Release Week: Robert Jackson Bennett, Seanan McGuire, Joel Rosenberg, and A.A. Attanasio

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Release Week: Robert Jackson Bennett, Seanan McGuire, Joel Rosenberg, and A.A. Attanasio

Posted on 2012-11-21 at 16:27 by Sam

Two of 2012’s most missing audiobooks and two backlist books from two of my favorite authors highlight the pre-Thanksgiving release week.

The Troupe By Robert Jackson Bennett, Narrated by Luis Moreno for Recorded Books — Length: 18 hrs and 6 mins — Published in February in print and ebook by Orbit, it’s been a leading contender for “most missing audiobook” all year for me, and leads off the Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2012 - SF/F/H list: “Best-selling author Robert Jackson Bennett has won widespread critical acclaim for his unique brand of darkly inventive fiction. In The Troupe, 16-year-old George Carole joins vaudeville in search of Heironomo Silenus, the man he believes to be his father. But what he discovers casts a dark pall over his world: Silenus’ troupe hides a dangerous secret - one that invites death to all in its vicinity.” I’ve been waiting for this since reading the first few sample chapters. Now to find the time…

The Troupe Discount Armageddon: InCryptid, Book 1 | [Seanan McGuire]

Speaking of long-time members of the “most missing audiobooks of 2012” leaderboard, also out this week is Discount Armageddon: InCryptid, Book 1 By Seanan McGuire, Narrated by Emily Bauer for Audible Frontiers — Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins. Published in March by DAW, it starts a new series for McGuire, author of the October Daye series and (as Mira Grant) the Newsflesh series (Feed, Deadline, Countdown, and Blackout). Here: “Ghoulies. Ghosties. Long-legged beasties. Things that go bump in the night… The Price family has spent generations studying the monsters of the world, working to protect them from humanity - and humanity from them. Enter Verity Price. Despite being trained from birth as a cryptozoologist, she’d rather dance a tango than tangle with a demon, and is spending a year in Manhattan while she pursues her career in professional ballroom dance. Sounds pretty simple, right? It would be, if it weren’t for the talking mice, the telepathic mathematicians, the asbestos supermodels, and the trained monster-hunter sent by the Price family’s old enemies, the Covenant of St. George. When a Price girl meets a Covenant boy, high stakes, high heels, and a lot of collateral damage are almost guaranteed. To complicate matters further, local cryptids are disappearing, strange lizard-men are appearing in the sewers, and someone’s spreading rumors about a dragon sleeping underneath the city…”

Even longer missing has been the work of Joel Rosenberg, the late author of the long-running Guardians of the Flame series — the first book of which, The Sleeping Dragon, is set to be released in audio later this week. This week, it’s another of his series which gets its start in audio with Ties of Blood and Silver: Thousand Worlds, Book 1, Narrated by Maxwell Glick for Audible Frontiers — Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins — “Elwere - city of rainbows, where the fortunes of the planet Oroga are concentrated in the grasping hands of the privileged few. To David, stolen from Elwere as a baby and raised as a thief of the Lower City, it is a dream of paradise, a treasure trove to which he must find the key, no matter what the cost… And Eschteef - a schrift of the jewel-and-precious-metals schtann, twice the size of a human, more than twice as strong, with frightfully glowing eyes and rows of needle-sharp teeth. It, too, has a dream, a dream of which David has suddenly become the crucial focus. And once a schrift has chosen, nothing can change its path.”

Ties of Blood and Silver: Thousand Worlds, Book 1 | [Joel Rosenberg] Radix: The Radix Tetrad | [A. A. Attanasio]

Similarly long-missing is the work of A. A. Attanasio, author of the Arthurian retelling series Arthor (The Dragon and the Unicorn, The Eagle and the Sword, …) — no sign of this in audio yet, however. Earlier this month saw the audio release of his 2006 standalone novel Killing with the Edge of the Moon and this week brings two books from his Radix series of eon-spanning sf, starting with Radix: The Radix Tetrad (Narrated by Sergei Burbank) and, after skipping the middle two books for now, The Last Legends of Earth: A Radix Tetrad Novel (Narrated by David Gilmore). First: “A young man’s odyssey of self discovery in a world eerily alien, yet hauntingly familiar. Set 13 centuries in the future, A. A. Attanasio meticulously creates a brilliantly realized Earth, rich in detail and filled with beings brought to life with intense energy. In this strange and beautiful world, Sumner Kagan will change from an adolescent outcast to a warrior with god-like powers and in the process take us on an epic and transcendent journey.” Then: “Seven billion years from now, long after the Sun has died and human life itself has become extinct, alien beings reincarnate humanity from our fossilized DNA drifting as debris in the void of deep space. We are reborn to serve as bait in a battle to the death between the Rimstalker, humankind’s reanimator, and the zotl, horrific creatures who feed vampire-like on the suffering of intelligent lifeforms.”

