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, R. Scott Bakker’s The Prince of Nothing, which I read in print and was blown away by its originality and scope. Starting with 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