Release Week: The Goblin Emperor, The Girl with All the Gifts, Koko Takes a Holiday, and Pills and Starships

Posted on 2014-06-18 at 13:52 by Sam

JUNE 3-10, 2014: Another fantastic release week this week, from fantasy to sf to all kinds of stuff in between, both in the picks of the week and beyond, though some of my most-anticipated books of the month end up in the "seen but not heard" list as well. Meanwhile, there's a second Recorded Books Humble Audiobook Bundle ongoing through June 24/25, offering a chance to "pay what you want" for a set of audiobooks including Pierce Brown's Red Rising, Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, and Michael J. Sullivan's Hollow World. And there's a lot of award news to pass along this week: Strange Bodies by Marcel Theroux (Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus, and Giroux) won this year’s John W. Campbell Memorial Award; the British Fantasy Award nominees have been announced including (among others) Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Sofia Samatar's A Stranger in Olondria, Lauren Beukes' The Shining Girls, and Nathan Ballingrud's North American Lake Monsters; the Mythopoeic Award finalists have also been announced, also including Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane along with Max Gladstone's Three Parts Dead, Helene Wecker's The Golem and the Jinni, Yangsze Choo's The Ghost Bride, and Mark H. Williams' Sleepless Knights; and the David Gemmell Award winners have been presented: Brian McClellan won the Morningstar Award for best debut novel for Promise of Blood, and Mark Lawrence won the Legend Award for best fantasy novel for Emperor of Thorns. There's plenty more coming this month -- in fact already out as this roundup is fully a week late in coming -- so get listening!

PICKS OF THE WEEK:

Posted in Release Week | Tagged daniel h wilson, finty williams, hillary huber, katherine addison, kieran shea, koko takes a holiday, kyle mccarley, lydia millet, Michael R Underwood, mozhan marno, mr carey, pills and starships, the girl with all the gifts, the goblin emperor

Release Week: Six-Gun Snow White, The River of Souls, The Dark Between the Stars, Prince of Fools, The Science of Discworld, and Mr. Mercedes

Posted on 2014-06-10 at 16:10 by Sam

MAY 28-JUNE 3, 2014: June got off to a big start, with star-spanning sf (Kevin J. Anderson's The Dark Between the Stars), epic fantasy (Mark Lawrence's Prince of Fools), historical almost-supernatural thriller (Robert McCammon's The River of Souls), a fairytale recast in the Wild West (Catherynne M. Valente's Six-Gun Snow White), and yes, horror from Stephen King (Mr. Mercedes). In the ALSO OUT listings there's an Expanse novella from James S.A. Corey along with Chandler Klang Smith's 2013 debut Goldenland Past Dark and Marc Levy's new sf thriller Replay, fiction (Lily King's Euphoria read by Xe Sands, Emma Straub's The Vacationers), and plenty more. Some highly-anticipated books in the SEEN BUT NOT HEARD roundup as well, including S.T. Joshi's Searchers After Horror, Ytasha Womack's Rayla 2212, Genevieve Valentine's The Girls of the Kingfisher Club, and Alastair Reynolds' On the Steel Breeze -- but thankfully nearly all of these are set for audio release later this month. Among another big crop of newly ADDED listings: Susan Klaus' Flight of the Golden Harpy later this month, Josh Weil's The Great Glass Sea in July, Mike Allen's collection Unseaming in October, and George R.R. Martin's latest Wild Cards book, Lowball, in November. Enjoy!

PICKS OF THE WEEK:

Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne M. Valente, read by Julia Whelan is out from Dreamscape Media this week as Valente’s Nebula-and-Hugo-nominated January 2013 novella from Subterranean Press gets an audio edition: “A plain-spoken, appealing narrator relates the history of her parents – a Nevada silver baron who forced the Crow people to give up one of their most beautiful daughters, Gun That Sings, in marriage to him. With her mother’s death in childbirth, so begins a heroine’s tale equal parts heartbreak and strength.” Buy: [Downpour]

Posted in Release Week | Tagged catherynne m valente, edoardo ballerini, julia whelan, kevin j anderson, mark lawrence, mr mercedes, prince of fools, robert mccammon, six-gun snow white, stephen king, terry pratchett, the dark between the stars, the river of souls, the science of discworld, tim gerard reynolds

Top 25 most-anticipated books of June 2014

Posted on 2014-06-05 at 18:40 by Sam

Everyone has their own lists, but here’s ours: what we're most looking forward to this month, in chronological order of release, with audiobook information if we know about it. (I tried holding the list to 10 as I managed for last month's preview, but after a second pass cutting as much as I was close to happy with, I was still in the 30s. Trimming further to 25 was hard enough!)

JUNE 3

Searchers After Horror edited by S.T. Joshi (Fedogan and Bremer, June 1) — The first of two anthologies on my list this month includes 21 “New Tales of the Weird and Fantastic” around the theme "the Weird place" and all but one are original to this anthology. Authors include (among others) Melanie Tem, John Shirley, Ramsey Campbell, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Steve Rasnic Tem, and Nick Mamatas ("Exit Through the Gift Shop"), all in a high-end hardcover edition which, granted, has been spotted in the wild a bit ahead of this publication date. Audio: No audiobook news. Buy: [Amazon]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged adjoa andoh, alastair reynolds, am dellamonica, antonia hodgson, california bones, catherynne m valente, child of a hidden sea, cibola burn, deadly curiosities, dogsland, eli horowitz, emily bauer, emmi itaranta, erik davies, finty williams, gail z martin, gardner dozois, genevieve valentine, george rr martin, greg van eekhout, hillary huber, incrypted, iron druid chronicles, j.k. rowling, james morrow, james robert herndon, james sa corey, jm mcdermott, john lee, julia whelan, kate rudd, katherine addison, katherine harbour, kevin hearne, kevin j anderson, kieran shea, koko takes a holiday, lauren owen, luke daniels, mammals, mark boyett, mark smylie, memory of water, michael fenton-stevens, michael page, mr carey, mr mercedes, octavia e butler, on the steel breeze, ray porter, rayla 2212, robert galbraith, rogues, scott meyer, seanan mcguire, searchers after horror, shattered, simon slater, six-gun snow white, spell or high water, spoken freely, st joshi, stephen baxter, stephen briggs, stephen king, terry pratchett, the barrow, the dark between the stars, the devil in the marshalsea, the expanse, the girl with all the gifts, the girls at the kingfisher club, the goblin emperor, the long mars, the madonna and the starship, the quick, the science of discworld, the silent history, the silkworm, thorn jack, unexpected stories, we leave together, will patton, ytasha womack

Whispersync Monthly Deals for June 2014: Ben Winters, Joyce Carol Oates, Joe Hill, Marcus Sakey, Elmore Leonard, and more (updated June 5!)

Posted on 2014-06-02 at 18:23 by Sam

June is here, and along with it another crop of monthly Kindle deals, including quite a few fantastic titles with inexpensive Whispersync for Voice upgrades to the Audible editions. Here are the eight titles which most caught my eye:

Countdown City: The Last Policeman Book II (Last Policeman Trilogy) by Ben H. Winters, read by Peter Berkrot for Brilliance Audio, for $3.99 Kindle plus $3.99 Whispersync for Voice upgrade to the Audible edition -- "There are just 77 days to go before a deadly asteroid collides with Earth, and Detective Hank Palace is out of a job. With the Concord police force operating under the auspices of the U.S. Justice Department, Hank’s days of solving crimes are over - until a woman from his past begs for help finding her missing husband." Winner of the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award, both Countdown City and the first book in the series, The Last Policeman, are fantastic books and audiobooks. I'm eagerly awaiting the conclusion, World of Trouble, in July.

Posted in Whispersync Deals | Tagged ania ahlborn, ben h. winters, brilliance, countdown city, daniel radcliffe, dave donovan, elmore leonard, grover gardner, horns, joe hill, joyce carol oates, kate mulgrew, luke daniels, marcus sakey, nos4a2, peter berkrot, raylan, seed, the accursed, the gift, timothy olyphant

Release Week: Jim Butcher's Skin Game, Jane Lindskold's Artemis Awakening, Glen Hirshberg's Motherless Child, Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw, and Tim Pratt's Heirs of Grace

Posted on 2014-05-29 at 15:27 by Sam

MAY 21-27, 2014: Well, crap. I should have snatched up Nick Harkaway's Tigerman before Audible (US) realized that it couldn't sell it to me, but hopefully that's a "not yet" and not an "ever". So, a release week I was over-the-top excited about is taken down a notch, though with blockbuster series releases from Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files continues with Skin Game, read by James Marsters), Elizabeth Moon (Crown of Renewal in her  Paksennarion: Paladin's Legacy series), and Ian Douglas (Dark Matter in his Star Carrier series), along with new audio releases such as Jane Lindskold's Artemis Awakening, Glen Hirshberg's Motherless Child, and Jo Walton'sd World Fantasy Award-winning 2003 novel Tooth and Claw (read by John Lee) to check out along with Tim Pratt's concluded Kindle Serial Heirs of Grace, any disappointment is pretty quickly tempered. The ALSO OUT listings include three age-differentiated productions of Kenneth Grahame's The Reluctant Dragon along with a pretty good haul for kids (Tesla's Attic), teens (City of Heavenly Fire which concludes the Mortal Instruments series), and fans of thrillers (The Last Refuge, I Am Pilgrim, and The Night Heron) and Tom Robbins (his long-awaited memoir Tibetan Peach Pie) and fiction (Smith Henderson's 1980s Montana-set Fourth of July Creek, which Jeff VanderMeer calls a "brilliant debut"). The SEEN BUT NOT HEARD listings include some good-looking books as well: Sarah Beth Durst's "macabre foray into literary urban fantasy for adults" The Lost, a pair of highly-anticipated original anthologies (Fearful Symmetries and Reach for Infinity), and J.R.R. Tolkien's long-unpublished translation of (and commentary on) Beowulf. Among a pretty sizable list of newly ADDED listings below: Brandon Sanderson's Firefight in January, Warren Ellis' Normal: A Novel in November, D. Harlan Wilson's Primordial: An Abstraction in July, Jen McConnel's Her Secret Inheritance in June, and (out in print/ebook earlier this year and much-bemoaned in my "seen but not heard" writeup) Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor, also in June. Lastly, the big book NEWS this week comes from Orbit, which announced "the acquisition of three new novels and four original novellas from multiple Hugo Award-nominated author Mira Grant. One of the novels will be a third book in the “Parasitology” series and will conclude the trilogy, while the second novel and all four novellas will be set in the world of the “Newsflesh” series. The third novel will be a standalone." And! The Audie Awards are tonight. Narrator Xe Sands (@xesands on Twitter) will be live-tweeting the awards as they happen starting around 7 pm, using hashtag #audies. Good luck, and enjoy!

PICKS OF THE WEEK:

Posted in Release Week | Tagged artemis awakening, glen hirshberg, heirs of grace, james marsters, jane lindskold, jim butcher, jo walton, john lee, leslie hull, motherless child, skin game, the dresden files, tim pratt, tooth and claw, xe sands

Release Week: Monica Byrne's The Girl in the Road, Stephen Baker's The Boost, and Hartley and Hewson's Hamlet, read by Richard Armitage

Posted on 2014-05-22 at 18:29 by Sam

MAY 14-20, 2014: One of my most-anticipated titles of the year, let alone this month, is finally here, Monica Byrne's The Girl in the Road, along with Stephen Baker's all-too-near-future of brain hacking, The Boost, and a new audio-original novelization of Shakespeare's Hamlet from the same authors who brought us Macbeth -- another audio original -- in 2011. There's a long list of titles to check out in the ALSO OUT listings as well, including South African author Sarah Trotz's The Three and Australian Trudi Canavan's Thief's Magic, new audiobooks from Simon Vance, Ralph Lister, and R.C. Bray, and! for younger listeners, Lisa Fiedler's Mouseheart, read by Kirby Heyborne. Meanwhile the SEEN BUT NOT HEARD roster this week gives plenty of fantastic reasons to crack open a real (or digital!) book including Jason Sizemore's collection Irredeemable, Jo Walton's My Real Children, Wu Ming-Yi's The Man with Compound Eyes, and Paul Cornell's The Severed Streets. Lastly, the newly ADDED listings this week are highlighted by Jonathan Carroll’s "surreal masterpiece" Bathing the Lion, due out in October. Enjoy! [PS: We did get a US audiobook of Nick Harkaway's Tigerman concurrent with the UK publication today (May 22), well ahead of the July US print/ebook release! Look for more on Tigerman next week...]

PICKS OF THE WEEK:

"Is this how adventures begin? With the hero cackling?" is neither quite the beginning of the novel or of Meena's adventures in it, but it's an early (darkly) light moment in an intense debut novel. The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne (Crown, May 20, 2014) which "traces the harrowing twin journeys of two women forced to flee their homes in different times in the near future. The first, Meena, is a Brahmin-caste student whose odyssey takes her from the coastal city of Mumbai toward Djibouti across a futuristic but treacherous bridge that spans the Arabian Sea. The second, Mariama, escapes from slavery as a small child in Mauritania, joining a caravan heading across Saharan Africa toward Ethiopia.” One big-name blurb among several, including Neil Gaiman ["glorious"], Jason Heller ["dizzying"], Natalie Zutter ["gripping"], and Helene Wecker ["utterly captivating"] is in from none less than Kim Stanley Robinson: “The Girl in the Road is a brilliant novel–vivid, intense, and fearless with a kind of savage joy. These journeys–Meena’s across the Arabian Sea and Mariama’s across Africa–are utterly unforgettable.” Crown has posted the first chapter online, which you can hear over at Random House Audio in an extract of the audiobook, featuring Nazneen Contractor as Meena.

Posted in Release Week | Tagged aj hartley, david doersch, david hewson, dioni collins, hamlet, monica byrne, nazneen contractor, richard armitage, stephen baker, the boost, the girl in the road

Review: Afterparty

Posted on 2014-05-22 at 05:56 by Dave

Afterparty by Daryl Gregory, performed by Tavia Gilbert Length: 10 hours, 52 minutes

Imagine going to church, taking communion, and as soon as you swallowed the wafer and wine, seeing God right beside you. Or, if not God, an aspect of God – one that you could converse with, argue with, beg, weep with, and scream at. Now, imagine all that if you were an atheist.

Regardless of what you believe or do not believe, as a science fiction fan you have to wonder: short of this miraculous wafer falling from the sky like manna, where is this drug coming from?

Posted in reviews | Tagged daryl gregory, religion and addiction, tavia gilbert

Release Week: C. Robert Cargill's Queen of the Dark Things, Felix Gilman's The Revolutions, Josh Malerman's Bird Box, Norman Lock's The Boy in His Winter, and Dead Man's Hand edited by John Joseph Adams

