APRIL 2-8, 2014: Well, the April 1 avalanche was followed up with an April 8 landslide, with a long, long! list of titles to check out, which took me a good long while to finally make sense of. (Seeing as this is coming a full week late, and the “next” release week is already here!) Just… so many good books that even after cutting beyond the comfort point, I had more than a dozen “picks”. Which does nobody any good, now, does it? So I cut further, and it hurts a bit, but the audiobooks that remain really are all worth checking out in detail — and so are a few of those which just slid into the “also out this week” listings, including Benford and Niven’s Shipstar, Laini Taylor’s Dreams of Gods & Monsters, Ann Brashares’ The Here and Now, Howard Andrew Jones’ The Bones of the Old Ones, Paul Antony Jones’ Revelations, Colin Harvey’s Winter Song, Barry Malzberg’s Overlay read by Stefan Rudnicki, and Charles Beumont’s Night Ride, and Other Journeys read by Rudnicki, J. Paul Boehmer, and Harlan Ellison. Newly added to the long-range listings is John Scalzi’s Unlocked and Steven Erikson’s Willful Child (November), and while the big book news this week includes JM McDermott’s We Leave Together being available for pre-order (June) and the announcement of a new Elizabeth Bear trilogy, the big audiobook news is the casting of narrator Fabio Tassone for Frostborn (Thrones and Bones) by Lou Anders (August). That one is going to be a blast. Enjoy! (One last note up here: while Christopher Priest’s The Adjacent was published last year in the UK and a US audiobook edition was already available, this week’s new US Kindle edition is Whispersync for Voice enabled to the tune of $7.69 plus $3.47.)

PICKS OF THE WEEK:

First up, a pair of literary-minded sf novels, starting with the multiply-starred-reviewed The Word Exchange: A Novel by Alena Graedon (Doubleday and Blackstone Audio, Apr 8, 2014) read by Tavia Gilbert and Paul Michael Garcia. “In the not-so-distant future, the forecasted “death of print” has become a near reality. Bookstores, libraries, newspapers, and magazines are essentially things of the past, as we spend our time glued to handheld devices called Memes that not only keep us in constant communication but have become so intuitive as to hail us cabs before we leave our offices, order takeout at the first growl of our stomachs, change traffic lights and interface with home appliances–even create and sell language itself in a marketplace called the Word Exchange.”

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North (Redhook and Hachette Audio, Apr 8, 2014) read by Peter Kenny. “Harry August is on his deathbed. Again. No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes. Until now. As Harry nears the end of his eleventh life, a little girl appears at his bedside. “I nearly missed you, Doctor August,” she says. “I need to send a message.” This is the story of what Harry does next, and what he did before, and how he tries to save a past he cannot change and a future he cannot allow.”

First published in the UK last year, Strange Bodies by Marcel Theroux recently had its first US release from FSG, and here comes to Tantor Audio read by Gildart Jackson and Veida Dhmlow. “Whatever this is, it started when Nicholas Slopen came back from the dead. In a locked ward of a notorious psychiatric hospital sits a man who insists that he is Dr. Nicholas Slopen, failed husband and impoverished Samuel Johnson scholar. Slopen has been dead for months, yet nothing can make this man change his story. What begins as a tale of apparent forgery involving unknown letters by the great Dr. Johnson grows to encompass a conspiracy between a Silicon Valley mogul and his Russian allies to exploit the darkest secret of Soviet technology: the Malevin Procedure. With echoes of Jorge Luis Borges and Philip K. Dick, Marcel Theroux’s Strange Bodies takes the listener on a dizzying speculative journey that poses questions about identity, authenticity, and what it means to be truly human.”

Out from Hugh Howey’s Broad Reach Publishing is the first of a planned 3-book anthology series examining the before, during, and after of apocalypse. First up, examining the “before”, is The End is Nigh: The Apocalypse Triptych, edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey. The anthology includes all-new, never-before-published works by Hugh Howey, Paolo Bacigalupi, Jamie Ford, Seanan McGuire, Tananarive Due, Jonathan Maberry, Scott Sigler, Robin Wasserman, Nancy Kress, Charlie Jane Anders, Ken Liu, and many others, and is narrated by just as full a cast including Mur Lafferty, Rajan Khanna, Kate Baker, Lex Wilson, Ralph Walters, Jack Kincaid, Norm Sherman, James Keller, and Anaea Lay.

OK, OK. We’ve seen speculative fiction and surreal sf, but what if you’re on the mood for fantasy? Two fantastic picks this week, starting off with Steles of the Sky by Elizabeth Bear (Tor and Recorded Books, Apr 8, 2014) read by Celeste Ciulla. I started hearing fantastic things about this concluding installment in Bear’s “Mongolian-flavored” The Eternal Sky fantasy trilogy late last year, and now — along with the announcement of a new follow-on trilogy — it’s finally here. “Re Temur, legitimate heir to his grandfather’s Khaganate, has finally raised his banner and declared himself at war with his usurping uncle. With his companions—the Wizard Samarkar, the Cho-tse Hrahima, and the silent monk Brother Hsiung—he must make his way to Dragon Lake to gather in his army of followers. But Temur’s enemies are not idle; the leader of the Nameless Assassins, who has shattered the peace of the Steppe, has struck at Temur’s uncle already. To the south, in the Rasan empire, plague rages. To the east, the great city of Asmaracanda has burned, and the Uthman Caliph is deposed. All the world seems to be on fire, and who knows if even the beloved son of the Eternal Sky can save it?”

On the lighter side of the epic fantasy spectrum lies Kevin J. Anderson’s The Dragon Business read by James Langton for Brilliance Audio. An e-serial which started late last year in ebook from 47North, now in full print and audio editions, this is the story behind the myth behind the legend behind the… “King Cullin may be known as “the Dragon Slayer”, but he fears his son’s legacy will be as “King Maurice Who Speaks with Proper Grammar”. The boy keeps his nose buried in parchments, starry-eyed at the idea of noble knights and eager to hand royal gold to any con man hawking a unicorn horn. Tonight, though, Cullin will educate the prince in the truth behind minstrels’ silly songs of glory….”

Another pairing, this time two books about insomnia epidemics. (Something in the air? Karen Russel’s Sleep Donation came out just a couple of weeks ago as well.) First up, Black Moon by Kenneth Calhoun was published in print/ebook in early March and comes just about a month later to audio, narrated by Neil Shah for Dreamscape Audio. “Insomnia has claimed everyone Biggs knows. Even his beloved wife, Carolyn, succumbed before disappearing into the quickly collapsing world. Yet Biggs can still sleep, and dream, so he sets out to find her. He ventures out into a world ransacked by mass confusion and desperation, where he meets others struggling against the tide of sleeplessness. Chase and Jordan are devising a scheme to live off their drug-store lootings; Lila is a high school student wandering the streets in an owl mask; Felicia abandons the sanctuary of a sleep research center to try to protect her family and perhaps reunite with Chase, an ex-boyfriend. However, Biggs persists in his quest for Carolyn, finding a resolve and inner strength that he never knew he had.”

Out in 2013 and shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Vancouver-set NOD By Adrian Barnes, Narrated By Tim Beckman for Audible Studios. “Dawn breaks over Vancouver and no-one has slept the night before, or almost no one. A few people, perhaps one in ten thousand can still sleep, and they’ve all shared the same strange, golden dream. A handful of children still sleep as well, but what they’re dreaming remains a mystery. After six days of absolute sleep deprivation, psychosis will set in. After four weeks, the body will die. In the interim, panic ensues and a bizarre new world arises in which those previously on the fringes of society take the lead. One couple experience a lifetime in a week as he continues to sleep, she begins to disintegrate before him, and the new world swallows the old one whole…NOD.”

