Monday’s haul easily crossed the threshhold to put together the “earlier this week” releases, including several Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age), the much-lauded self-published sf series Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1 - 5) By Hugh Howey, and Briarpatch By Tim Pratt (narrated by this blog’s own Dave Thompson). Meanwhile it’s a big Tuesday (August 28, 2012) for Angry Robot on Brilliance Audio.
Mockingbird By Chuck Wendig, Narrated by — Length:9 hrs and 4 mins —after Blackbirds earlier this year, reviewed very warmly by The Guilded Earlobe. Here: “Miriam is trying. Really, she is. But this whole “settling down thing” that Louis has going for her just isn’t working out. She lives on Long Beach Island all year round. Her home is a run-down double-wide trailer. She works at a grocery store as a check-out girl. And her relationship with Louis - who’s on the road half the time in his truck - is subject to the piss and vinegar Miriam brings to everything she does. Still, she’s keeping her psychic ability - to see when and how someone is going to die just by touching them - in check. But even that feels wrong, somehow. Like she’s keeping a tornado stoppered up in a tiny bottle. Then comes one bad day that turns it all on her ear.”
Seven Wonders By Adam Christopher, Narrated by — Length:14 hrs and 37 mins — after his debut novel Empire State: A Novel early this year, Christopher takes another look at superhero fiction with his follow-up: “Tony Prosdocimi lives in the bustling Metropolis of San Ventura – a city gripped in fear, a city under siege by the hooded supervillain, The Cowl. When Tony develops super-powers and acts to take down The Cowl, however, he finds that the local superhero team Seven Wonders aren’t as grateful as he assumed they’d be….”
The Corpse-Rat King By Lee Battersby Narrated by — Length:11 hrs and 19 mins — Page is the award-winning narrator of (among many other titles) Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora and here takes on: “Marius dos Hellespont and his apprentice, Gerd, are professional looters of battlefields. When they stumble upon the corpse of the King of Scorby and Gerd is killed, Marius is mistaken for the monarch by one of the dead soldiers and is transported down to the Kingdom of the Dead. Just like the living citizens, the dead need a king - after all, the king is God’s representative, and someone needs to remind God where they are. And so it comes to pass that Marius is banished to the surface with one message: If he wants to recover his life he must find the dead king. Which he fully intends to do. Just as soon as he stops running away.”
Yeah, I mentioned it Monday, but once more with feeling: Briarpatch By Tim Pratt, Narrated by Dave Thompson — Length:10 hrs and 9 mins — “Darrin’s life has been going downhill ever since his girlfriend Bridget walked out on him without a word of explanation six months ago. Soon after losing her, he lost his job, and his car, and eventually his enthusiasm for life. He can’t imagine things getting worse - until he sees Bridget again, for the first time since she walked out, just moments before she leaps to her death from a bridge. In his quest to find out why Bridget took her own life, he encounters a depressive (and possibly immortal) cult leader; a man with a car that can drive out of this world and into others; a beautiful psychotic with a chrome shotgun; and a bridge that, maybe, leads to heaven. Darrin’s journey leads him into a place called the Briarpatch, which is either the crawlspace of the universe, or a series of ambitious building projects abandoned by god, or a tangle of alternative universes, depending on who you ask. Somewhere in that disorderly snarl of worlds, he hopes to find Bridget again.”
Also, there’s a new GraphicAudio title out this month that catches my eye. It’s The Highwayman, the first installment of The Saga of the First King by R.A. Salvatore, with part 2 coming in September and part 3 coming in October:
ALSO OUT TUESDAY:
