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Received: Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston
Posted on 2012-06-19 at 15:24 by Sam
Received: Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston, read by Stefan Rudnicki (and cast) for Macmillan Audio. Coming concurrent with hardcover and e-book release from Tor on July 17.
Posted in regular | Tagged received
Release Week: Chabon's Kavalier and Clay; Jemisin's Dreamblood; Brenda Cooper's Silver Ship; Novik's Temeraire; Joan D. Vinge's The Snow Queen; and more
Posted on 2012-06-14 at 14:17 by Sam
My most anticipated release this week comes from the fiction section: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay By Michael Chabon, Narrated by David Colacci for Brilliance Audio. FINALLY an UNABRIDGED recording! Colacci’s narration of the abridged version was a mere 8 hrs and 53 mins — about one third of the full 26 hrs and 20 mins of the unabridged recording. “It’s 1939, in New York City. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdiniesque escape, has just pulled off his greatest feat: smuggling himself out of Hitler’s Prague. He’s looking to make big money, fast, so that he can bring his family to freedom. His cousin, Brooklyn’s own Sammy Clay, is looking for a partner in creating the heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit the American dreamscape: the comic book.” Next: somebody bring us the unabridged Yiddish Policeman’s Union in digital audio, please.
Completing just a month and a half after the release of The Killing Moon: Dreamblood, Book 1The Shadowed Sun: Dreamblood, Book 2, Narrated once again by for Hachette Audio: “Gujaareh, the city of dreams, suffers under the imperial rule of the Kisuati Protectorate. A city where the only law was peace now knows violence and oppression. And nightmares. A mysterious and deadly plague haunts the citizens of Gujaareh, dooming the infected to die screaming in their sleep. Trapped between dark dreams and cruel overlords, the people yearn to rise up - but Gujaareh has known peace for too long. Someone must show them the way.”
It’s also another busy week for Audible Frontiers, bringing several previously published series to audio. The series I’m most excited about is which begins with The Silver Ship and the Sea: Silver Ship, Book 1 (2007), Narrated by Reading the Wind: Silver Ship, Book 2 (2008) and Wings of Creation: Silver Ship, Book 3 (2009). The first of the two main reasons I’m excited about this release is having previously liked Cooper’s work: both her novel co-written with Larry Niven, Building Harlequin’s Moon, and her short fiction (particularly “My Father’s Singularity” at Clarkesworld). The second is the pitch for the series: “The colony planet Fremont is joyous, riotous, and very wild. Its grasses can cut your arms and legs to ribbons, the rinds of its precious fruit can skewer your thumbs, and some of the predators are bigger than humans. Meteors fall from the sky and volcanoes erupt. Fremont is verdant, rich, beautiful, and dangerous. Fremont’s single town, Artistos, perches on a cliff below rugged mountains. Below Artistos lie the Grass Plains, which lead down to the sea. And in the middle of the Grass Plains, a single silver spaceship lies quiet and motionless. The seasons do not dull it, nor do the winds scratch it - and the fearful citizens of Artistos won’t go near it.”
The other series which most jumps out at me is David Louis Edelman’s Jump 225 Trilogy. Published in print (in the US) by Pyr, the series begins with Infoquake: Jump 225 Trilogy, Book 1 and is narrated throughout by Tom Dheere. Here’s the pitch, involving pitches: “How far should you go to make a profit? Infoquake, the debut novel by David Louis Edelman, takes speculative fiction into alien territory: the corporate boardroom of the far future. It’s a stunning trip through the trenches of a technological war fought with product demos, press releases, and sales pitches.” The series continues with Multireal: Jump 225 Trilogy, Book 2 and Geosynchron: Jump 225 Trilogy, Book 3.
ALSO OUT TUESDAY:
Read more...Posted in regular, Release Week | Tagged brenda cooper, dreamblood, joan d vinge, kavalier and clay, michael chabon, n k jemisin, release week, silver ship, the snow queen
Schedule of SYNC Downloads -- free audiobook downloads all summer
Posted on 2012-06-07 at 00:17 by Sam
Link: Schedule of SYNC Downloads — free audiobook downloads all summer
The one I’m most looking forward to is for the week of August 2 – August 8, 2012: Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor, Read by Khristine Hvam (Hachette Audio):
Now to just set myself a weekly reminder…
Posted in link
Release Week: Redshirts by John Scalzi, a US release for Alastair Reynolds's Blue Remembered Earth, Daniel A. Wilson's Amped, and the story of Philip K. Dick's Robotic Resurrection
Posted on 2012-06-06 at 13:57 by Sam
The first release week for June 2012 is led by the sf meta-comedic Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas By John Scalzi, Narrated by Wil Wheatonfor Audible, out concurrently with the print and (DRM-free!) e-book release from Tor. At 7 hours and 41 minutes it sounds a bit slight, but Wheaton is not your typical plodding-along narrator. The book re-unites the author/narrator duo behind Fuzzy Nation (which was just honored with an Audie Award), Agent to the Stars, and The Android’s Dream, and certainly seems another pitch-perfect casting for Wheaton after his wonderful turn at the helm of the 80s pop culture romp that was last year’s sf debut novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. The set-up? The “redshirts” — starship away mission cannon-fodder — start to figure out that their casualty rate is startling high. There’s a theme song by Jonathan Coulton (covered by Scalzi on ukulele and elsewhere made into a fan video) and sample chapters are afoot as well.
Fitting in between Kim Stanley Robinson’s excellent 2312 (out last week) and David Brin’s Existence (later in June) and making for a trio of big-time summer big-idea sf novels is Blue Remembered Earth by Alastair Reynolds, narrated by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith for Recorded Books. A meaty 21 hrs and 44 mins, this is the same narration which was published concurrent with the UK print release in the UK in mid-January from Orion Publishing Group, now out in the US concurrent with the US print release from Ace Hardcover: “One hundred and fifty years from now, in a world where Africa is the dominant technological and economic power, and where crime, war, disease, and poverty have been banished to history, Geoffrey Akinya wants only one thing: to be left in peace, so that he can continue his studies into the elephants of the Amboseli basin.”
Amped: A Novel By , Narrated by concurrent with the print release from Doubleday. A taught 8 hrs and 42 mins, Amped is a new sf/thriller hybrid from the author of last summer’s Robopocalypse. In Amped we’ll find enhanced humans on the run from new laws meant to curtail their powers:
ALSO OUT TUESDAY:
Read more...Posted in regular, Release Week | Tagged alastair reynolds, blue remembered earth, john scalzi, kobna holdbrook-smith, redshirts, release week, wil wheaton
Audiobook review: Osama by Lavie Tidhar
Posted on 2012-06-05 at 16:32 by Sam
Narrated by Jeff Harding for Audible Ltd
Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
Release Date: 05-14-2012 [PS Publishing | Goodreads | Audible UK]
Review by Dave Thompson: “Life Isn’t a Pulp Novel”
Lavie Tidhar’s Osama is not an easy or light novel. However, it is a very thought provoking one, and I suspect it’s one that’s going to stay with me for a long time.
What if Osama bin Laden never existed? What if his acts of terror were confined solely to pulp novels, the kind that are published alongside pornography? That’s the Philip K. Dickian world the novel takes place in.
Joe is a private detective hired to find the author of the Osama bin Laden: Vigilante books. As he travels across the world attempting to track down the writer, the distance between Joe’s fictional world and the real world begins to dissipate. The normal detective stuff happens - attempts are made on his life, he’s told to drop the case, etc. But it gets really interesting when Joe comes into contact with “refugees” - people who seem fuzzy around the edges and appear to be trapped - and he begins to question the nature of the world he inhabits, and even of himself.
The novel asks a lot of questions about how we cope with horrible acts of violence through escapism fiction, the war on terror, about choices that we make, and classic Dickian themes like what is reality, and who we are.
For example, at “OsamaCon” — a convention dedicated to the books put on by enthusiastic fans, complete with fanzines — Joe meets some fans of the bin Laden books, and asks them what’s the draw. The couple responds by saying, “To read about these horrible things and know they never happened … and when you’re finished, you can put down the book and get on with your life. To know it’s fiction - pulp fiction … And that’s where all these terrible things should stay … in the pages of a book.”
The most difficult passages are those from the pulp novels - which turn out to be acts of terror that have occurred recently in our history. They’re gut-wrenching on so many different levels, and it’s difficult material to discuss and interact with it. Thankfully Tidhar’s writing doesn’t sensationalize it, and he handles it all with a certain amount of grace.
Jeff Harding gives a solid narration, but for some reason, it got off to a slow start and took a while for me to get completely invested in. That said, it’s worth sticking with. This is a book that’s lingered with me since I finished listening, and I’ll almost certainly reread at some point.
————
Dave Thompson is the host and co-editor of PodCastle, the fantasy fiction audio magazine. His own fiction has been published by Bull Spec and Apex Magazine, among others. You can follow him on Twitter @krylyr.
Posted in regular | Tagged dave thompson, jeff harding, lavie tidhar, osama, review
Release Week: Mark L. Van Name's No Going Back and Lavie Tidhar's Tel Aviv Dossier
Posted on 2012-05-30 at 02:09 by Sam
May goes out fairly quietly in terms of raw numbers, but there are still two audiobooks I am pretty excited about, led for me by No Going Back: Jon & Lobo, Book 5 By Mark L. Van Name, Narrated by Tom Stechschulte for Audible Frontiers. Out concurrently with its print and e-book release from Baen, the book continues the Jon and Lobo series, which came to audio in one giant gulp last month. “Jon and Lobo are back–and everything is about to change. If they both survive. Haunted by memories of children he could not save, Jon Moore is so increasingly self-destructive that even his best friend, the hyper-intelligent Predator-Class Assault Vehicle, Lobo, is worried. When Jon risks meeting a woman from his distant past and undertakes a high-stakes mission, Lobo fears this will be their last. The job is illegal. They have to take on one of the oldest, most powerful men alive. Two different security forces are tracking them. And Jon is falling in love. Desperate and out of options on a world so inhospitable that its statues and monuments outnumber its living inhabitants, Jon and Lobo encounter their deadliest challenges yet. They must make decisions from which there truly is No Going Back.”
The second audiobook I’m most excited about this week is The Tel Aviv Dossier By and Yir Yaniv, Narrated by for Audible Ltd. Originally published in print by ChiZine in 2009, it’s the third of Tidhar’s books to come to audio after the mid-May release of his 2011 novel Osama and his novella An Occupation of Angels last year. Here’s the pitch for The Tel Aviv Dossier: “Through a city torn apart by violence they cannot comprehend, three disparate people: a documentary film-maker, a yeshiva student, and a psychotic fireman must try to survive, and try to find meaning - even if it means being lost themselves. As Tel Aviv is consumed, a strange mountain rises at the heart of the city and shows the outline of what may be another, alien world beyond. Can there be redemption there? Can the fevered rumours of a coming messiah be true? As the city loses contact with the outside world and closes in on itself, as the few surviving children play and scavenge in the ruins, can innocence survive? And is it possible for hope to spring amid such chaos?”
ALSO OUT TUESDAY:
Read more...Posted in regular, Release Week | Tagged lavie tidhar, mark van name, no going back, release week
The Guilded Earlobe's Top 10 Zombie Novels and Series (with audiobook notes)
Posted on 2012-05-25 at 14:08 by Sam
Link: The Guilded Earlobe’s Top 10 Zombie Novels and Series (with audiobook notes)
Led by Mira Grant’s Newsflesh series (bumped up to #1 due to Bob’s very positive thoughts on the final, just-released Blackout) and including several other books and series available in audio (and some which are not). My own write-in, though as much, much less a zombie connoisseur is Boneshakerby Cherie Priest, read wonderfully by Kate Reading and Wil Wheaton. Anyway — go check out the list and add your own favorites.
Posted in link | Tagged guilded earlobe
Release Week: KSR's 2312; Anne Lyle; Rob Ziegler; Lev AC Rosen; David Brin; Tim Akers; and the conclusion to The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel
Posted on 2012-05-23 at 19:32 by Sam
The absolutely mammoth release week for Tuesday, May 23, is led for me by the much-anticipated and well-regarded 2312 by arrated by for Hachette Audio, out concurrently with its publication in hardcover and e-book by Orbit. At 19 hrs and 15 mins, it seems a pretty good length for exploring a science fiction world (not too long, not too short). Over on Scalzi’s Whatever blog, Robinson talks about the Big Idea behind the novel, there’s an official site which lets you build your own asteroid terrarium, and here’s the publisher description: “The year is 2312. Scientific and technological advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. Earth is no longer humanity’s only home; new habitats have been created throughout the solar system on moons, planets, and in between. But in this year, 2312, a sequence of events will force humanity to confront its past, its present, and its future. The first event takes place on Mercury, on the city of Terminator, itself a miracle of engineering on an unprecedented scale. It is an unexpected death, but one that might have been foreseen. For Swan Er Hong, it is an event that will change her life. Swan was once a woman who designed worlds. Now she will be led into a plot to destroy them.”
The Alchemist of Souls: Night’s Masque, Book 1 By , Narrated by — Length:15 hrs and 9 mins — Out just a bit earlier this year in print and e-book, read by Page, the narrator of the (deservedly) award-winning audiobook for Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora. Again, there’s a Big Idea piece from the author, and here’s the publisher: “When Tudor explorers returned from the New World, they brought back a name out of half-forgotten Viking legend: skraylings. Red-sailed ships followed in the explorers’ wake, bringing Native American goods - and a skrayling ambassador – to London. But what do these seemingly magical beings really want in Elizabeth I’s capital? Mal Catlyn, a down-at-heel swordsman, is appointed to the ambassador’s bodyguard, but assassination attempts are the least of his problems. What he learns about the skraylings and their unholy powers could cost England her new ally – and Mal his soul.”
Seed (2011) By , Narrated by — Length:12 hrs and 45 mins. Seed is Ziegler’s debut novel: “It”s the dawn of the 22nd century, and the world has fallen apart. Decades of war and resource depletion have toppled governments. The ecosystem has collapsed. A new dust bowl sweeps the American West. The United States has become a nation of migrants - starving masses of nomads who seek out a living in desert wastelands and encampments outside government seed-distribution warehouses. In this new world, there is a new power. Satori is more than just a corporation, she is an intelligent, living city that grew out of the ruins of Denver. …”
Out last Wednesday from Recorded Books was All Men of Genius (2011) By Lev AC Rosen, Narrated by Emily Gray — Length:16 hrs and 57 mins — “Set in a steampunk version of Victorian England, Lev AC Rosen’s acclaimed debut novel, All Men of Genius, follows the fantastical adventures of Violet Adams. Determined to attend the prestigious Illyria College, Violet gains entrance by masquerading as her twin brother Ashton. But continuing the scheme turns out to be difficult - especially when “Ashton” is faced with blackmail, killer automata, and possible romance with a young duke.”
And continuing its almost weekly march upon bigtime backlists, Audible Frontiers this week brings us a wide selection of the works of science fiction author David Brin, in the run-up to Brin’s forthcoming Existence (June 17). The post-apocalyptic 1985 novel The Postman, which indeed spawned the Mel Gibson film, is narrated by
Also new in audio are: Earth (1990 Narrated by Kiln People (2002) and The Practice Effect (1984, Narrated by Glory Season (1993, Narrated by
Lastly, also new from Audible Frontiers are the first two books in Tim Akers’s Burn Cycle, both narrated by beginning with Heart of Veridon: Burn Cycle, Book 1 (2009, Solaris Books):
And continuing with Dead of Veridon: Burn Cycle, Book 2 (2011) — 9.5 hours each, these novels follow “Jacob Burn: pilot, criminal and disgraced son of one of the founding families of the ancient city of Veridon.”
ALSO OUT TUESDAY:
Read more...Posted in regular, Release Week | Tagged 2312, david brin, kim stanley robinson, release week, tim akers
Dave Thompson to narrate Tim Pratt's Briarpatch
Posted on 2012-05-21 at 20:37 by Sam
Link: Dave Thompson to narrate Tim Pratt’s Briarpatch
Quoth Dave: “I get to read the audiobook for Tim Pratt’s amazing fantasy novel Briarpatch! … I am so stoked beyond words about this, I don’t even know what else to say! I keep expecting people to email me that they’ve changed their minds. I love this book. I loved it immediately - as soon as I started reading it when it came out last year.”
This is absolutely awesome news all around: 1. An audiobook for Briarpatch 2. I get to make Dave interview himself. (Hey, if he can handle a whole cauldron of witches, he can surely handle himself.) It should be available via ACX (Audible) late this summer. Yeah!
Posted in link | Tagged acx, briarpatch, dave thompson, tim pratt
Audible.com 48-hour Customer Favorites $7.95 sale
Posted on 2012-05-18 at 17:17 by Sam
Through Noon Eastern Time on May 21, Audible.com is having a 48-hour Customer Favorites $7.95 sale. There is a handy Sci-Fi & Fantasy tab, though there are sf/f titles lurking under the Thriller, Fiction (a lot), and Romance tabs as well. Here’s what most caught my eye in the sf/f tab:
- Howl’s Moving Castle By Diana Wynne Jones, Narrated by Jenny Sterlin — Length:8 hrs and 34 mins — which I got to gush about over on The Functional Nerds blog as part of the Diana Wynne Jones 2012 blog tour
- The Wise Man’s Fear: Kingkiller Chronicles, Day 2 (2011) By Patrick Rothfuss, Narrated by Nick Podehl — Series: KingKiller Chronicles, Book 2 — Length:42 hrs and 59 mins — one step down from the wonderful first book, The Name of the Wind, is still in rarified air
- The Windup Girl (2009) By Paolo Bacigalupi, Narrated by Jonathan Davis — Length:19 hrs and 34 mins — winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and John W. Campbell awards
And there’s a whole lot more worth giving a look at:
Read more...Posted in regular | Tagged sales
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