If near-future dystopias of mass sleep deprivation aren’t quite enough for you, here’s another pairing, this time horror in two dramatically different modes and varieties. The Vanishing by Wendy Webb came out from Hyperion in late January, and I was excited to hear first that it was coming to audio and second that it would be under narrator Xe Sands. Sands doesn’t go for a Minnesota accent, which works here — it would I think have undermined the overall more gothic atmosphere, and in any case wouldn’t be the book’s first person narration accent. “Recently widowed and rendered penniless by her Ponzi-scheming husband, Julia Bishop is eager to start anew. So when a stranger appears on her doorstep with a job offer, she finds herself accepting the mysterious yet unique position: caretaker to his mother, Amaris Sinclair, the famous and rather eccentric horror novelist whom Julia has always admired…and who the world believes is dead. When she arrives at the Sinclairs’ enormous estate on Lake Superior, Julia begins to suspect that there may be sinister undercurrents to her “too-good-to-be-true” position. As Julia delves into the reasons of why Amaris chose to abandon her successful writing career and withdraw from the public eye, her search leads to unsettling connections to her own family tree, making her wonder why she really was invited to Havenwood in the first place, and what monstrous secrets are still held prisoner within its walls.”

Stant Litore’s retelling of Biblical stories as episodes in the age-old battle of humanity against the rise of the undead, The Zombie Bible series, is fantastically good. The mashup more than “just works” at about every level, whether it’s Old Testament prophets battling zombies from within a Babylonian-besieged Jerusalem or Rome during the rise of Christianity, Litore has found a compelling voice and style and approach. Originally published late last year through early this year as a Kindle Serial, Litore’s retelling of The Gospel of Luke, No Lasting Burial, tells of a certain Yeshua and the Sea of Galilee. “What if Jesus of Nazareth had faced both the hungry living and the hungry dead? A man wanders out of the desert one day and finds a village in ruins after a night of the walking dead. The survivors have thrown the snarling corpses into the Sea of Galilee, only to starve as the ghoul-haunted sea stops producing fish. Yeshua has heard their hunger. He hears the suffering of the living and the dead, like moaning in his ears. Desperate to respond, he calls back the fish. Just one thing: The dead are called up, too.” A word on the narration here: the previous (shorter) installments were all narrated quite ably by Benjamin L. Darcie, here Brilliance Audio has cast Mikael Naramore.

Almost done! Two more picks here comb a little closer to the “long tail” of releases, but each is worth checking out. Indianapolis horror and dark fantasy author (and Dark Faith anthology series editor) Maurice Broaddus has published some fantastic stories and books over the years, from Steampunk “Pimp My Airship” to his latest novel, I Can Transform You, a short science fiction novel in Apex Book Company’s “Apex Voices” series. In between there somewhere, Angry Robot Books published Broaddus’ “Knights of Breton Court” urban fantasy series, which is now finally coming to audio starting with King Maker: Knights of Breton Court, Book 1, narrated by Neal Sutherland for Audible. (The other two books in the trilogy are due out April 22.) These books are a much different take on urban fantasy, putting the “urban” back into it if you will, as well as one of the more unique re-castings of Arthurian legend as you’ll find. “From the drug gangs of downtown Indianapolis, the one true King will arise. The King Arthur myth gets dramatically replayed through the destiny of street hustler King, as he tries to unite the crack dealers, gangbangers, and the very real monsters lurking amongst them, to do the right thing. This is an edgy, fantastical debut, genuinely unlike anything you’ve ever read before.”

Lastly, When HARLIE Was One By David Gerrold, Narrated By David Gerrold (Audible Studios, April 4). When listening to an audiobook read by the author, it can be very hit (Neil Gaiman, John Crowley, Ruth Ozeki, Neil Peart) or miss. Here, I was startled enough by the quality of the narration to wonder if there was a mistake in the listing. But, no, after checking some other recordings of his talks, it is Gerrold’s voice, captured at his best. There are some (minor) pacing beats I would quibble with, but overall Audible has something pretty special going on here, complete with sighs and asides as the author revisits his Nebula and Hugo nominated 1972 novel with obvious pleasure. The text is from the 1988 expanded edition: “HARLIE is the first self-aware intelligence engine. But instead of answers, he has questions—too many questions, and most of his questions have no answers at all. What does it mean to be human?”

ALSO OUT THIS WEEK:

SEEN BUT NOT HEARD:

COMING SOON:

MAY 2014:

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AUGUST 2014:

SEPTEMBER 2014:

OCTOBER 2014:

NOVEMBER and DECEMBER 2014:

UNDATED or 2015: