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Tell me what to listen to next.
Posted on 2012-04-26 at 18:46 by Sam
Link: Tell me what to listen to next.
I am as usual in the midst of a bout of choice paralysis. So: I turn to you using a poll with the options:
- Jon Sprunk’s Shadow’s Son
- David Anthony Durham’s The War with the Mein
- Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora
- Gene Wolfe’s The Shadow of the Torturer
Or write-in via a comment here, or re-blog, or on Twitter or Facebook. I’m always up for suggestions!
Posted in link | Tagged polls
Release Week: The Mongoliad, Tricked, The Dark Tower, Blackbirds, Robert Silverberg, and more
Posted on 2012-04-25 at 02:32 by Sam
Well, the release week for Tuesday, April 24, 2012 is not messing around. There are two dozen+ new audiobooks, including a pretty big list of big titles.
The Mongoliad: The Foreworld Saga, Book 1 By Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, Mark Teppo, E. D. deBirmingham, Erik Bear, Joseph Brassey, and Cooper Moo, Narrated by Luke Daniels for Brilliance Audio — concurrent with its print and e-book publication from Amazon’s 47North, this is the first novel to come out of the serial novel project “The Mongoliad”, of which I’ve been a subscriber but which I haven’t followed terrifically closely since about chapter 5 or 6. I’m about 3/4 of the way through the audiobook at this point thanks to receiving a review copy, and Daniels (with whom I am familiar after his world on the Wild Cards anthologies and Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid Chronicles) employs a wide variety of voices to bring the motley cast of Christendom’s champions to audio; from Hungarians to Italians and Irishmen, to Germans and onwards east to their opponents in Mongolia. The much-awaited “sword porn” — meticulously researched and choreographed martial combat — appeared in the form of an impressive gladiatorial contest about halfway through. I’ll have more thoughts on this fairly short (13 hrs and 17 mins) novel soon:
Tricked: The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book 4 By Kevin Hearne, Narrated by Luke Danielsfor Random House Audio — speaking of Daniels’s work on Hearne’s series, here’s the 4th installment of the Arizona-dwelling Druid Atticus O’Sullivan, concurrent with its print and e-book release from Del Rey. Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins.
The Wind Through the Keyhole: The Dark Tower By Stephen King, Narrated by the author for Simon & Schuster Audio — billed as “Book 4.5” of King’s The Dark Tower series, it’s another shorter audiobook at 10 hrs and 29 mins, and one which has already been reviewed quite positively over at The Guilded Earlobe. Here’s the publisher’s pitch: “King has returned to the rich landscape of Mid-World. This story within a story within a story finds Roland Deschain, Mid-World’s last gunslinger, in his early days during the guilt-ridden year following his mother’s death. Sent by his father to investigate evidence of a murderous shape-shifter, a “skin-man”, Roland takes charge of Bill Streeter, a brave but terrified boy who is the sole surviving witness to the beast’s most recent slaughter.”
Blackbirds By Chuck Wendig, Narrated by Emily Beresfordfor Angry Robot on Brilliance Audio — 8 hrs and 7 mins — yet another non-doorstop-length novel, also already reviewed, and also quite positively, by The Guilded Earlobe. (Bob, do you ever sleep?!) Publisher’s pitch: “Miriam Black knows when you will die. Still in her early twenties, she’s foreseen hundreds of car crashes, heart attacks, strokes, suicides, and slow deaths by cancer. But when Miriam hitches a ride with truck driver Louis Darling and shakes his hand, she sees that in thirty days he will be gruesomely murdered while he calls her name.Miriam has given up trying to save people; that only makes their deaths happen. No matter what she does, she can’t save Louis. But if she wants to stay alive, she’ll have to try.” Wendig is quite worth following on Twitter, by the way; his piece on Lady Gaga should be required reading for the new millennium. Update: Wendig wrote up his “Big Idea” (hint: “Everybody poops. Everybody dies.”) for Scalzi’s Whatever blog.
