OCTOBER 29-NOVEMBER 4, 2014: Breathtakingly imaginative epic fantasy, sarcastic star-crossing science fiction, a demon possession pandemic, and multiverse-spanning virtual realities make for a fantastic release week of concurrent and backlist new audiobooks this week to start November. It’s a packed week as well, with several very good titles also out this week including Stephen Baxter’s Proxima, Jack McDevitt’s Coming Home, Kim Newman’s An English Ghost Story, Lydia Millet’s Mermaids in Paradise, Ryan Graudin’s The Walled City, Jamie Metzl’s Genesis Code, Paul Dale’s The Dark Lord’s Handbook, Carrie Ryan and John Parke Davis’s The Map to Everywhere, and two David Drake “Hammer’s Slammers” novels read by Jay Snyder. And, outside of speculative fiction, Richard Ford returns to his Frank Bascombe stories with Let Me Be Frank With You, and a pair of non-fiction titles catch my eye/ear as well: Bill Nye’s Undeniable and Martin Short’s I Must Say, both read by the author. And! There’s a trio of new GraphicAudio titles worth checking out as well, including Cherie Priest’s The Inexplicables, Jon Sprunk’s Blood and Iron, and Simon R. Green’s Ghost of a Chance. It’s also a week with some intriguing books in the “seen but not heard” listings, including David James Keaton’s The Last Projector, Chaz Brenchley’s collection Bitter Waters, Fred Venturini’s The Heart Does Not Grow Back, Jennifer Brozek and Bryan Thomas Schmidt’s anthology Shattered Shields, and a new Wild Cards mosaic novel, Lowball. Enjoy!

PICKS OF THE WEEK:

The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley was published in print/ebook just a bit earlier this year by Angry Robot, starting a new series The Worldbreaker Saga for the author of the Bel Dame Apocrypha trilogy. Before I get to the audiobook, here’s what’s on the pbulisher’s tin: “On the eve of a recurring catastrophic event known to extinguish nations and reshape continents, a troubled orphan evades death and slavery to uncover her own bloody past – while a world goes to war with itself. In the frozen kingdom of Saiduan, invaders from another realm are decimating whole cities, leaving behind nothing but ash and ruin.” Narrated by Liza Ross for Audible, the book/audiobook here is much, much stranger than the publisher copy. Sentient trees, acid magic, a kaleidoscope of original creatures and weapons and plots. 72-year-old actress and veteran narrator Ross lends a confident voice of wisdom to the older characters — this is no one-note cast, with children and crones and all shapes and sizes in between — while still ably capturing the frightened young girl, Lilia, in whose point of view we open the novel, raiders breaching her village’s defenses, the houses on fire. Ross’ previous fantasy experience serves her well, particularly her work in the Forgotten Realms universe — how many narrators get “chitinous” to feel right? — and while overall I still found the narration not exactly spot-on it’s still a very, very worthwhile audiobook. Meanwhile, fresh off a double Hugo Award win for her non-fiction at this year’s WorldCon, and for her fiction already a BFA Newcomer winner and nominated for the Nebula, Tiptree, BSFA, and Clarke Awards, Hurley’s imaginative novel has dawn plenty of well-deserved attention, and it’s a must read for this year. More: Hurley’s guest post for Scalzi’s The Big Idea. Get: [Audible]

Willful Child by Steven Erikson (Tor, Nov 4, 2014) — “From the New York Times Bestselling author Steven Erikson comes a new SF novel of devil-may-care, near calamitous and downright chaotic adventures through the infinite vastness of interstellar space. These are the voyages of the starship A.S.F. Willful Child. Its ongoing mission: to seek out strange new worlds on which to plant the Terran flag, to subjugate and if necessary obliterate new life-forms, to boldly blow the… And so we join the not-terribly-bright but exceedingly cock-sure Captain Hadrian Sawback and his motley crew on board the Starship Willful Child for a series of devil-may-care, near-calamitous and downright chaotic adventures through ‘the infinite vastness of interstellar space.’” There’s an excerpt available at Tor.com, and now that it’s out you can hear samples narrated by MacLeod Andrews for Brilliance Audio, which gives a clearer picture as to what you’re getting into here: a darkly funny, sarcastic take on space exploration motifs. This is kind of in the neighborhood of Redshirts or Galaxy Quest but also unlike both, perhaps channeling a little more of Futurama‘s Zapp Brannigan. Andrews is great for this role, dialing down the street smarts from his work on Sandman Slim but keeping the confident sarcasm. More: Tor.com presents highlights from Erikson’s Septembter reddit AMA. Get: [Downpour | Audible]

Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory, read by Peter Berkrot for Tantor (Nov 4) — I’ve had Gregory’s 2008 debut, World Fantasy Award nominated novel in my daily “where’s the audiobook” search for quite a while — that particular intersection of debut novel and World Fantasy Award nominee has brought many fantastic books my way over the years now — and I’m very excited to find that it’s come from narrator Berkrot, whom I’ve enjoyed on Ben H. Winters’ The Last Policeman series. “It is a world like our own in every respect . . . save one. In the 1950s, random acts of possession begin to occur. Ordinary men, women, and children are the targets of entities that seem to spring from the depths of the collective unconscious, pop-cultural avatars some call demons. There’s the Truth, implacable avenger of falsehood. The Captain, brave and self-sacrificing soldier. The Little Angel, whose kiss brings death, whether desired or not. And a string of others, ranging from the bizarre to the benign to the horrific.” From an author whose other books include Raising Stony Mayhall, Afterparty, and We Are All Completely Fine, all AudioBookaneers favorites. Get: [Audible]

City of Golden Shadow: Otherland, Book 1 [Downpour] and River of Blue Fire: Otherland Book 2 [Downpour] by Tad Williams, narrated by George Newbern for Penguin Audio (Oct 30) — Tad’s 1996 and 1998 novels in his far-spanning tetralogy of virtual realities: “Surrounded by secrecy, it is home to the wildest dreams and darkest nightmares. Incredible amounts of money have been lavished on it. The best minds of two generations have labored to build it. And somehow, bit by bit, it is claiming the Earth’s most valuable resource – its children.” Newbern has been fantastic in voicing The Dirty Streets of Heaven and the remainder of the Bobby Dollar books, so it’s an easy pairing to follow into old/new territory. I’m excited by this for two further reasons: 1. perhaps now the re-launched Otherland MMORPG really will happen and 2. perhaps we’ll see his truly fantastic Memory, Sorrow and Thorn epic fantasy trilogy come to audio ahead of the decades-later continuation The Witchwood Crown due in 2015.

ALSO OUT THIS WEEK:











Update: Here are the 3 GraphicAudio titles I mention in the updated intro. Two are available in audio for the first time: Jon Sprunk’s Blood and Iron and Cherie Priest’s The Inexplicables, the 2012-published 5th novel in her Clockwork Century series. The last, Simon R. Green’s Ghost of a Chance, is available in standard audiobook.

ALSO ALSO OUT THIS WEEK:





SEEN BUT NOT HEARD:





COMING SOON:

DECEMBER 2014:

UNDATED or 2015: