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Audible.com's Tournament of Audiobooks now includes free first chapters

Posted on 2012-03-27 at 10:00 by Sam

Link: Audible.com’s Tournament of Audiobooks now includes free first chapters

Audible has added a new feature to their Tournament of Audiobooks: free first chapters for all 32 titles. For SF/F fans, this is a chance to really get a strong sampling of:

Along with other fiction and non-fiction titles.

Posted in link

Tantor Audio $6.99 direct download sale

Posted on 2012-03-27 at 01:29 by Sam

Link: Tantor Audio $6.99 direct download sale

Tantor Audio is having a $6.99 direct download sale, including a long list of sf/f titles:

Posted in link

News: Lavie Tidhar announces five-book deal with Audible, including Osama and trilogy The Bookman Histories

Posted on 2012-03-26 at 19:34 by Sam

Link: News: Lavie Tidhar announces five-book deal with Audible, including Osama and trilogy The Bookman Histories

Absolutely fantastic news:

  
Posted in link | Tagged lavie tidhar, news

Review and Interview: The Witches of Lublin

Posted on 2012-03-26 at 14:51 by Sam

REVIEW and INTERVIEW: The Witches of Lublin By Ellen Kushner, Elizabeth Schwartz, and Yale Strom, Narrated by Ellen Kushner, Miriam Margolyes, Neil Gaiman, Simon Jones, and Barbara Rosenblat for SueMedia Productions:

Review and Interview by Dave Thompson: “Music Bridging our Profane World to the Holiness of the World to Come”

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Posted in regular | Tagged dave thompson, ellen kushner, interviews, the witches of lublin

News: Oliver Wyman to narrate more of Pohl's Heechee saga, and William F. Nolan's Logan's Run

Posted on 2012-03-23 at 20:05 by Sam

Via Twitter, Oliver Wyman reports that he’ll be narrating “William F. Nolan’s classic Logan’s Run (+ 2 sequels) & 4 more books in Fred Pohl’s epic Heechee saga” for Audible, adding: “I love my job.”

For fans (like me!) of Wyman’s excellent, excellent narration on Frederik Pohl’s Gateway, this is fantastic news. As to more on why Wyman is super-excited about this, check out his response to Audible’s asking narrators to talk about “The Best Book I Ever Narrated” last year. I wonder if they’ll get Robert J. Sawyer to introduce the rest of the series…

Posted in regular | Tagged news, oliver wyman

Interview: Brandon Sanderson on (primarily) The Alloy of Law and narrator Michael Kramer

Posted on 2012-03-23 at 14:45 by Sam

Today I’m absolutely ecstatic to post my interview with bestselling author Brandon Sanderson:

 

I first met and spoke to Sanderson in September 2010, when he came to Raleigh’s Quail Ridge Books for a reading and signing event for The Way of Kings: Book One of The Stormlight Archive, and one of the topics we got onto happened to be audiobooks. Fast forward to the fall of 2011 and the release of The Alloy of Law: A Mistborn Novel (which I reviewed here on the Audible SF/F blog) and it felt like it was time to dig a little deeper on the subject of audiobooks, narrator Michael Kramer, and (maybe) see about poking around on the ending to the Wheel of Time, due out in January 2013.

Q: Last time we spoke, we were talking about the 45-hour audiobook for The Way of Kings. Each of the Mistborn books came in at 25-30 hours, but The Alloy of Law comes in at a tidy 9 discs. Did you set out to write a shorter book?

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Posted in regular | Tagged brandon sanderson, interviews, michael kramer, the alloy of law

Release Week: Tobias Buckell's Arctic Rising and M. M. Buckner's The Gravity Pilot

Posted on 2012-03-21 at 13:00 by Sam

It’s another packed week of audiobook releases, with the two biggest books for me both being previously released in hardcover from Tor, and both dealing with near/medium future ecological change: Tobias S. Buckell’s Arctic Rising and M. M. Buckner’s The Gravity Pilot.

ARCTIC RISING: Out in hardcover and e-book from Tor in late February, Buckell’s latest is an ecothriller set in a near future where: “Global warming has transformed the Earth, and it’s about to get even hotter. The Arctic Ice Cap has all but melted, and the international community is racing desperately to claim the massive amounts of oil beneath the newly accessible ocean.” Read by Carolyn Michelle Smith for Audible Frontiers, the audiobook for Arctic Rising comes in at just under 9 hours. It’s my first audiobook from narrator Smith, who thus far (I’m a little more than a third of the way through) has done a very solid job on the mainline narration and for the Nigerian lead, though her Russian and Inuit accents require a little more imagination, and she’s been quite clear and easily distinguishable with several voices for both male and female characters. It’s not my first fiction from Buckell, though it’ll be my longest story of his, after his novellas in both of the METAtropolis anthologies and The Executioness, and a very long list of short stories of his I’ve enjoyed.

 

THE GRAVITY PILOT: Out in hardcover from Tor in March 2011, The Gravity Pilot By M. M. Buckner is Narrated by Jay Snyder for Audible Frontiers. Coming in at 11.5 hours, it’s a title I have been looking for in audio for about a year, and I’m ecstatic that Snyder (among other titles: The Caryatids and Blood of Ambrose) was cast. “It is the polluted and gritty future, saved - sort of - by technofixes. Young skydiver Orr Sitka wants no more from life in future Alaska than he already has: a woman he loves and the chance to dive. When he makes a reckless, record-breaking jump that catapults him into celebrity, he’s courted by corporations that want to exploit his talent to make him a sports media star. The dangerous jump that wins Orr infamy turns out to be a breaking point for his loving girlfriend, Dyce, who is wooed away by a promising job in the thriving underground city of Seattle, a world media center in a crumbling civilization. Separately, Orr and Dyce are sucked into nightmare lives that take a terrible toll on each of them. When Orr learns that Dyce has become addicted to virtual reality, controlled by an eccentric media billionaire and his decadent daughter, he does everything in his power to rescue her. But is Orr strong enough to get through to Dyce and break them both out of hell?”

ALSO OUT TUESDAY:

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Posted in regular, Release Week | Tagged arctic rising, mm buckner, release week, the gravity pilot, tobias buckell

Some Iambik releases: Gemma Files and Jennifer Stevenson

Posted on 2012-03-21 at 01:17 by Sam

Though not yet available at Audible, over at Iambik audiobooks you can already purchase a digital download of A Book of Tongues and A Rope of Thorns by Gemma Files, read by Gordon Mackenzie: “Two years after the Civil War, Pinkerton agent Ed Morrow has gone undercover with one of the weird West’s most dangerous outlaw gangs-the troop led by “Reverend” Asher Rook, ex-Confederate chaplain turned “hexslinger,” and his notorious lieutenant (and lover) Chess Pargeter. Morrow’s task: get close enough to map the extent of Rook’s power, then bring that knowledge back to help Professor Joachim Asbury unlock the secrets of magic itself.” These are the first two books in Files’s Hexslinger series, originally published in print by ChiZine.

 

And earlier this week, Iambik published Trash Sex Magic by Jennifer Stevenson, read by Arielle Lipshaw. Originally published by Small Beer Press: “Jennifer Stevenson’s debut novel starts with Raedawn Somershoe who lives in a trailer on the banks of the Fox River. She likes men and men like her. It runs in the family: her mother, Gelia, can seduce a man just by walking across a road. When they set their sights on a man, something magical happens.”

Posted in regular | Tagged gemma files, hexslinger, iambik

The Guilded Earlobe reviews Clay and Susan Griffith's The Greyfriar, read by James Marsters

Posted on 2012-03-20 at 15:41 by Sam

Link: The Guilded Earlobe reviews Clay and Susan Griffith’s The Greyfriar, read by James Marsters

“Quick Thoughts: The Greyfriar is a rollicking fun start to a series with great potential. With a lot of vicious Vampires and adventurous derring-do, the first installment of the Vampire Empire lives defies expectations and breaths new life into the Vampire subgenre. Marsters’ narration combined with the fun feel of this novel makes its translation to audiobook seamless, and should win the authors whole new slew of loyal fans.”

Posted in link

Release Week: Kosmatka, Pagliassotti, Zebrowski, Cherryh, Julavits, Medina, and more...

Posted on 2012-03-14 at 14:58 by Sam

A prolific and intriguing release week is led by The Games By Ted Kosmatka, Narrated by Scott Brick for Random House Audio — “This stunning first novel from Nebula Award and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist Ted Kosmatka is a riveting tale of science cut loose from ethics. Set in an amoral future where genetically engineered monstrosities fight each other to the death in an Olympic event, The Games envisions a harrowing world that may arrive sooner than you think. Silas Williams is the brilliant geneticist in charge of preparing the U.S. entry into the Olympic Gladiator competition, an internationally sanctioned bloodsport with only one rule: No human DNA is permitted in the design of the entrants. Silas lives and breathes genetics; his designs have led the United States to the gold in every previous event. But the other countries are catching up. Now, desperate for an edge in the upcoming games, Silas’s boss engages an experimental supercomputer to design the genetic code for a gladiator that cannot be beaten.”

 

Clockwork Heart (2008) By Dru Pagliassotti, Narrated by Kate Rudd for Brilliance Audio — “Taya soars over Ondinium on metal wings. She is an icarus - a courier privileged to travel freely across the city’s sectors and mingle indiscriminately among its castes. But even she can’t outfly the web of terrorism, loyalty, murder, and intrigue that snares her after a daring mid-air rescue. Taya finds herself entangled with the Forlore brothers, scions of an upperclass family: handsome, brilliant Alister, who sits on the governing council and writes programs for the Great Engine; and awkward, sharp-tongued Cristof, who has exiled himself from his caste and repairs clocks in Ondinium’s lowest sector. Both hide dangerous secrets, in this city that beats to the ticking of a clockwork heart.”

The Omega Point Trilogy (1983) By George Zebrowski, Narrated by Oliver Wyman for Audible Frontiers — “6599 A.D.: The war between the Earth Federation and the Herculean Empire had been over for more than three centuries. The planet in the Hercules Globular Cluster was a cinder; the few descendents of the surviving Herculeans lived on Myraa’s World, half a galaxy away, in what seemed to be a religious commune. But on an unnamed planet, deep within the Hercules Cluster, two survivors, father and son, gather their resources and plan to enforce a reign of terror over the Federation worlds. But the woman Myraa has a different vision - one which excludes empires and warring armies. Subtly, she strives to shape events toward a different end. Rising to one of the most unusual climaxes in recent fantastic literature, this novel of chase and vengeance depicts a colorful, poetic future which is struggling to overcome its past. Filled with striking twists and vivid ideas, this is space opera at its most modern.” (Another Zebrowski novel, Brute Orbits, is also out Tuesday, read by William Dufris.)

 

Cyteen (1988) By C. J. Cherryh, Narrated by Gabra Zackman and Jonathan Davis for Audible Frontiers — Hugo Award for Best Novel — “The saga of two young friends trapped in an endless nightmare of suspicion and surveillance, of cyber-programmed servants and a ruling class with century-long lives - and the enigmatic woman who dominates them all. Narrators Jonathan Davis and Gabra Zackman skillfully split up this sweeping sci-fi epic that is ‘at once a psychological novel, a murder mystery, and an examination of power on a grand scale.’ (Locus)” This is the first of Cherryh’s novels to come to Audible, and it’s no bite-sized offering at nearly 37 hours.

Fiction: The Vanishers By Heidi Julavits, Narrated by Xe Sands for  Dreamscape Media, LLC — concurrent with print release from Doubleday — “ Julia Severn is a student at an elite institute for psychics. Her mentor, the legendary Madame Ackermann, afflicted by jealousy, subjects Julia to the humiliation of reliving her mother’s suicide when Julia was an infant. As the two lock horns, and Julia gains power, Madame Ackermann launches a desperate psychic attack that leaves Julia the victim of a crippling ailment. But others have noted Julia’s emerging gifts, and soon she’s recruited to track down an elusive missing person who might have a connection to her mother. As Julia sifts through ghosts and astral clues, everything she thought she knew of her mother is called into question, and she discovers that her ability to know the minds of others goes far deeper than she ever imagined.”

 

Teens/Fiction: The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind By Meg Medina, Narrated by Cristina Panfilio for Candlewick on Brilliance Audio (Candlewick, March 13) — “Though everyone in the village of Tres Montes thinks Sonia Ocampo is blessed, she knows she is nothing but a fraud. She’s spent her life listening to the hopes and wishes of her neighbors and family, but when a classmate dies despite her prayers, she is forced to realize that she has no special powers -  no way to prevent bad things from happening. …  With a hint of magical realism and romance, Meg Medina weaves a poignant tale about a girl who dares to face life’s harsh truths and find power within herself.”

ALSO OUT TUESDAY:

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Posted in regular, Release Week | Tagged CJ Cherryh, clockwork heart, dru pagliassotti, oliver wyman, release week, scott brick, ted kosmatka, the games
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