Lastly (well, above the fold at least) is the release of seven (seven!) audiobooks from Tower of Glass (8 hrs and 2 mins), The Stochastic Man (7 hrs and 13 mins), The Book of Skulls (8 hrs and 14 mins), and Dying Inside (7 hrs and 31 mins).
ALSO OUT TUESDAY:
Read more...Posted in regular, Release Week | Tagged blackbirds, chuck wendig, kevin hearne, neal stephenson, release week, robert silverberg, stefan rudnicki, stephen king, the mongoliad
Untitled
Posted on 2012-04-19 at 23:29 by Sam
Received: Forthcoming from Brilliance Audio, both THE MONGOLIAD by Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, et al. and Evan Currie’s INTO THE BLACK, both concurrent with their print publication from 47North. (Will I be listening to The Mongoliad by the time you read this? Probably not. This weekend, though!)
Posted in photo
Audiobook release day: Jon Sprunk's Shadow's Son is out from GraphicAudio
Posted on 2012-04-19 at 22:05 by Sam
Link: Audiobook release day: Jon Sprunk’s Shadow’s Son is out from GraphicAudio
“In the holy city of Othir, treachery and corruption lurk at the end of every street, just the place for a freelance assassin with no loyalties and few scruples. Caim makes his living on the edge of a blade, but when a routine job goes south, he is thrust into the middle of an insidious plot. Pitted against crooked lawmen, rival killers, and sorcery from the Other Side, his only allies are Josephine, the socialite daughter of his last victim, and Kit, a guardian spirit no one else can see. But in this fight for his life, Caim only trusts his knives and his instincts, but they won’t be enough when his quest for justice leads him from Othir’s hazardous back alleys to its shining corridors of power. To unmask a conspiracy at the heart of the empire, he must claim his birthright as the Shadow’s Son…” With an approximate run time of 7 hours, Jon Sprunk’s Shadow’s Son is the title that is finally going to get me to check out GraphicAudio and its “movie in your mind” full sound productions. I have been hesitant so far, because I’m just not sure about the sound effects, but this is a book I have been wanting to check out for a while, since it was originally published in print by Pyr in June 2010. So: trying something new!
Posted in link | Tagged graphicaudio, jon sprunk, shadow's son
Audible.com's Semi-Annual Half-Price Sale, through April 27
Posted on 2012-04-19 at 20:29 by Sam
Audible.com’s Semi-Annual Half-Price Sale lists 1000+ titles, ending April 27 at Noon ET. Organized into the major categories, there’s helpfully a Sci-Fi and Fantasy listing, but it’s quite a doozy at 131 results. So! Here’s my usual rundown of the (too many, still) titles which caught my eye with a (somewhat) shorter list of PICKs:
Read more... Posted in regular | Tagged sales
Release Week: Mechanique, White Horse, James Patrick Kelly, and more
Posted on 2012-04-18 at 15:03 by Sam
A bit quieter in volume, but the release week of Tuesday, April 17, 2012 has brought two intriguing novels from 2011 to audio, namely Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti and Pattern Scars, along with new releases White Horse, Elizabeth Hand’s Radiant Days, and more.
Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti By Genevieve Valentine, Narrated by 8 hrs and 19 mins —Outside any city still standing, the Mechanical Circus Tresaulti sets up its tents. Crowds pack the benches to gawk at the brass-and-copper troupe and their impossible feats: Ayar the Strong Man, the acrobatic Grimaldi Brothers, fearless Elena and her aerialists who perform on living trapezes. War is everywhere, but while the Circus is performing, the world is magic. That magic is no accident: Boss builds her circus from the bones out, molding a mechanical company that will survive the unforgiving landscape. But even a careful ringmaster can make mistakes.”
White Horse: A Novel By for Blackstone Audio — 10 hrs and 15 mins — Concurrent with print/e-book publication from Atria — “White Horse is the first book in an absolutely unique debut trilogy - a postapocalyptic thriller chronicling one woman’s quest to nurture those she holds dear against the backdrop of a shocking new world. Thirty-year-old Zoe wants to go back to college. That’s why she cleans cages and floors at Pope Pharmaceuticals. If she can keep her head down, do her job, and avoid naming the mice, she’ll be fine. Her life is calm, maybe even boring - until the end of the world arrives and the president of the United States announces that humans are no longer a viable species…. Told in alternating before and after chapters, White Horse is a terrifying and romantic story that readers will be unable to put down.”
Look into The Sun By James Patrick Kelly, Narrated by Kevin T. Collins for Audible Frontiers — 10 hrs and 43 mins — Kelly’s 1989 “fable about a dissatisfied architect who travels ‘up-time’ and changes shape to design a temple for a goddess.” Also out is another Kelly audiobook from Audible Frontiers, Wildlife (1994) Narrated by Scott Aiello, Ismenia Mendes, and Stephen Bel Davies. I’m a big fan of JPK’s short fiction (go now and listen to his own narration of his award-winning novella, “Burn”, or the dozens of short stories in podcast form) and hope to find time for Look into the Sun before too long.
Lastly, also out Tuesday was Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir) By Jenny Lawson, narrated by the author. Why do I include this? Because Neil Gaiman, Wil Wheaton, and more made an awesomely bad book trailer video “thing” for the book. Based on the sample, it seems to be in a relatively near space to the excellent Zombie Spaceship Wasteland: A Book by Patton Oswalt — funny memoir-ish creative nonfiction, full of genre references and irreverences.
EARLIER THIS WEEK:
Read more...Posted in regular, Release Week | Tagged caitlin sweet, genevieve valentine, james patrick kelly, mechanique, release week, the pattern scars, white horse
Release Week: The Greyfriar, Welcome to Bordertown, Infinite Jest, "Enter, Night", Immobility, Unholy Night, Grail, the Honorverse, and more
Posted on 2012-04-11 at 13:12 by Sam
Another bumper crop of releases this week, ranging from Steampunk alternate history vampires, to vampires in a remote northern Ontario mining town, to a shared world urban fantasy anthology, to the 56 hours that is David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, a literary post apocalypse, a revisionary approach to the Three Wise Men, and more.
Vampire Empire - The Greyfriar By Narrated by Buzzy Multimedia Publishing (10 hrs and 39 mins):
“1870. A time known as The Great Killing. The vampire clans arose and slaughtered humanity with unprecedented carnage in the northern parts of the world. Millions perished; millions were turned into herd animals. The great industrialized civilizations of the world were left in ruin. A remnant fled south to the safety of the ever present heat which was intolerable to vampires. There, blending with the local peoples, they rebuilt their societies founded on human ingenuity, steam and iron. The year now is 2020. The Equatorian Empire, descendant of the British Empire, stretches from Alexandria to Cape Town. Princess Adele, quick witted, combat trained and heir to throne is set to wed the scion of the American Republic, a man she has never met. Their marriage will cement an alliance between the nations and set the stage for war against the vampires in an attempt to retake the north. Prepared to do her duty she finds herself caught in a web of political intrigue and physical danger.
The Greyfriar, a legendary vampire hunter from the north, appears ready to rescue the Princess and return her home—but he harbors secrets of his own. As the power struggle between the vampires and humans increase Adele and The Greyfriar are caught in the middle, on the run, being hunted, and fighting for not just their own lives, but for future of humanity.”
Originally published in print by Pyr in 2010, this is a long, long-awaited audiobook for me, the past year being the longest since Marsters was announced as narrator. Marsters, whose television roles include Spike on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel”, was the long-time voice of Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files series for Buzzy Multimedia. Now Marsters is booked to continue the Vampire Empire series with two more books: 2011’s The Rift Walker and 2012’s The Kingmakers, due out in print this fall. The first audiobook, The Greyfriar, “breathes new life into the Vampire subgenre” according to The Guilded Earlobe; I can hardly wait to jump in.