Posted on 2014-05-14 at 17:56 by Sam

MAY 7-13, 2014: A sequel I've been anticipating for the past year, a short stay on the "missing in audio" list for a book from one of my favorite authors, a post-apocalyptic horror, Huck Finn in the future, and a Weird West anthology headline a fairly quiet publishing week this week, at least compared to last week's haul, but by no means does that imply that there aren't more books worth checking out in the ALSO OUT listings as well. Those include (among others) Porochista Khakpour's The Last Illusion and Danie Ware's 2012 novel Ecko Rising along with a pair of collections, Charles Stross' Wireless and Justina Robson's Heliotrope. In the SEEN BUT NOT HEARD listings I'm most bemoaning Ari Marmell's Prohibition Chicago-set urban fantasy Hot Lead, Cold Iron -- how fantastic could an audiobook production of this "the Dresden Files meets The Untouchables" book be? -- and Will McIntosh's intense near-future military sf novel of alien invasion, Defenders, as well as the Kickstarter-funded Crossed Genres anthology Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History edited by Rose Fox and Daniel Jose Older. (I would spend more time grumbling about John Scalzi's short novella Unlocked, but there is reportedly an audiobook edition forthcoming.) Some newly ADDED listings I want to mention this week: the Kickstarter-funded War Stories anthology is due out this summer from Apex Books, Darryl Gregory's We Are All Completely Fine is set for August publication from Tachyon, Jenn Brissett's Elysium is due out in September from Aqueduct, and two Dreamscape Media productions are coming June 3: Genevieve Valentine's forthcoming The Girls at the Kingfisher Club and Catherynne M. Valente's Hugo-nominated 2013 novella Six-Gun Snow White. One last thing before I get to this week's picks: GraphicAudio has released a few titles of interest recently, including the concluding third book in Jon Sprunk's Shadow Saga, Shadow's Master, and the first book in Cherie Priest's Clockwork Century series, Boneshaker, with (at least) book two, Dreadnought, on the way; there's also a pair of new shorts, one in Peter V. Brett's Demon Cycle series, and the other in Tim Waggoner's Nekropolis series. Enjoy!

PICKS OF THE WEEK:

Queen of the Dark Things: A Novel by C. Robert Cargill (Harper Voyager, May 13, 2014) read by Vikas Adam for Harper Audio, reprising his fantastic turn on the first book of the series, which I reviewed in my March 2013 report. Dreams and Shadows completes a full narrative arc and doesn't necessarily compel further reading, but I've been waiting to find out where Colby goes after its dramatic conclusion. “Screenwriter and noted film critic C. Robert Cargill continues the story begun in his acclaimed debut Dreams and Shadows in this bold and brilliantly crafted tale involving fairies and humans, magic and monsters—a vivid phantasmagoria that combines the imaginative wonders of Neil Gaiman, the visual inventiveness of Guillermo Del Toro, and the shocking miasma of William S. Burroughs. Six months have passed since the wizard Colby lost his best friend to an army of fairies from the Limestone Kingdom, a realm of mystery and darkness beyond our own. But in vanquishing these creatures and banning them from Austin, Colby sacrificed the anonymity that protected him. Now, word of his deeds has spread, and powerful enemies from the past-including one Colby considered a friend—have resurfaced to exact their revenge.” Buy: [Downpour | Kobo |Indiebound | Amazon | Kindle]

Posted in Release Week | Tagged bird box, c robert cargill, cassandra campbell, dead man's hand, felix gilman, grover gardner, john joseph adams, josh malerman, natalie ross, norman lock, phil gigante, ralph lister, the boy in his winter, the revolutions, vikas adam

Sam's Listening Report: April 2013

Posted on 2014-05-13 at 16:39 by Sam

Well, I've lapped myself in terms of getting out these so-called "monthly" listening reports, as these listens are all from a year (and counting) ago. But it was a fantastic month for me, with all four books showing up in my favorites of the year, spread across four genres: horror (The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates), heroic fantasy (No Return by Zachary Jernigan), literary speculative fiction (Life After Life by Kate Atkinson), and a hard-to-categorize novel of game development and friendship (You by Austin Grossman).

REVIEWS:

Posted in Sam's Monthly Listening Report | Tagged austin grossman, fenella woolgar, grover gardner, john fitzgibbon, joyce carol oates, kate atkinson, life after life, no return, the accursed, will collyer, you, zachary jernigan

Release Week: Jeff VanderMeer's Authority, Laline Paull's The Bees, Charlie Fletcher's The Oversight, Michael Cunningham's The Snow Queen, and Stefan Rudnicki reading Silverberg, Lansdale, and John Joseph Adams

Posted on 2014-05-12 at 17:59 by Sam

APRIL 30-MAY 6, 2014: May is here, and the first release week brings with it a massive haul of audiobooks to kick off a month just packed with highly-anticipated titles. It was hard cutting to limit my PICKS to just seven audiobooks, so do check out this week's ALSO OUT listings which include Seanan McGuire's Sparrow Hill Road, Clive Barker's Sacrament, and Will Ludwigsen's collection In Search of And Others (just nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award), along with a long list of highly-anticipated series books including Sarah Pinborough's Murder, Brian McClellan's The Crimson Campaign, Michael J. Martinez' The Enceladus Crisis, and David Drake's latest Lt. Leary space opera/adventure, The Sea Without a Shore. It's also a fantastic week for young readers/listeners, with Tony DiTerlizzi's The Battle for WondLa (read by Teri Hatcher) and J.A. White's The Thickety. Meanwhile, the SEEN BUT NOT HEARD listings include Mary Rickert's The Memory Garden, Elizabeth May's The Falconer, Terence Hawkins's American Neolithic, Douglas Hulick's Sworn in Steel, and plenty more. Newly ADDED books in the listings include Lauren Beukes' Broken Monsters and James Morrow's The Madonna and the Starship, as well as the (now) already-released The Revolutions by Felix Gilman. In audiobook NEWS I've got something to pass along: The Armchair Audies has opened voting for its 1st Annual Listeners Choice Award with voting open until Tuesday, May 27th at 12pm EST. Let your voice be heard! Still, it's the new audiobooks which have my attention this week, and here they are, starting with a full review of this week's lead pick:

PICKS OF THE WEEK:

It should be no surprise given how much I loved Annihilation that my top pick this week is Authority by Jeff VanderMeer, continuing his The Southern Reach trilogy which began with Annihilation in February and which concludes with Acceptance in September. In Authority, VanderMeer pivots from the first-person journal of the unnamed biologist (read by Carolyn McCormick) which introduced "Area X" in Annihilation to an exploration of a different, though as uncanny and surreal, terrain: the organization which sent her into "Area X" in the first place, the Southern Reach itself. We do see the biologist often in Authority, but it is through the eyes of agent/operative John Rodriguez (aka "Control"), newly appointed acting director of the Southern Reach, interrogating her after her reappearance along with the other survivors of the expedition depicted in Annihilation. Control finds offices in decay and disarray, a shrinking staff divided into factions loyal to the previous director and "lifers" who are in it for the weird science and/or have nowhere else, really, to go. Throughout, Control reports his progress and findings -- often couched -- to The Voice, a shrouded, mysterious figure known only as a (digitally masked) voice on the phone. The cast of characters here each have layers and motivations -- usually inscrutable -- of their own: Grace, the assistant director who believes the previous director is still alive; Cheney, the head of the science department; and fellow scientist Whitby, who frequently acts as Control's guide. I found the Southern Reach in Authority to act as both a metaphor for the many fragments of our own labyrinthine consciousnesses while also a rejection of such abstraction or disaggregation; an organization gone feral after decades of attempting to understand the incomprehensible, having stared too long into the abyss. Meanwhile Control's expedition into its hierarchies and storage rooms and film archives plays with and against reader expectations: again we must question the reliability of our narrator, of the purpose and use of evidence and rationality in the context of such a narrative in the first place. VanderMeer creates mystery, unease, and an escalation of the compulsion behind this series: what is "Area X"?

Posted in Release Week | Tagged authority, bronson pinchot, charlie fletcher, claire danes, deadman's road, jeff vandermeer, joe r lansdale, john joseph adams, laline paull, michael cunningham, nightwings, orlagh cassidy, robert silverberg, simon prebble, stefan rudnicki, the bees, the oversight, the snow queen, wastelands