Whispersync Deals for December 8, 2025

Posted on 2025-12-08 at 12:00 by Sam

I know it has been a quiet year here on the blog itself, but I happened upon two old-school “Whispersync Deals” today while browsing around. (To refresh, a “Whispersync Deal” is a term I came up with some years ago for when a Kindle title goes on such a steep sale that the price for the Kindle title plus the “Whispersync” Audible add-on is well under the cost of a credit.)

First up, David Drake’s Lord of the Isles, book one of his “Lord of the Isles” epic fantasy series, with the audiobook read by the masterful Michael Page. “A towering and complex epic of heroic adventure in an extraordinary and colorful world where the elemental forces that empower magic are rising to a thousand-year peak. In the days following an unusually severe storm, the inhabitants of a tiny seaport town travel toward romance, danger, and astonishing magic that will transform them and their world.” This one’s available for $2.99 Kindle plus $5.60 Audible add-on.

And secondly, Cold Magic by Kate Elliott, book one of The Spiritwalker Trilogy, with the audiobook read by Charlotte Parry. “Epic fantasy in which science and magic are locked in a deadly struggle. It is the dawn of a new age… The Industrial Revolution has begun, factories are springing up across the country, and new technologies are transforming the cities. But the old ways do not die easy. Cat and Bee are part of this revolution. Young women at college, learning of the science that will shape their future and ignorant of the magics that rule their families. But all of that will change when the Cold Mages come for Cat. New dangers lurk around every corner and hidden threats menace her every move. If blood can’t be trusted, who can you trust?” This one’s available for $1.99 Kindle plus $4.60 Audible add-on.

OK, that’s it for me today, happy deal-hunting!

Posted in Whispersync Deals

The Most Missing Audiobooks of 2024

Posted on 2025-01-13 at 12:00 by Sam

Another year has come and gone, bringing so many books and audiobooks that already, of course, one can't get to them all in a lifetime, let alone 12 months. Still, some of the titles I most anticipated -- or was most surprised by! -- last year did not come out in audio editions, and as I used to do years ago, I'm going to survey some of these for you, and hopefully some audio publishers (Podium? Tantor? Scribd?) will take notice.

First, yes, let's get it out of the way that the new Dungeon Crawler Carl book is not out in audio until February. OK? OK. Yes, that's by far the most missing audiobook of 2024. Second, a disclaimer that the links are affiliate links which may result in a few nickels and dimes for me. Lastly, I do call out my picks for the "most missing" audiobooks nearly every week in my reddit r/audiobooks release week roundups, so if you want an even larger list, you are welcome to comb through those. As you may know, I tend to get wordy, and these lists tend to get long, but, really, I've tried to filter these down as much as I can. (Despite the evidence to the contrary coming right up.) Here we go...

FICTION: The Top 20

Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud (Tor Nightfire) -- "Years ago, in a cave beneath the dense forests and streams on the surface of the moon, a gargantuan spider once lived. Its silk granted its first worshippers immense faculties of power and awe. It’s now 1923 and Veronica Brinkley is touching down on the moon for her intake at the Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy. A renowned facility, Dr. Barrington Cull’s invasive and highly successful treatments have been lauded by many. And they’re so simple! All it takes is a little spider silk in the amygdala, maybe a strand or two in the prefrontal cortex, and perhaps an inch in the hippocampus for near evisceration of those troublesome thoughts and ideas. But patients aren’t the only ones with trouble on their minds, and although the spider’s been dead for years, its denizens are not. Someone or something is up to no good, and Veronica just might be the cause."

The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar (Tordotcom) -- A Philip K. Dick Award finalist: "The boy was raised as one of the Chained, condemned to toil in the bowels of a mining ship out among the stars. His whole world changes—literally—when he is yanked “upstairs” and informed he has been given an opportunity to be educated at the ship’s university alongside the elite. Overwhelmed and alone, the boy forms a bond with the woman he comes to know as “the professor,” a weary idealist and descendent of the Chained who has spent her career striving for validation from her more senior colleagues, only to fall short at every turn. Together, the boy and the woman will embark on a transformative journey to grasp the design of the chains that fetter them both—and are the key to breaking free."

Posted in Uncategorized

The Audiobookaneer, January 2018: Frankenstein in Baghdad, Beneath the Sugar Sky, The Beautiful Ones, and more

Posted on 2018-02-10 at 21:15 by Sam

I've no idea if I'll keep this up, but it doesn't seem like too much to tiptoe back onto the blog with one small monthly feature. I'm still chugging along with weekly release picks over on reddit, but I haven't tried to go back and pick the "picks of the picks" for a month in a long, long time, and, hey, this gives me a chance to put in pretty pictures again! Anyway, here's the first in what I hope is a monthly column this year, of use especially to those really looking for one or two recommendations, and (for the "most missing" roundup) audiobook publishers looking for a stray gem. For the full, far-too-much-at-length, probably, weekly roundups, see: January 2, January 9, January 16, January 23, and January 30. (For the purposes of my sanity, I'm going to ignore books out on January 31 until February's installment, ok? OK.)

PICKS OF THE MONTH

Frankenstein in Baghdad: A Novel by Ahmed Saadawi, read by Edoardo Ballerini and Kaleo Griffith for Penguin. The novel was Winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, Winner of France's Grand Prize for Fantasy, and here it's published in English in time to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Mary Shelley's original, and? it's just plain brilliant. "From the rubble-strewn streets of US-occupied Baghdad, Hadi - a scavenger and an oddball fixture at a local café - collects human body parts and stitches them together to create a corpse. His goal, he claims, is for the government to recognize the parts as people and to give them proper burial. But when the corpse goes missing, a wave of eerie murders sweeps the city, and reports stream in of a horrendous-looking criminal who, though shot, cannot be killed. Hadi soon realizes he's created a monster, one that needs human flesh to survive - first from the guilty, and then from anyone in its path."

Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire, read by Michelle Dockrey for Macmillan is book 3 of McGuire's wonderful "Wayward Children" series which began with the Alex, Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winning, World Fantasy Award finalist Every Heart a Doorway. With Beneath the Sugar Sky the series gets its third different narrator, and some new characters to go along with some of our now dear and familiar faces.

Posted in Sam's Monthly Listening Report

Ever Felt Like a Convention Wanted to Kill You? -- Dave Reviews I Am Providence

Posted on 2017-08-31 at 04:57 by Dave

I Am Providence
By Nick Mamatas, Narrated by Joel Richards and Rachel Jacobs
Length: 8 hours, 58 minutes
[Audible]

The first convention I ever went to was San Diego Comic Con, right around 1998. It was a huge deal, but you could still buy tickets easily enough and you didn’t have to camp out overnight waiting to get into the panels. But it was enormous, and it was crowded. The second convention I went to was a small SF/F/H literary con also in San Diego, where the panels averaged about 10-20 guests. I remember being shocked to see such a small turn out for some pretty amazing authors.

If you’ve ever been to a similar convention, or if you follow SF/F/H fandom closely, then this book is for you.

The Summer Tentacular convention celebrates the works of H.P. Lovecraft, while the attendees argue with each other about his legacy. As a wordsmith, Lovecraft was terrifying. As a human being, he was a pretty awful racist, and that perspective bled over into some of his fiction. At the Summer Tentacular, we meet our two narrators: up and coming horror author Colleen Danzig and her newly murdered, newly faceless roommate Panossian — who was murdered Panossian during the convention.

Why did someone kill Panossian? Maybe because he had a book bound in human flesh he was looking to sell? Or maybe because he was an asshole? Or…both? The local police are acting a bit weird, so Colleen takes it upon herself to investigate Panossian’s murder among her fellow convention goers, if she can survive the con herself. It sounds like a thriller, and to some extent that’s what it is, but for people who have been following fandom and the field of SF/F/H lately, it’s also pretty hilarious in a dark sort of way. Sad Puppies, convention sexual harassment policies, “fake” fans, the need for diversity in fandom and fiction, internet flame wars segueing into death threats…I mean, as I type this list up, I know in my head these aren’t actually funny — they kind of keep me up at night. But author Nick Mamatas’s portrayal of it all had me cracking up throughout the novel. That’s some kind of dark and delicious magic right there.

