The 33 most missing audiobooks of 2014

Posted on 2015-01-17 at 06:12 by Sam

Three thousand two hundred sixty-seven. That's how many science fiction and fantasy audiobooks were added to Audible.com's US listings alone in 2014, and the larger number of new speculative fiction audiobooks -- which include GraphicAudio, independent (for example The Maze of Games and Eric Flint's "Islands"), and other titles not available at Audible (for example Cory Doctorow's Homeland and Information Doesn't Want to Be Free), physical-only releases, podiobooks, and English-language audiobooks released in other countries, to name a few, not to mention the many sf/f titles shelved under "Fiction" or "Mysteries and Thrillers" or of course young adult and young reader titles --  is nearly impossible to catalog. (I tried, as usual, this year with the release week coverage, but even so missed quite a lot.) And, of course, while The AudioBookaneers focuses on science fiction and fantasy, there were quite a few fantastic books without dragons or spaceships in them this year, too.

First, a warning. This article is a long over-wrought mess. Second, before I get to those "most missing in audio" books which came out last year and did not make it into audio at all, I'll start with highlighting a few that actually did come to audio, albeit overseas:

Posted in The Arrrdies | Tagged adam roberts, alex dally macfarlane, am dellamonica, american neolithic, ben aaronovitch, blake butler, broken river books, bryan allen carr, dave hutchinson, david edison, david james keaton, diana wynne jones, elysium, emmi itaranta, fred venturini, gemma files, greg van eekhout, hilda hilst, iain m banks, james l cambias, jay lake, jennifer marie brissett, jenny erpenbeck, jm mcdermott, joanne m harris, john hornor jacobs, jonathan carroll, josh weil, julia elliott, kerry howley, laila lalami, lavie tidhar, maze, naomi foyle, neil williamson, nick mamatas, nina allan, our lady of the islands, peter liney, rajan khanna, richard house, rjurik davidson, sam sykes, shannon page, simon ings, stephen baxter, stuart rojstaczer, terence hawkins, the great glass sea, the last projector, ultima, unwrapped sky, ursula jones, will mcintosh, wu ming-yi

My Top 10 Audiobooks of 2014

Posted on 2015-01-09 at 02:15 by Sam

Always look forward to The Guilded Earlobe’s picks:

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Pulling the Future Toward Me

Posted on 2015-01-06 at 14:41 by Sam

Congrats to Dave (and co-editor Anna) on 5 amazing, ridiculously amazing and wonderful years of PodCastle fantasy stories:

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Release Week: Rudy Rucker's Software, Michael Underwood's The Younger Gods, Daniel Abraham's The Price of Spring, Shae Ford's Dragonsbane, Mary Rickert's The Memory Garden, Russell H. Greenan's It Happened in Boston?, Multiverse, and Rick Wilber's Field of Fantasies

Posted on 2015-01-03 at 04:38 by Sam

DECEMBER 17-31, 2014: I went ahead and extended this pair of weeks one extra day to give a clean cutoff to 2014. It was a fantastic year of audiobooks (and of course Dave and I will be here with some best-of-the-year picks in due course) and 2015 looks every bit as packed as we consider a preview of what's to come. In the meantime, the last half of the last month of 2014 had some surprises, with all eight picks again coming off the "seen but not heard" listings -- though a few of them are from just a few months earlier in the year. Also out and well worth checking out are Catherina Asaro's Undercity, Walter Jon Williams' Dread Empire's Fall series, Mike Allen's The Black Fire Concerto, Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle, and Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner's This Shattered World. In "seen but not heard" to wrap up the year are Stephanie Ricker's The Battle of Castle Nebula, Astrid ‘Artistikem’ Cruz' The Last Superhero, and Guy Adams' For a Few Souls More. Happy New Year!

PICKS OF THE WEEK(S):

Posted in Release Week | Tagged chris sorensen, daniel abraham, derek perkins, dragonsbane, fate's forsaken, field of fantasies, gardner dozois, greg bear, luke daniels, mary rickert, michael underwood, multiverse, neil shah, poul anderson, rick wilber, robert fass, rudy rucker, russell h greenan, shae ford, software, tavia gilbert, the price of spring, the younger gods

Release Week: Steve Erickson's Zeroville, Jane Smiley's The Greenlanders, Robert W. Chambers' The Maker of Moons, and Luisa May Alcott's A Whisper in the Dark

Posted on 2014-12-27 at 05:06 by Sam

DECEMBER 10-16, 2014: For the first time in (at least recent) memory, all four of my picks for the week come off the "never before in audio" list, with none of the books even being released this decade and some being well out of copyright in text, and all under some of the best narrators in the field. There's still more backlist audiobooks and even more concurrent new releases also out this week, from the 50-audiobook "The Saint" series in its mind-boggling entirety to David Drake's Skyripper to Jane Yolen's Sword of the Rightful King, from Frank Tallis' creepy The Voices to Kate Milford's Greenglass House, to paranormal romance (Elizabeth Hunter's The Scribe) and Nobel Prize winner fiction, to still plenty more where all that came from. Meanwhile, just a few days ago on December 24th, a new Baen Audio Books production was out just in time for your holiday enjoyment, as Baen's Free Radio Hour podcast debuted Larry Correia's "Detroit Christmas". After all, what goes with the holly and the ivy better than a Tommy gun? (And for those curious about the behind the scenes of a full cast, sound effects and original score production, there's a short video for you.) Speaking of audiobooks with high production values, the current Humble Bundle is a pay-what-you-want offer on a huge batch of Doctor Who audiobooks, including seasons voiced by David Tennant and Colin Baker. Enjoy!

PICKS OF THE WEEK:

Posted in Release Week | Tagged a whisper in the dakr, bronson pinchot, cassandra campbell, claire bloom, gabrielle de cuir, jane smiley, louisa may alcott, ralph lister, robert w chambers, skyboat media, stefan rudnicki, steve erickson, susan hanfield, the greenlanders, the maker of moons, zeroville

Release Week(s): Carbide Tipped Pens, The Godless, The Strange Library, Winterswim, The Martian Race, The Winter King, Ari Marmell's "Hot Lead, Cold Iron", and Cory Doctorow's "Information Doesn't Want to Be Free"

Posted on 2014-12-18 at 03:15 by Sam

NOVEMBER 26-DECEMBER 9, 2014: A fantastic and wide-ranging fortnight of releases for you to start December, including epic fantasy, hard sf, Arthurian legend, a whimsy from Murakami, a GraphicAudio magical noir, non-fiction, and more. Do check out some of the "also out" listings as well such as Kazuaki Takano's A Genocide of One, Richard Parks' Yamada Monogotari, and Felicia Hajra-Lee's The Niantic Project: Ingress for Google's Niantic Labs, and plenty of mysteries and thrillers besides, including Moriarty, MacDonald, and Raymond Chandler, and! a free Larry Correia "Grimnoir Chronicles" short read by Bronson Pinchot. Unfortunately there's some absolutely fantastic books in the "seen but not heard" listings as well, including Jenn Brissett's Elysium, Chris Bucholz' Severance, Shannon Page and Jay Lake's Our Lady of the Islands, N.K. Jemisin's The Awakened Kingdom, Jim C. Hines' Rise of the Spider Goddess, and the PW-year's-best-lsited anthology The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women. Early December also brings the Audible availability of Jeff VanderMeer's Area X omnibus of his Southern Reach trilogy. And I've added another absolutely huge round of "added" titles for 2015 in the "coming soon" listings, though quite a few have large variability for measurements of "soon". Enjoy!

PICKS OF THE WEEK:

Posted in Release Week | Tagged ari marmell, ben bova, ben peek, carbide tipped pens, chris sorensen, cory doctorow, eric choi, gabrielle de cuir, gregory benford, haruki murakami, information doesn't want to be free, kirby heyborne, paul michael garcia, ryan w bradley, the godless, the martian race, the strange library, wil wheaton, winterswim

9 Science Fiction and Fantasy Audiobooks by Women of Color You Must Hear

Posted on 2014-12-10 at 18:15 by Sam

Making the Internet rounds yesterday was a new list from Buzzfeed of 19 Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels by Women of Color You Must Read and as headline-bait listicles go it's actually pretty good. (Of course one may quibble, but those that I have read that are on this list are fantastic books.) Here's an audiobibliophile tour of the list:

9 ARE IN AUDIO:

Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, read by Lynne Thigpen for Recorded Books -- One of the absolute all-time best books and audiobooks I've ever encountered. "God is change. That is the central truth of the Earthseed movement, whose unlikely prophet is 18-year-old Lauren Olamina. The young woman's diary entries tell the story of her life amid a violent 21st-century hell of walled neighborhoods and drug-crazed pyromaniacs - and reveal her evolving Earthseed philosophy. Against a backdrop of horror emerges a message of hope: if we are willing to embrace divine change, we will survive to fulfill our destiny among the stars." Get: [Audible]

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December Whispersync Deal Roundup: Hurley, Jemisin, Walton, Rothfuss, Lawrence, Lynch, Sanderson, and much more

Posted on 2014-12-04 at 18:20 by Sam

I keep putting off compiling the December Whispersync Deal roundup, but (1) a good chunk of titles are only on sale through Dec 14 and (2) I already missed passing along both that Andy Weir's The Martian was on sale for $3 and that Rachel Aaron's The Spirit Thief was on sale as well as John Shirley's Everything is Broken, on and on... and since I've no idea when/if some of this deals will disappear, I had better get on it! In that frame of mind, first up here's some deals on some fantastic, highly-recommended titles where I just don't know when they'll return to their regular prices: (UPDATE DEC 5: To include the new crop of Big Deal titles which are on sale through Dec 21.)

Kameron Hurley's God's War (Bel Dame Apocrypha, Book 1) for $1.99+$3.99 -- OMGWTFBBQ is basically the Twitterverse reaction to the Kindle price drop on the first book of Hurley's Arthur C. Clarke and Nebula Award nominated Bel Dame Apocrypha series. I first heard of Hurley via Jeff VanderMeer's 2011 year-end roundup for Locus, where he described the "bug-based tech/magic" and "muscular prose" of the book, and I've had this on my daily watch list for just this who-kn0ws-who-screwed-up price break. Read by Emily Bauer for Audible: "Nyx had already been to hell. One prayer more or less wouldn't make any difference... On a ravaged, contaminated world, a centuries-old holy war rages, fought by a bloody mix of mercenaries, magicians, and conscripted soldiers. Though the origins of the war are shady and complex, there's one thing everybody agrees on - there's not a chance in hell of ending it. Nyx is a former government assassin who makes a living cutting off heads for cash. But when a dubious deal between her government and an alien gene pirate goes bad, Nyx's ugly past makes her the top pick for a covert recovery. The head they want her to bring home could end the war--but at what price? The world is about to find out."

A year earlier, the eye-opening fantasy debut everyone was talking about and nominating for awards - and which I perhaps predictably learned about via VanderMeer's year's best roundup for Locus that year -- was N.K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (The Inheritance Trilogy Book 1) and it's also on sale, for $1.99+$3.49 read by Casaundra Freeman for Brilliance Audio: "Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle." (For completists, do check out VanderMeer's list from 2009 also. Just saying.)

Posted in Whispersync Deals | Tagged amanda hocking, bridget ladd, casaundra freeman, chuck wendig, clive barker, crossroad press, david niall wilson, davina porter, diana gabaldon, emily bauer, erik larson, gail z martin, james clamp, jo walton, kameron hurley, katherine kellgren, luke daniels, mark lawrence, michael page, nick podehl, nk jemisin, outlander, patrick rothfuss, prince of thorns, scott lynch, stant litore, stephen hoye, the lies of locke lamora

Release Week: Mira Grant's Symbiont, Brandon Sanderson's Legion: Skin Deep, Tobias Buckell's Mitigated Futures, and Bronson Pinchot reading David Drake's Grimmer Than Hell

Posted on 2014-12-03 at 06:43 by Sam

NOVEMBER 19-25, 2014: An overall very, very quiet week in publishing, but with a standout concurrent new release (Mira Grant's Symbiont), two glimmering backlist collections (Buckell and Drake), the return of Sanderson's Legion (for free! read by Oliver Wyman again!), and a few more titles well worth noting (an indie fantasy superstar in the making in Jacob Cooper, anthologies Robot Uprisings and Night Shift, Bernard Cornwell's Grail Quest novels, Costello and Hautala's Star Road, and a huge pile of Akashic's "Noir" anthologies) make for plenty to pick from. Enjoy!

PICKS OF THE WEEK:

Posted in Release Week | Tagged brandon sanderson, bronson pinchot, christine lakin, david drake, grimmer than hell, legion, mira grant, mitigated futures, oliver wyman, symbiont, tobias buckell

Review: Copperhead

Posted on 2014-12-02 at 05:55 by Dave

Copperhead (Ironskin, Book 2) By Tina Connolly, read by Rosalyn Landor Length: 9 hours, 43 minutes

Appearances can be deceptive.

There are two sisters. Jane was wounded in an invasion by the fae, and now suffers from a disability in which she is cursed by a supernatural anger, and is a constant outsider, and goes to work as a governess in what appears to be a haunted house in the countryside. Helen is beautiful, married a wealthy aristocrat, and is obsessed with society and its balls and fashions.

If you’d asked me which sister I’d rather read about, I wouldn’t have thought twice. Jane sounds far more interesting and engaging. And I did enjoy reading Ironskin. So much, I listened to it as well. So you can imagine my surprise when I loaded Copperhead onto my phone and enjoyed it even more. But like I said, appearances can be deceptive.

Jane disappears from Copperhead early on, while attempting to help convince some of the most prestigious women in society that they have to do away with their fae-glamoured beauty. Helen is forced to take over after Jane’s disappearance, to track down the women, and convince them of the danger they’re in. A nice twist - some of the women Jane and Helen have to convince are using their supernatural beauty for good - such as celebrity-like spokeswomen for charitable causes.

Posted in reviews | Tagged fantasy, romance, rosalyn landor, tina connolly