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Release week: Shadow Show, Caitlin R. Kiernan's The Drowning Girl, The Last Policeman, and Year Zero
Posted on 2012-07-11 at 13:52 by Sam
July really gets rolling here in its second week, with a long list of big new releases, including Rob Reid’s Year Zero and Deborah Harkness’s Shadow of Night. Still, it’s another four books which most catch my eye this week, starting with the anthology Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury edited by Sam Weller and Mort Castle, narrated by George Takei, Edward Herrmann, Kate Mulgrew, F. Murray Abraham, Neil Gaiman, Peter Appel, and James Urbaniak for Harper Audio, concurrent with its print release from William Morrow. “The recent passing of literary legend Ray Bradbury was a blow to field of fiction. This tribute collection, started before his passing, features the talents of just a small portion of writers whose lives he affected: Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, Robert McCammon, Ramsey Campbell, Alice Hoffman, Audrey Niffenegger, Kelly Link, Harlan Ellison and 18 more. This must-have anthology also features an essay, “Second Homecoming,” written by Bradbury specifically for this publication.” (via Kirkus Reviews):
Also new in audio today is The Drowning Girl By , Narrated by for Neil Gaiman Presents — Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins — Published in print just earlier this year, this is certainly a triumphant return for Neil Gaiman Presents after a more than four month absence. Kiernan’s previous novel, The Red Tree, was a World Fantasy Award finalist, and publishing a current year release is by far the most recent release for the 9-month-old imprint. “India Morgan Phelps - Imp to her friends - is schizophrenic. Struggling with her perceptions of reality, Imp must uncover the truth about her encounters with creatures out of myth - or from something far, far stranger…” A few words from Neil on The Drowning Girl: “As with all “Neil Gaiman Presents” titles, it’s very important to me to find the voice that comes closest to the voice in the author’s head; for Caitlin, for this book, that was Suzy Jackson. It was not until the second round of auditions that we found someone who sounded young but not naïve, someone who could catalogue the sharp detail of Imp’s carefully observed daily life but also convey the blurred edges of her reality. Caitlin and Suzy kept in touch during the recording, and the result is a reading that is precise but not “stagey”, a literary but accessible reading of the novel.”
Nearly lastly (well, above the fold, there’s a long list of good-looking titles below the “read more”) is one I don’t remember having heard of before seeing it today: The Last Policeman By Ben H. Winters, Narrated by Peter Berkrot for Brilliance Audio, concurrent with its print publication from Quirk Books. A more moderate length of just under 8.5 hours: “What’s the point in solving murders if we’re all going to die soon, anyway? Detective Hank Palace has faced this question ever since asteroid 2011GV1 hovered into view. There’s no chance left. No hope. Just six precious months until impact. The Last Policeman presents a fascinating portrait of a pre-apocalyptic United States. The economy spirals downward while crops rot in the fields. Churches and synagogues are packed. People all over the world are walking off the job—but not Hank Palace. He’s investigating a death by hanging in a city that sees a dozen suicides every week—except this one feels suspicious, and Palace is the only cop who cares. The first in a trilogy.”
And coming from the comedic side of sf: Year Zero: A Novel By Rob Reid Narrated by John Hodgman for Random House Audio (the PC in the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” commercials, among other places) — Length:9 hrs and 53 mins — (Del Rey, July 10) — “a headlong journey through the outer reaches of the universe—and the inner workings of our absurdly dysfunctional music industry.”
ALSO OUT TUESDAY:
Read more...Posted in regular, Release Week | Tagged caitlin r kiernan, graham joyce, neil gaiman, neil gaiman presents, ray bradbury, release week, the drowning girl, the last policeman, year zero
Release week: Alif the Unseen; Guy Gavriel Kay; Alexei Panshin; White Trash Zombies; Prince of Thorns; and more
Posted on 2012-07-04 at 01:21 by Sam
While the first release week in July isn’t headlined with new star-powered releases — those might be found in the “seen but not heard” section, including a new Charles Stross “Laundry Files” novel — there are a few intriguing new titles along with another round of new Audible Frontiers productions of previously well-received novels.
The title that most intrigues me this week is shelved in the Mysteries/Thrillers section, but with both some near future cyberthriller elements, and supernatural fantasy elements as well: Alif the Unseen By the award-winning graphic novelist , Narrated By
“In an unnamed Middle Eastern security state, a young Arab-Indian hacker shields his clients — dissidents, outlaws, Islamists, and other watched groups — from surveillance and tries to stay out of trouble. He goes by Alif — the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, and a convenient handle to hide behind. The aristocratic woman Alif loves has jilted him for a prince chosen by her parents, and his computer has just been breached by the state’s electronic security force, putting his clients and his own neck on the line. Then it turns out his lover’s new fiancé is the “Hand of God”, as they call the head of state security, and his henchmen come after Alif, driving him underground. When Alif discovers The Thousand and One Days, the secret book of the jinn, which both he and the Hand suspect may unleash a new level of information technology, the stakes are raised and Alif must struggle for life or death, aided by forces seen and unseen.”
ALSO OUT TUESDAY:
Read more...Posted in regular, Release Week | Tagged alexei panshin, alif the unseen, guy gavriel kay, release week, stefan rudnicki
Listening Report: May 2012
Posted on 2012-07-04 at 00:04 by Sam
April’s claim of 9 audiobooks was a bit of a “cheat”; I included the late Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 although I had actually read it in (very) early May. Here, things were going to again a bit stretched as it took a few days into June to finish the audiobook which took up most of my late May as well (Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312) but hey, again, it’s my blog, I include what I want, when I want, right? So. Six audiobooks in May, several outstanding including J.M. McDermott’s Last Dragon, Lavie Tidhar’s Osama, and KSR’s 2312.
REVIEWS:
Read more...Posted in Sam's Monthly Listening Report | Tagged 2312, david tallerman, giant thief, jm mcdermott, kim stanley robinson, last dragon, lavie tidhar, monthly listening report, osama
Wonderful 16-minutes of Oliver Wyman reading H.P. Lovecraft's "Dagon"
Posted on 2012-07-02 at 18:25 by Sam
In a tweet, fantastically talented narrator Oliver Wyman (Jeff VanderMeer’s Finch, Frederik Pohl’s Gateway, on and on) mentions that he “Finally got around to recording some Lovecraft for #GoingPublic.” Well, I don’t know exactly what this particular Twitter tag is for yet, but I do know that Wyman gives a perfect rendition of the pulpish proto-weirdish story in question, and that you should go listen to it.
Posted in regular | Tagged GoingPublic, h.p. lovecraft, oliver wyman
Rush's Neil Peart to narrate the Brilliance Audio production of Kevin J. Anderson's Clockwork Angels: The Novel (based in turn on the Rush album)
Posted on 2012-06-27 at 20:01 by Sam
Via his blog, author Kevin J. Anderson mentions (among other things) something he’d apparently previously announced:
The hardcover, full-color novel comes out from ECW on September to coincide with the launch of the Rush Clockwork Angels tour. The unabridged audiobook from Brilliance is narrated by Neil Peart himself.
And, well, that’s not something I’d heard yet. Anderson is also giving away a free booklet preview of the novel:
Very interesting… The audiobook listing at Brilliance Audio gives a release date of September 1, and this description: “Rush’s upcoming Album Clockwork Angel tells a story throughout the Album, friend of the Band and major fan Kevin Anderson has spent the last two years working with the band to tell the story their album tells in prose novel form. The story is a young man’s quest to follow his dreams, he is caught between the grandiose forces of order and chaos. He travels across a lavish and colorful world of steampunk and alchemy, with lost cities, pirates, anarchists, exotic carnivals, and a rigid Watchmaker who imposes precision on every aspect of daily life.”
Posted in regular | Tagged clockwork angels, kevin j anderson, rush
The Devourer of Books Audiobook Week, Wednesday: A short meme.
Posted on 2012-06-27 at 17:12 by Sam
Quoth The Devourer: “Here’s something quick and easy for the middle of the week, just a short meme. Just copy and paste to your own post (and, you know, obviously change the answers so they’re yours and not mine).”
Here’s something quick and easy for the middle of the week, just a short meme. Just copy and paste to your own post (and, you know, obviously change the answers so they’re yours and not mine).
Current/most recent audiobook:
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, narrated by David Colacci for Brilliance Audio. (Yeah, I haven’t updated the sidebar yet…)
Impressions:
It’s hard to believe that until very recently there was only the “abridged” version, which stood at about one-third (eight hours vs. 26 hours) of the full book. This is a Pulitzer-winning novel which is fun to read and let yourself be carried away by, and Colacci’s accents — both Brooklyn and Czech, and beyond — add a lovely layer of flavor to it all.
Current/most recent favorite audiobook:
Whew. That’s a hard one, but for most recent I will go with Last Dragon by J. M. McDermott, read by Cori Samuel for Iambik Audio, which I listened to in May, by just a hair over Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312 which I finished in early June. Last Dragon gets pretty darned close to cracking my all-time favorite audiobooks list (The Magicians, Finch, The Road, …), but I’ll need a little more time in the rearview to decide on that.
Favorite narrator you’ve discovered recently:
Hard to believe, maybe, but I only recently listened to my first Simon Vance audiobooks. Needless to say, more will be listened to in the near future.
One title from your TBL (to be listened) stack, or your audio wishlist:
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon and Iron Council by China Mieville. If either were available at Audible (US), I’d have already listened to both. I will break down fairly soon and order the CD set of the Chabon.
Your audio dream team (what book or author would you LOVE to see paired with a certain narrator, can already exist or not):
It already exists: Stefan Rudnicki reading Lewis Shiner’s Glimpses.
Posted in regular | Tagged devourer of books
Release week: The Age of Miracles, Logan's Run, and The Prince of Nothing
Posted on 2012-06-27 at 12:56 by Sam
The release week of June 26 brings a genre in the mainstream debut, a long-awaited classic read by one of my favorite narrators, and R. Scott Bakker’s Prince of Nothing series, among several other titles to check out.
That Genre-in-the-Mainstream debut is The Age of Miracles: A Novel By Karen Thompson Walker, Narrated by Emily Janice Card for Random House Audio — Length:9 hrs and 3 mins. A “coming of age set against the backdrop of an utterly altered world” sees the rotation of the Earth slowing down. AudioFile says that “Card’s mild, young voice suits Julia, and it softens some of the horrors she and everyone else on the planet experience—mysteriously dying birds and whales, the sun’s radiation let loose, a wholly uncertain future.”
Audible Frontiers has another busy week, with two very wished-for series. The first is one I did not even know was a “series”, having only been familiar with William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson’s 1967 classic sf novel Logan’s Run. But Nolan did write a decade-later sequel, Logan’s World (1977) and a third novel, Logan’s Search (1980). And now the entire series is available in audio, narrated by Oliver Wyman, whose work on Jeff VanderMeer’s Finch and Frederik Pohl’s Gateway established him as one of my favorite narrators.
The second series is more recent, The Darkness That Comes Before: The Prince of Nothing, Book One (2003) and continuing with The Warrior-Prophet: The Prince of Nothing, Book Two (2004) and The Thousandfold Thought: The Prince of Nothing, Book Three (2006), the dark epic fantasy series follows the rising tides of war between religious schisms, schools of magic, and the machinations of Anasûrimbor Kellhus. Bakker continues this world with a second trilogy, The Aspect-Emperor, with novels The Judging Eye (2008) and The White-Luck Warrior (2011) already published. Here, the first trilogy is narrated by David DeVries.
One last note before the deluge below is that James S.A. Corey’s Caliban’s War, the sequel to Leviathan Wakes, is out today in print and e-book from Orbit, but the Recorded Books audiobook is not due out until September 1.
ALSO OUT TUESDAY:
Read more...Posted in regular, Release Week | Tagged age of miracles, logan's run, oliver wyman, prince of nothing, release week
Review: Redshirts by John Scalzi, read by Wil Wheaton
Posted on 2012-06-26 at 19:10 by Sam
Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas By John Scalzi
Narrated by Wil Wheaton for Audible Frontiers
Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
Release Date: 06-05-12
Review by Dave Thompson: “Stay off the Bridge! Avoid the Narrative!”
“Is it just me…or is everyone on this ship monumentally fucked up about away teams?” asks one of the Redshirts early on in John Scalzi’s latest. Redshirts is funny, exciting, and gets emotional and pretty heartfelt in the most surprising places. But what’s really unique about this one is how Meta it gets. If you’ve ever been frustrated with some of the bad science in your science fiction, you’re going to get some good laughs out of this one. Scalzi plays with his narrative like a phaser set to disintegrate and aims it at all the tropes, poor logic, and shoddy science that badly made genre TV, film, and fiction have conjured for “dramatic purposes.”
There’s a twist early on in Redshirts that could be pretty divisive among the audience, and will make or break this story from some, but if you can go with it, it’s a very fun ride – even an inspiring one.