It’s impossible for me to talk about this book without talking about Nick Mamatas himself. From the opening chapter, it seems clear that Panossian is a stand-in for Mamatas — which is pretty funny since when we first meet Panossian he’s dead and in morgue, his face recently sliced off. Panossian wrote a cult-favorite Lovecraftian pastiche called The Catcher in Ry’leh (a Catcher in the Rye/Lovecraft mash-up). Mamatas wrote the excellent Move Underground (a Jack Kerouac/Lovecraft mash-up). They both have sharp, witty, angry, and often offensive online personalities which result in a lot of people being pissed off at them. And it’s a lot of fun to see Mamatas mining all of that into his novel to make something both accessible and entertaining.

Joel Richards is great as the dead Panosian, complete with his post-mortal world-weary snark. (A dead author can snark can with the best of them.) That said, Rachel Jacobs does a particularly great reading not only from Colleen’s perspective, but also bringing to life the bizarre cast of characters from the Summer Tentacular. If someone murdered me, I’d hope Jacobs would pounding the convention floor trying to find out who the killer is. (And I’d also hope I could sound as snarky as Richards does, even after I’m dead.)

If you’re a part of SF/F/H fandom, I can’t recommend this book enough. It’s funny and smart, skewering Lovecraft and his culture while celebrating it in the most awkward way possible. I hope we get more like this from Mamatas in the future.

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Posted in reviews, Uncategorized | Tagged fandom, h.p. lovecraft, joel richards, nick mamatas, rachel jacobs

April 27th #WhispersyncDeal roundup: Madeline Ashby, Peter Watts, Jo Walton, Robert J. Sawyer, Steven Erikson, and more

Posted on 2017-04-27 at 14:16 by Sam

While I'm putting the finishing touches on the full #WhispersyncDeal roundup of the Monthly Deals in Kindle Books, today's crop of Daily Deal eBooks with Audible Narration is too good to just share out one Tweet at a time. Feast your eyes and ears on:

Company Town by Madeline Ashby, read by Cecelia Kim for Audible for $2.99+$4.49 -- "They call it Company Town--a city-sized oil rig off the coast of the Canadian Maritimes, now owned by one very wealthy, powerful, byzantine family: Lynch Ltd. Hwa is of the few people in her community (which constitutes the whole rig) to forgo bio-engineered enhancements. As such, she's the last truly organic person left on the rig--making her doubly an outsider, as well as a neglected daughter and bodyguard extraordinaire. Still, her expertise in the arts of self-defense and her record as a fighter mean that her services are yet in high demand. When the youngest Lynch needs training and protection, the family turns to Hwa. But can even she protect against increasingly intense death threats seemingly coming from another timeline?"

Posted in Whispersync Deals

"Twisted and Frighteningly Relatable" -- James reviews The Circle

Posted on 2017-04-06 at 13:25 by Sam

The Circle
By Dave Eggers
Narrated by Dion Graham for Random House
 [Audible | Downpour]

-- Review by James Alexander --

Like a novel-length episode of Black Mirror, Dave Eggers’ The Circle paints a twisted and frighteningly relatable picture of technology and human nature gone wrong. The story beings with Mae Holland, a recent college graduate, bored, broke and overqualified at her nightmare of a job in public utility. She’s eventually recruited into the Circle, an exciting, all-encompassing tech company like Google, Facebook and Apple cranked to 11.

It looks like a dream job, at first. But what seems like an exceptionally accommodating work environment eventually becomes overbearing and unsettling. Are the constant parties and the gamification of workplace participation a team building strategy, or is it an attention draining trap? Are the campus dorms, stores, and health coverage simply convenient, or are employees being made dependent and cut off from the outside world? The longer she stays, the more the Circle and its utopian vision blurs the line where it starts to resemble a cult.

Posted in reviews | Tagged dave eggers, dion graham, james alexander, the circle

March #WhispersyncDeal roundup: Kate Reading reading Marie Brennan, Simon Vance reading Brian Staveley and James Maxwell, and more

Posted on 2017-03-31 at 03:56 by Sam

I'm getting this roundup just, barely, under the wire, as the main roundup expires at midnight on March 31. So... without further adieu, here's what most catches my #WhispersyncDeal-attuned eyes and ears among the 218 eBooks with Audible Narration in the March Monthly Deals in Kindle Books:

A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent by Marie Brennan, read by Kate Reading for $2.99+$3.99 NOTE: it looks like the Audible add-on portion of this price changed to $12.99? or? I somehow had the wrong number yesterday? -- A fantastic book and audiobook, highly recommended: "All the world, from Scirland to the farthest reaches of Eriga, know Isabella, Lady Trent, to be the world's preeminent dragon naturalist. She is the remarkable woman who brought the study of dragons out of the misty shadows of myth and misunderstanding into the clear light of modern science. But before she became the illustrious figure we know today, there was a bookish young woman whose passion for learning, natural history, and, yes, dragons defied the stifling conventions of her day. Here at last, in her own words, is the true story of a pioneering spirit who risked her reputation, her prospects, and her fragile flesh and bone to satisfy her scientific curiosity; of how she sought true love and happiness despite her lamentable eccentricities; and of her thrilling expedition to the perilous mountains of Vystrana, where she made the first of many historic discoveries that would change the world forever."

The Emperor's Blades by Brian Staveley, read by Simon Vance for $2.9+$3.99 -- Book 1 of the Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne, fantastic epic fantasy under one of the best narrators in the business: "The emperor of Annur is dead, slain by enemies unknown. His daughter and two sons, scattered across the world, do what they must to stay alive and unmask the assassins. But each of them also has a life-path on which their father set them, destinies entangled with both ancient enemies and inscrutable gods."

Posted in Whispersync Deals

What ever happened to Sam's "Release Week" roundup posts? They're on reddit!

Posted on 2017-03-02 at 02:27 by Sam

I’ve realized that I never made any kind of “formal” post or announcement here on the blog, when I moved the “Release Week” roundup posts from here to reddit’s /r/audiobooks… So… Yeah… Sorry about that. I’ve been a moderator there for quite a long time now, and when push came to shove for that particular column, the formatting, linking, images, and such just became a bit too much to both write up here and then sanitize a bit for posting over there, and I just took to using the more or less “barebones” formatting over there and calling it a day. If you’d like to go back and take a look at what’s been coming out on a week by week basis for, oh, the past year and a half, at least, start here with my picks for the release week ending February 28 and work your way backwards through the “last week” links. Enjoy! I don’t think I’ll make too much of a habit of posting here about it, but I’ll start at least sharing the week’s picks on Facebook and Twitter. I know it’s not quite the same without the images and links (and more extensive write-ups) but, well, it’s what I’ve got time to slash together these days.

Posted in Release Week

"The past can’t be changed, but it can be learned from." -- James reviews Snapshot

Posted on 2017-02-28 at 19:21 by Sam

Snapshot
By Brandon Sanderson
Narrated by William DeMeritt for Audible

— Review by James Alexander —

Snapshot is one of those books you know will probably be a movie soon right away. I mean that in the best possible sense, the premise is just too good. In a city of millions, detectives Davis and Chaz are the only real people. Cops in this futuristic world have taken to using “Snapshots”, large scale, holodeck-like re-creations of the past to solve crimes.

Posted in reviews | Tagged brandon sanderson, james alexander, snapshot, william demeritt

February #WhispersyncDeal roundup: Octavia Butler, Julie McElwain, Wesley Chu, Greg Bear, Rysa Walker, Veronica Rossi, Ben Fountain, and more

Posted on 2017-02-26 at 17:52 by Sam

All right! February's Monthly Deals listings, of which 269 are eBooks with Audible Narration, aren't actually that long in terms of what I would call outstanding #WhispersyncDeal titles. But! A solid dozen are well worth checking out, starting with some time travel:

Kindred by Octavia Butler, read by Kim Staunton for $2.99+$3.49 -- "Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has a chance to begin."

A Murder in Time: A Novel by Julie McElwain, read by Lucy Rayner for $1.99+$3.47 -- "When brilliant FBI agent Kendra Donovan stumbles back in time and finds herself in a 19th century English castle under threat from a vicious serial killer, she scrambles to solve the case before it takes her life—200 years before she was even born."

All right, how about some sci-fi?

Posted in Whispersync Deals