Welcome to Bordertown: New Stories and Poems of the Borderlands is an anthology edited by Narrated by Brilliance Audio (18 hrs and 8 mins):
Bordertown: a city on the Border between the human world and the elfin realm. A place where neither magic nor technology can be counted on, where elf and human kids run away to find themselves.
The Way from our world to the Border has been blocked for 13 long years. Now the Way is open once again—and Bordertown welcomes a new set of seekers and dreamers, misfits and makers, to taste life on the Border.
Here are 13 interconnected stories and eight poems—all new work by some of today’s best urban fantasy, fantasy, and slipstream writers: Christopher Barzak, Holly Black, Steven Brust, Emma Bull, Cassandra Clare, Charles de Lint, Cory Doctorow, Amal El-Mohtar, Neil Gaiman, Nalo Hopkinson, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Annette Curtis Klause, Ellen Kushner, Patricia McKillip, Dylan Meconis, Tim Pratt, Sara Ryan, Delia Sherman, Will Shetterly, Janni Lee Simner, Catherynne M. Valente, Terri Windling, and Jane Yolen.
Originally published in print by Tor last year, Tor.com has a brief introduction with links to more information on the shared world of Bordertown.
Infinite Jest By Narrated By
A gargantuan, mind-altering comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America set in an addicts’ halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.
Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human - and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.
How to describe this “novel”… OK. It’s DFW’s 1996 novel, considered among the greatest English-language novels ever written. In audio, it’s 56 hours and 14 minutes long. That’s about all I have, though Jon Korn at LitReactor tries a little harder when he classifies it as sf. Lastly: “Please note: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.” These are likely the (significant) end-notes, with their own footnotes. But I don’t know for sure, and am not quite ready to drop the 2 credits to find out. I need to date the sample a bit longer before committing to 56 hours.
ALSO OUT TUESDAY:
Read more...Posted in regular, Release Week
Another peek overseas at Audible UK and the digital divide
Posted on 2012-04-09 at 15:46 by Sam
Early last month, I wrote a bit about the regional digital divide, which sees Audible UK members having some excellent sf/f titles which Audible US members don’t have access to, from Songs of the Earth, to The Scar: New Crobuzon, Book 2 and Iron Council: New Crobuzon, Book 3 By Rivers of London and Moon Over Soho By Blue Remembered Earth By
Use of Weapons By Iain M. Banks, which led me to find the 2006 audio release of The Algebraist, also not available in the Audible US store. Outrageous!
But, then again, I saw a pretty good list of audiobooks we’ve had on this side of the pond for a good while, which were finally released just in the past month in the UK:
- The Dervish House By
- Ready Player One By Ernest Cline, Narrated by
- The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear By Patrick Rothfuss, Narrated by
Posted in regular | Tagged china mieville, iain m banks, patrick rothfuss, regional digital divide
The Guilded Earlobe reviews Brian Evenson's Immobility
Posted on 2012-04-06 at 14:06 by Sam
Link: The Guilded Earlobe reviews Brian Evenson’s Immobility
“Quick Thoughts: For fans of Post Apocalyptic fiction, Immobility is a different take of some familiar situations. Evenson offers some brilliant visuals, compelling dilemmas and a gut punch ending, just don’t expect to go away completely satisfied.”
Posted in link | Tagged brian evenson, guilded earlobe, immobility
Untitled
Posted on 2012-04-04 at 21:06 by Sam
It’s official ladies and gents, Princeless is an Eisner nominee! Not only that, we’re nominated in two different categories: Best Single Issue and Best Publication for Kids (8-12).
Honestly, I had hoped for the best, but just getting nominated for an Eisner was beyond my wildest expectations.
Congrats and well-deserved, Whitley and Goodwin. So excited for you guys; my kids both love this comic.
Posted in photo
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