Release Week | Tagged libba bray, midnight robber, nalo hopkinson, release week, the diviners