OUT TUESDAY:

  • My Soul to Take By Tananarive Due, Narrated By Lizan Mitchell for Recorded Books -- Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins -- "My Soul to Take continues the saga of a line of immortals destined to save the world from the apocalypse."
  • Baudolino By Umberto Eco, Narrated by George Guidall for Recorded Books -- Length: 18 hrs and 57 mins -- "As Constantinople is being pillaged and burned in April 1204, a young man, Baudolino, manages to save a historian and a high court official from certain death at the hands of crusading warriors. Born a simple peasant, Baudolino has two gifts: his ability to learn languages and to lie. A young man, he is adopted by a foreign commander who sends him to university in Paris. After he allies with a group of fearless and adventurous fellow students, they go in search of a vast kingdom to the East - a kingdom of strange creatures, eunuchs, unicorns and, of course, lovely maidens."
  • Anthology: Hotter Than Hell By Kim Harrison (editor), Narrated by Teresa Willis -- Length: 16 hrs and 23 mins
  • The White Bull By Fred Saberhagen, Narrated by Paul Christy for Audible Frontiers -- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
  • Divide and Rule By L. Sprague de Camp, Narrated by Mike Chamberlain -- Length: 3 hrs and 43 mins
  • Crashlander By Larry Niven, Narrated by Christopher Prince -- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
  • The Gripping Hand By Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven, Narrated by L. J. Ganser -- Length: 15 hrs and 11 mins
  • Fiction: Woes of the True Policeman By Roberto Bolaño, Narrated by Armando Durán for Dreamscape -- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
  • Agenda 21 "By" Glenn Beck ("with Harriet Parke") -- Narrated by January LaVoy for Simon & Schuster Audio -- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins -- the writing, editing, and publishing of which is the focus of a fascinating Salon.com article, a dystopian novel about over-reaching totalitarian governments (but not the same kind of dystopian over-reaching totalitarian government which Beck promotes, though the outcome looks surprisingly similar in terms of control over women's bodies), already being used in its intended purpose as pro-Beck-brand-totalitarian-dystopia propaganda
EARLIER THIS WEEK: SEEN BUT NOT HEARD:
  • Aaron, Rachel : Spirit’s End  (Orbit) -- Eli Monpress #5 -- via Locus Online
  • Magnason, Andri Snaer, translated by Victoria Cribb : LoveStar (Seven Stories) -- dystopian sf novel translated from Icelandic -- Publishers Weekly gives it a starred review: “Orwell, Vonnegut, and Douglas Adams are felt on every page, though Magnason is never derivative. His satire and insightful social commentary sweeten the pot and the sheer wackiness of Magnason’s oversized imagination is invigorating.” -- via Locus Online
  • Collection: Marshall, Helen : Hair Side, Flesh Side (Chizine Publications) -- via Locus Online
  • Collection: Murphy, Derryl : Over the Darkened Landscape (Fairwood) -- via Locus Online
  • Anthology: Oliver, Jonathan, ed. : Magic (Solaris) -- via Locus Online
  • Silverberg, Robert, & Alvaro Zinos-Amaro : When the Blue Shift Comes  (Arc Manor) -- via Locus Online
ON PRE-ORDER LISTINGS: COMING SOON:
  • The Fractal Prince by Hannu Rajaniemi (Tor, Nov 27) -- followup to The Quantum Thief, "A physicist receives a mysterious paper. The ideas in it are far, far ahead of current thinking and quite, quite terrifying. In a city of “fast ones,” shadow players, and jinni, two sisters contemplate a revolution. And on the edges of reality a thief, helped by a sardonic ship, is trying to break into a Schrödinger box for his patron. In the box is his freedom. Or not. Jean de Flambeur is back. And he’s running out of time."
  • The Rise of Ransom City by Felix Gilman (Tor, Nov 27) -- sequel to The Half-Made World, "This is the story Harry Ransom. If you know his name it’s most likely as the inventor of the Ransom Process, a stroke of genius that changed the world. Or you may have read about how he lost the battle of Jasper City, or won it, depending on where you stand in matters of politics."
  • Anthology: Edge of Infinity edited by Jonathan Strahan (Solaris, Nov 27) -- "the thirteen stories in this anthology span the whole of the human condition in their race to colonise Earth’s nearest neighbours. Featuring stories by Hannu Rajaniemi, Alastair Reynolds, James S. A. Corey, John Barnes, Stephen Baxter, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Elizabeth Bear, Pat Cadigan, Gwyneth Jones, Paul McAuley, Sandra McDonald, Stephen D. Covey, An Owomoyela, and Bruce Sterling."
  • The Testament of Jesse Lamb by Jane Rogers, read by Fiona Hardingham for Blackstone Audio (Dec 1) -- a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize
  • The Folly of the World by Jesse Bullington (Orbit, Dec 18) -- "On a stormy night in 1421, the North Sea delivers a devastating blow to Holland: the Saint Elizabeth Flood, a deluge of biblical proportions that drowns hundreds of towns, thousands of people, and forever alters the geography of the Low Countries. Where the factions of the noble Hooks and the merchant Cods waged a literal class war but weeks before, there is now only a nigh-endless expanse of grey water, a desolate inland sea with moldering church spires jutting up like sunken tombstones. For a land already beleaguered by generations of civil war, a worse disaster could scarce be imagined. Yet even disaster can be profitable, for the right sort of individual, and into this flooded realm sail three conspirators: a deranged thug at the edge of madness, a ruthless conman on the cusp of fortune, and a half-feral girl balanced between them."
  • An audiobook edition of Alchemystic by Anton Strout, published earlier this fall -- reportedly coming from Audible Frontiers on Dec 21
Posted in regular, Release Week | Tagged aa attanasio, joel rosenberg, robert jackson bennett, seanan mcguire, the troupe