Posts published in: 2013/09

Review: The Fall of the Kings

Posted on 2013-09-27 at 19:58 by Dave

The Fall of the Kings (Riverside, Book 3) By Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman Narrated by Ellen Kushner, Nick Sullivan, Simon Jones, Katherine Kellgren, Robert Fass, Richard Ferrone, Tim Jerome, and Neil Gaiman Length: 18 hours, 40 minutes

Often fantasy fiction relies on escapism through the fantastic, so it's refreshing when you come across a book like The Fall of the Kings that kind of skewers that the fantastic necessarily equates escape. The Fall of the Kings is very much a left turn from Swordspoint.

Posted in reviews | Tagged deliah sherman, ellen kushner, neil gaiman presents, reviews, riverside

Release Week: Doctor Sleep, The Incrementalists, Every Boy Should Have a Man, and North American Lake Monsters

Posted on 2013-09-26 at 02:28 by Sam

SEPTEMBER 18-24, 2013: Well, I warned you last week that this week would be big. Huge. The list of excellent audiobooks that fall into the "also out this week" would make for a stellar set of release week picks: V.E. Schwab's Vicious (Tor and Brilliance Audio), James A. Moore's Seven Forges, Jhumpa Lahiri's recently-ABA-longlisted The Lowland, War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches, Laura Anne Gilman's Paranomal Scene Investigations, David Tallerman's Prince Thief, Anton Strout's Stonecast, Jason M. Hough's

Posted in Release Week | Tagged brandon sanderson, doctor sleep, nathan ballingrud, stephen king, steven brust, the incrementalists

Review: The Privilege of the Sword

Posted on 2013-09-24 at 06:19 by Dave

The Privilege of the Sword (Riverside, Book 2) By Ellen Kushner, Narrated by Ellen Kushner, Barbara Rosenblat, Felicia Day, Nick Sullivan, Katherine Kellgren, Joe Hurley and Neil Gaiman Length: 15 hours, 40 minutes

I have a serious complaint about Ellen Kushner's The Privilege of the Sword: it ended. I could’ve happily listened to 100 more hours of Katherine’s Tom Joad-esque mythology as a swordswoman for the disenfranchised and disempowered. But look, I'm getting ahead of myself. But look again, this book

Posted in reviews | Tagged ellen kushner, felicia day, joe hurley, neil gaiman, reviews, riverside, the privilege of the sword

Review: Fortunately, The Milk

Posted on 2013-09-20 at 14:28 by Dave

Fortunately, the Milk Written and Read by Neil Gaiman Length: 58 minutes

It should be a walk down the street, but on a father's trip to buy some milk for his children's cereal (and probably also his tea), aliens show up (as they do), and kidnap him. Dad escapes by breaking the time space continuum and lands himself on a 17th century pirate ship, and here - things get a little weird.

Throughout the rest of the book there are vampyrs, time traveling dinosaurs, exploding volcanoes, oh-so-self-fulfilling

Posted in reviews, Uncategorized | Tagged Children's Books, neil gaiman

Received: Summer 2013

Posted on 2013-09-19 at 20:53 by Sam

I haven't done a "received" post in a while, so in the interest of openness and acknowledgement, here's what we've asked for and received this summer.

JUNE 2013

The Planet Thieves by Dan Krokos, read by Kirby Heywood for Blackstone Audio (Sam) -- I wasn't entirely sure of the age range for this one, which ended up being somewhere in between young reader and young adult. We don't have the wide-eyed innocence of childhood or (thankfully) the jaded apathy of too many YA novels. Instead it's an adventure for

Posted in received, Uncategorized

Review: American Elsewhere

Posted on 2013-09-19 at 06:00 by Dave

American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett, Read by Graham Winton Length: 22 hours, 23 minutes

If you have to stand against the great lurking darkness that’s encroaching upon you from the edge of universe, I recommend cranking up The Best of Erich Zann's Violin Classics, inviting over Chuthulu’s rebellious teenage children to stand by your side, and having  Robert Jackson Bennett’s American Elsewhere in hand to keep said Darkness at bay.

I’ve been looking forward to this book pretty much since I’d heard

Posted in reviews, Uncategorized | Tagged american elsewhere, kaleidoscope of wtfery, recorded books, robert jackson bennett

Release Week: Happy Hour in Hell, Neptune's Brood, The Rose and the Thorn, Bleeding Edge, and Neil Gaiman's Fortunately, the Milk

Posted on 2013-09-18 at 17:17 by Sam

SEPTEMBER 11-17, 2013: Urban fantasy, deep future sf, adventure fantasy, early 21st century technothriller, and more await listeners in this week's round of picks -- and even more await the "also out this week" reader/listener. (Let alone the "also also out this week" listings. Yes, I've gone Full Monty Python.) Near future, backlist epic fantasy, special edition audio anthology re-issues, resurrecting zombie Taft to run for president, Kafka-esque kittens, nuclear and non-nuclear non-fiction, and more. Whew

Posted in Release Week | Tagged charles stross, michael j sullivan, neil gaiman, tad williams, thomas pynchon

Release Week: The Thicket, Zombie Baseball Beatdown, Dissident Gardens, and The New Space Opera 2

Posted on 2013-09-11 at 14:19 by Sam

SEPTEMBER 4-10, 2013: After closing the summer months with Jason Mott's debut The Returned (Brilliance Audio) and Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman's 2003 novel The Fall of the Kings (Neil Gaiman Presents), the fall audiobook release schedule got off to a cracking start last week with early September releases of Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam (Random House Audio), Kim Stanley Robinson's Shaman (Hachette Audio), and Nancy Farmer's The Lord of Opium (Simon & Schuster Audio). This week brings western storytelling

Posted in Release Week | Tagged gardner dozois, joe lansdale, jonathan lethem, jonathan strahan, new space opera, paolo bacigalupi, the thicket

Release Week: Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam, Kim Stanley Robinson's Shaman, Toby Barlow's Babayaga, and Seanan McGuire's Chimes at Midnight

Posted on 2013-09-04 at 19:05 by Sam

AUGUST 28-SEPTEMBER 3, 2013: September kicks off with two of my most anticipated titles of the year, Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam and Kim Stanley Robinson's Shaman. It also brings news from The Hugo Awards at this weekend's World Science Fiction Convention in San Antonio, where Mur Lafferty (The Shambling Guide to New York City) won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Author, and John Scalzi's Redshirts was named Best Novel. This week does not, however, bring all the audiobooks that were hoped for: in

Posted in Release Week | Tagged babayaga, kim stanley robinson, maddaddam, margaret atwood, mary robinette kowal, seanan mcguire, shaman, toby barlow

Review: The Great Gatsby

Posted on 2013-09-02 at 06:10 by Dave

The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald, narrated by Jake Gyllenhall
Length: 4 hours, 49 minutes

Happy Labor Day, folks! How does a trip deconstructing the American Dream sound?

Last month I talked about the delights of comfort food, but sometimes you're in the mood for what my family calls "growing food," which is part of the reason I decided to give The Great Gatsby a whirl. I'd been assigned to read it twice in high school, but hadn't revisited it since, and my wife just got assigned to teach it, so

Posted in reviews, Uncategorized