There are a lot of characters, and as a result, some of them feel a little more cookie-cutter than I’d prefer. Scalzi’s characters are never terribly complex, but the protagonist doesn’t stand out as much as some of the others he’s written. However, the way this story’s set-up, it can certainly be argued that that is the point. They are generic Redshirts after all, right? Still, I wish they could’ve been a little more distinct. (And the usual Scalzi stuff applies - the constant dialogue tags, the characters voices, etc.)
That said, Scalzi’s characters warn each other about being “Under the Influence of the Narrative” and “Death by Away Team” - and I have little doubt will become shorthand for all sorts of creative types in the future. And through it all, Scalzi throws down a challenge to not only live long and prosper, but to stop wasting time - to take advantage of your life and really live, and to do something worthwhile.
There’s been a decent amount of talk about the three Codas that conclude this book. My own reaction to them is somewhat mixed. They’re well-enough written, and the second and third hit emotional points I wasn’t expecting. The first coda, however, seems to be at direct odds with the end of the novel proper (as well as some of the main ideas) - to say more, I fear would be treading into spoiler territory.
Wil Wheaton once again does a very strong job with the narration – and really, who else would you pick to narrate this book but the once and future Wesley Crusher? It’s great to hear him reading another Scalzi book, and one can only hope that if this ever gets made into a movie, Wheaton will get to play one of the lead roles (though I’m personally hoping he gets the part of poor Lt. Kerensky).
For Star Trek and SF fans, for creative types, for anyone who has ever watched a SF TV or film and wanted to throw something at the screen because it all suddenly stopped making sense - this is worth checking out. There’s a good chance you’ll be laughing while you do so.
——
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, john scalzi, redshirts, review, wil wheaton
The Devourer of Books Audiobook Week, Monday: My Audiobook Year
Posted on 2012-06-25 at 17:07 by Sam
The Devourer of Books is having an Audiobook Week this week, encouraging other audiobooks bloggers to join in. Bob Reiss at The Guilded Earlobe has already done so. So I’ll chip in with something short and take a stab at the topic.
It was actually about a year ago (June 20th to be precise) that I first started seriously blogging about audiobooks here — though I back-posted a few months of “best of the month” picks, a feature I only continued forward a few months. My biggest feature ended up being the 4-part 2011 in review series, followed by a ridiculously huge preview of 2012 which I’ve referenced myself in putting together upcoming release schedules for my release week posts.
I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do, other than have a place to keep my own notes about audiobooks coming out that I wanted to listen to, and bemoan the list of books which weren’t available in audio. I found that I could receive review copies (awesome), interview authors and narrators (even more awesome), and finally start publishing reviews and interviews by contributors (I don’t have to do anything? sweet!). This year, I thought I would publish a feature every Friday, and an interview every Monday. Yeah, that fell by the wayside fairly quickly, though a few more are in the works. I started putting together a monthly listening report instead, which, yeah, I didn’t post May’s in early June, so I’m working on either putting together a 2-month report, or just scrapping that and putting out reviews as I put them together instead of in a monthly group.
It was July 9th of last year that I started finding out about the wider audiobooks blogging community, falling instantly in followship to The Guilded Earlobe, leading eventually to The Devourer of Books herself, and a few others. It’s definitely led to my listening to a lot, lot, lot more audiobooks than in previous years. Instead of a trickle of one audiobook a month or so, it’s 5, 6, 7, sometimes even more per month, in addition to reading more as well. And, and this is the best part, listening more often to books I enjoy — I’ve come to trust Bob’s reviews. Even the audiobooks he doesn’t like, his reviews sometimes convince me to listen myself. I think that’s the sign of a good audiobooks reviewer, and that’s something I’d like to be able to do more.
On that note, if I’m going to spend more time on the blog today, it should be on getting more of those May and June reviews finished…
Posted in regular | Tagged devourer of books, the guilded earlobe
Release Day: Ian McDonald's Brasyl and River of Gods
Posted on 2012-06-21 at 18:37 by Sam
I don’t generally post releases outside of the “release week” posts, but it’s a pretty big day for audiobooks as River of Gods (published 2004, winner of the BSFA Award, nominated for a Hugo, Arthur C. Clarke, and Locus, and here read by Brasyl (published 2007, winner of the BSFA Award, nominated for a Hugo, Nebula, John W. Campbell, and Locus, and here read by
“Ian McDonald’s River of Gods painted a vivid picture of a near future India, 100 years after independence. It revolutionised British science fiction for a new generation by taking a perspective that was not European or American. Brasyl will do the same for South America’s largest and most vibrant country.”
Posted in regular | Tagged brasyl, ian mcdonald, river of gods
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