romance – Page 9

Recent Arrivals: Eloquent Voice, Blackstone Audio, Macmillan Audio, Penguin Audio

Monday, November 1, 2010 Scott D.

SFFaudio Recent Arrivals

Hey folks! Here’s a new batch of audiobooks, fresh from the publishers. It’s amazing really, wonderous! These missives were written, transcribed, recorded, digitized, burned, stamped, mailed, opened, scanned, emailed and then posted. All for one “recent arrivals” post!

Here’s the first in Andre Norton’s redoubtable “Forerunner” series…

The Time Traders
By Andre Norton; Read by William Coon
OverDrive Download – Approx. 6 Hours 50 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Eloquent Voice
Published: November 1, 2010
ISBN: 9780983089803
‘To anyone who glanced casually inside the detention room the young man sitting there did not seem very formidable…unless one was observant enough to note those light-gray eyes and catch a chilling, measuring expression showing now and then for an instant in their depths.’ The young man in question, Ross Murdock, is about to embark upon the adventure of his life. In order to avoid prosecution, he reluctantly joins Operation Retrograde, whose members are exploring various time periods. Their goal? To find out where – and when – the ‘Reds’ are obtaining certain scientific breakthroughs, in order to maintain the balance of global power. An outsider in his own time, Ross becomes an outsider in other times as well, and faces one challenge after another. Will he succeed? Or will he inadvertently alter time forever?

The Disney movie, John Carter of Mars, is supposed to be based on the first three novels in this series. We best better buckle-in for audiobooks now, lest we be overwhelmed by the giant four-armed green ads for the video version!

A Princess of Mars (Book One Of The Martian Series)
By Edgar Rice Burroughs; Read by William Dufris
6 CDs – Approx. 7.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: July 15, 2010
ISBN: 9781441718662
Ex–Confederate Army captain John Carter finds himself suddenly and unwittingly transported to Mars while fleeing Apache Indians. This new world is populated by a race of monstrous Martians whose culture is based on the ability to fight for their race. Captured by the savage green men of Thark, John discovers that the gravitational difference between Mars and Earth has endowed him with the strength that he will need for survival on this hostile planet. He battles ferocious Martian creatures and gains the respect and friendship of the Barsoomians. Along the way he encounters the beautiful Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, and earns her everlasting devotion.

I reviewed the first book in the Larry Niven/Edward M. Lerner series, Fleet Of Worlds |READ OUR REVIEW|, back in 2008…

Betrayer Of Worlds (Fleet of Worlds Series, Book 4)
By Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner; Read by Tom Weiner
8 CDs – Approx. 9.3 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: October 2010
ISBN: 9781441761408
Since fleeing the supernova chain reaction at the galactic core, the cowardly Puppeteers of the Fleet of Worlds have—just barely—survived one crisis after another: the rebellion of their human slaves, the relentless questing of the species of Known Space, the spectacular rise of the starfish-like Gw’oth, the onslaught of the genocidal Pak. Now fresh disaster looms, as though past crises have returned and converged. Who can possibly save the Fleet this time?

While Blackstone Audio has been busily re-recording many of the Miles Vorkosigan books, many had been previously recorded by the now defunct The Reader’s Chair), this one is wholly and entirely new, and has never before been audiobooked…

Cryoburn (A Miles Vorkosigan Adventure)
By Lois McMaster Bujold; Read by Grover Gardner
9 CDs – Approx. 10.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: October 2010
ISBN: 9781441747464
Kibou-daini is a planet obsessed with cheating death. Barrayaran Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan can hardly disapprove—he’s been cheating death his whole life, on the theory that turnabout is fair play. But when a Kibou-daini cryocorp—an immortal company whose job it is to shepherd its all-too-mortal frozen patrons into an unknown future—attempts to expand its franchise into the Barrayaran Empire, Emperor Gregor dispatches his top troubleshooter, Miles, to check it out. On Kibou-daini, Miles discovers generational conflict over money and resources is heating up, even as refugees displaced in time skew the meaning of “generation” past repair. Here he finds a young boy with a passion for pets and a dangerous secret, a Snow White trapped in an icy coffin who burns to rewrite her own tale, and a mysterious crone who is the very embodiment of the warning “Don’t mess with the secretary.” Bribery, corruption, conspiracy, kidnapping—something is rotten on Kibou-daini, and it isn’t due to power outages in the Cryocombs. And Miles is in the middle—of trouble!

Here’s the follow up to First Drop Of Crimson, if the title pattern continues I’d expect that a future book in the series might be Temporary Tatoo Of Blue – or something to that effect…

Eternal Kiss of Darkness (The Night Huntress World Series, Book 2)
By Jeaniene Frost; Read by Tavia Gilbert
9 CDs – Approx. 10.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: September 2010
ISBN: 9781441773357
An immortal war has been brewing in the darkness … and now one woman has stumbled into the shadows. Chicago private investigator Kira Graceling should have just kept on walking. But her sense of duty refused to let her ignore the moans of pain coming from inside a warehouse just before dawn. Suddenly she finds herself in a world she’s only imagined in her worst nightmares. At the center is Mencheres, a breathtaking Master vampire who thought he’d seen it all. Then Kira appears—this fearless, beautiful human who braved death to rescue him. Though he burns for her, keeping Kira in his world means risking her life. Yet sending her away is unthinkable. With danger closing in, Mencheres must choose either the woman he craves or embracing the darkest magic to defeat an enemy bent on his eternal destruction.

It seems like there’s a new book in this series every full moon now…

Overwinter (The Werewolf Tales Book 3)
By David Wellington; Read by Tai Sammons
9 CDs – Approx. 10.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: October 2010
ISBN: 9781441751065
In this stand-alone continuation of the tale begun in Frostbite, horror star David Wellington delivers another gripping werewolf tale in which heroine Chey is once again forced to fight for her own humanity. Overwinter opens as protagonist Chey, bitten by a werewolf and cursed to live out eternity as a monster, prowls the Arctic Circle on the trail of an ancient secret, the one thing that could remove the lycanthropic curse and make her human again. As she hunts for an answer, she realizes that with every passing day the wolf inside her is becoming stronger and her humanity is slipping away. Meanwhile, another werewolf arrives, an evil centuries-old woman, bent on sabotaging Chey’s quest and stealing away the one thing that’s still important to her.

I wonder how this would compare with David Moody’s Hater |READ OUR REVIEW|? I love the cover…

Patient Zero: A Joe Ledger Novel, Book 1
By Jonathan Maberry; Read by Ray Porter
12 CDs – Approx. 14.2 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: October 2010
From multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning author Jonathan Maberry comes a major new thriller that combines the best of the New York Times bestselling books World War Z by Max Brooks and James Rollins’s Sigma Force Series to kick off the start of a new series featuring Joe Ledger and the Department of Military Sciences. When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week there’s either something wrong with your world or something wrong with your skills—and there’s nothing wrong with Joe Ledger’s skills. And that’s both a good and a bad thing. It’s good because he’s a Baltimore detective who has just been secretly recruited by the government to lead a new task force created to deal with the problems that Homeland Security can’t handle. This rapid-response group is called the Department of Military Sciences, or the DMS for short. It’s bad because his first mission is to help stop a group of terrorists from releasing a dreadful bio-weapon that can turn ordinary people into zombies. The fate of the world hangs in the balance.

Here’s an interesting one, James Howard Kunstler is a non-fiction author who is turning to fiction and using the thesis of his non-fiction to create the world! Blackstone Audio, oddly, is classifying it as a “General Fiction” book. Really? Are things really that bad in the USA?

World Made By Hand
By James Howard Kunstler; Read by Jim Meskimen
8 CDs – Approx. 9.3 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: September 2010
ISBN: 9781441772961
In The Long Emergency, celebrated social commentator James Howard Kunstler explored how the terminal decline of oil production combined with climate change had the potential to put industrial civilization out of business. In World Made by Hand, an astonishing work of speculative fiction, Kunstler brings to life what America might be, a few decades hence, after these catastrophes converge. The electricity has flickered out. The automobile age is over. In Union Grove, a little town in upstate New York, the future is nothing like people thought it would be. Life is hard and close to the bone. Transportation is slow and dangerous, so food is grown locally at great expense of time and energy, and the outside world is largely unknown. There may be a president, and he may be in Minneapolis now, but people aren’t sure. The townspeople’s challenges play out in a dazzling, fully realized world of abandoned highways and empty houses, horses working the fields and rivers, no longer polluted, and replenished with fish. This is the story of Robert Earle and his fellow townspeople and what happens to them one summer in a country that has changed profoundly. A powerful tale of love, loss, violence, and desperation, World Made by Hand is also lyrical and tender, a surprising story of a new America struggling to be born—a story more relevant now than ever.

And here’s the sequel…

The Witch Of Hebron: A World Made By Hand Novel
By James Howard Kunstler; Read by Jim Meskimen
8 CDs – Approx. 9.3 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: September 2010
ISBN: 9781441772893
In the sequel to his bestselling World Made by Hand, James Howard Kunstler expands on his vision of a post-oil society with a new novel about an America in which the electricity has flickered off, the Internet is a distant memory, and the government is little more than a rumor. In the tiny hamlet of Union Grove, New York, travel is horse-drawn and farming is back at the center of life. But it’s no pastoral haven. Wars are fought over dwindling resources and illness is a constant presence. Bandits roam the countryside, preying on the weak, and a sinister cult threatens to shatter Union Grove’s fragile stability. Here is a novel that seamlessly weaves hot-button issues like the decline of oil and the perils of climate change into a compelling narrative of violence, religious hysteria, innocence lost, and love found—a cautionary tale with an optimistic heart. Already a renowned social commentator and a bestselling novelist and nonfiction writer, Kunstler has recently attained even greater prominence in the global conversation about energy and the environment. In the last two years he has been the focus of a long profile in the New Yorker, the subject of a full-page essay in the New York Times Book Review, and his wildly popular blog and podcast have made him a sought-after speaker who gives dozens of lectures and scores of media interviews each year.

Here’s the first book in a new series from author David Weber. In the audio sample I heard, over on the Macmillan Audio site, there was an alien complaining about another alien being a pain in his “excretory orifice.” See, aliens aren’t so different. It kind of reminded me of the Vogons. Also, regarding that sample, narrator Charles Keating sounds terrific!

Out Of The Dark
By David Weber; Read by Charles Keating
15 CDs – Approx. 18 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Published: September 2010
ISBN: 9781427210616
Earth is conquered. The Shongairi have arrived in force, and humanity’s cities lie in radioactive ruins. In mere minutes, over half the human race has died. Now Master Sergeant Stephen Buchevsky, who thought he was being rotated home from his latest tour in Afghanistan, finds himself instead prowling the back country of the Balkans, dodging alien patrols and trying to organize the scattered survivors without getting killed. His chances look bleak. The aliens have definitely underestimated human tenacity—but no amount of heroism can endlessly hold off overwhelming force. Then, emerging from the mountains and forests of Eastern Europe, new allies present themselves to the ragtag human resistance. Predators, creatures of the night, human in form but inhumanly strong. Long Enemies of humanity…until now. Because now is the time to defend Earth.

From the description, I like the “Sci-Phile” aspect of this audiobook, and the whole Nancy Drew-style plotting sounds pretty interesting too! There’s a website for the book, and the audiobook should be in stores tomorrow.

Virals: Adventures Unleashed
By Kathy Reichs; Read by Cristin Milioti
8 CDs – Approx. 9.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Published: November 2010
ISBN: 9780142428160
Adventure has always been in fourteen-year-old Tory Brennan’s blood. After all, she is the niece of world-famous forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. So when she moves to middle of nowhere Morris Island, South Carolina, to live with a marine biologist dad she’s never known, Tory does the best she can to adjust to her new life. There she meets a group of local kids who are just as “Sci-Phile” as she is—science geeks who’ve grown up exploring the backwoods marsh-lands of nearby Loggerhead Island. But there’s something strange going on at the Loggerhead Research Institute… maybe even something deadly. After rescuing a stray wolfdog pup from a top-secret lab, Tory and her friends are exposed to a rare strain of canine parvovirus, changing them—and their DNA—forever. Now, with newly heightened senses and canine-quick reflexes, they’ll have to solve a cold-case murder that’s suddenly become very hot … that is, if they can stay alive long enough to catch the killer’s scent. Fortunately, they are now more than friends. They are a pack. They are VIRALS.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Heist Society by Ally Carter

Tuesday, August 24, 2010Wednesday, August 25, 2010 Jesse Willis

Aural Noir: Review

Heist Society
By Ally Carter; Read by Angela Dawe
5 CDs, 1 MP3-CD or Audible Download – Approx. 6 Hours 7 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Published: February 9, 2010
ISBN: 1441826734 (cd), 9781441826756 (mp3-cd)
Themes: / Crime / Caper / Heist / Grifting / Art / Europe / Romance /
SAMPLE |MP3|

Since she can remember, Katarina’s relatives have been grooming her for the family business – thieving. But when Kat tries to go straight and leave the “Life” for a normal life, she’s promptly kicked out of her new school for stealing the headmaster’s car and mounting it on the school fountain. Although she could have done it without breaking a sweat, ironically, this time, she’s innocent. In fact, she was framed – by another highly skilled thief. Her friend and brother-in-trade Hale, with his mischievous smile and limitless bank account, has appeared out of nowhere to bring her back to the Life, back to the family Kat tried so hard to escape. Hale has a good reason: A powerful mobster has just been robbed of his priceless art collection, and he wants to retrieve it. Only a master thief could have cracked this vault, and Kat’s father isn’t just on the suspect list, he IS the list. Now, caught between Interpol and a far more deadly predator, Kat’s dad needs her help. For Kat, a consummate thief in her own right, the solution is simple: track down the paintings and steal them back. So what if it’s a spectacularly impossible job? She’s got two weeks, a teenage crew, and maybe just enough misguided pride to pull off the biggest heist in history – or at least in her family’s (very crooked) history.

I can’t say there’s much more to this novel than the very detailed premise outlined above. It’s theme is as old as YA. A smart kid must save his or her parent from something. Mayhaps it’s not the most exicting theme ever, but it’s far more interesting than:

“Love conquers all, or love is the strongest force or something. Something about love being so strong to overcome anything.”

And as I value my time, and try to be pragmatic about these things, I find it hard not to recommend Heist Society as a breezy listen! It’s easily picked up, and just as easily dropped. I listened to it over the course of about four months – between more serious audiobooks and a forced reading of part of Twilight. Now, being a fan of practically every grifter/heist movie ever made, I can’t say I learned a single new trick or wrinkle while listening to Heist Society. But then again I didn’t really expect to. That isn’t to say, though, that I wouldn’t have liked to. And while all this probably doesn’t sound like a particularly ringing endorsement I’d much rather hand a copy of Heist Society to practically any kid than something far more popular with far more vapidity (like say something with a sparkly vampire and the teen who pines after him). See, the negatives with Heist Society aren’t particularly egregious. Sure Katarina’s and Hale are a pair of kids who act variously cynical and cool, innocent and dastardly, all while lusting (ever so gently) towards each other – but they do so in a slightly more realistic world, talking about slightly more realistic subjects, with slightly more interest in history, art and a lot more of the taking-charge-of-shit and a lot less of the lying-around-and-wishing-that a handsome-prince-whose-been-in-high-school-for-ninety-years would stare at her while she sleeps.

Bitter? Noooo, I’m not bitter.

Anyway, Ally Carter’s writing style is brisk, unobtrusive, and not wholly unsophisticated. It delivers a soft boiled tale that seems far more inspired by the Oceans 11, 12, 13, Entrapment, The Maiden Heist end of the spectrum than the The Silent Partner, The Great Train Robbery, Thief end. And if you’re an adult, in the mood for a YA novel that doesn’t have a single brooding vampire anywhere in sight (not even in the castles), this might just fill a few empty hours.

Narrator Angela Dawe performs Kat well enough, perhaps sounding a bit too adult. Dawe is not, however, quite able to fully sell me on the male characters. Her voice range isn’t particularly vast. Thankfully, as most scenes aren’t full of multiple characters, there isn’t much of a chance of confusing any of them. She’s certainly good enough for this novel.

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBC Audiobooks America: Fashionably Undead by Meg Cabot and the Twitterverse

Monday, May 24, 2010Monday, May 24, 2010 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Here’s another collaboratively constructed audiobook, following on the heels of Hearts, Keys, and Puppetry. It’s short, free, and full of zombies.

Fashionably Undead
By Meg Cabot and the Twitterverse; Read by Sarah Drew
9 MP3 Files – Approx. 1 Hour 22 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: BBC Audiobooks America
Published: May 2010
New York Times bestselling author Meg Cabot and more than 50 fiction lovers joined forces on Twitter.com to spin a hilarious tale of haute couture and horror. Carly, an unassuming receptionist at Guru Fashion Agency, is shocked when sexy new guy Jake texts her to say he needs her help—fighting off zombie models! Soon she discovers New York is under siege and she’s the chosen one who can save them all. With the help of her sassy, donut-loving deskmate Joyce and the intriguing Jake, Carly embarks on a death-defying adventure that leads to a Fashion Week showdown with the Queen of the Zombies, one of the industry’s biggest icons. It just might be the strangest first date she’s ever had.

Chapter 1 |MP3| Chapter 2 |MP3| Chapter 3 |MP3| Chapter 4 |MP3| Chapter 5 |MP3| Chapter 6 |MP3|
Chapter 7 |MP3| Chapter 8 |MP3| Chapter 9 |MP3|

[via AudiobookDJ]

Posted by Jesse Willis

FREE @ Audible.com: Vampire’s Tango by Michele Hauf

Thursday, March 18, 2010 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Free at Audible.com (for account holders) this novella…

Vampire’s Tango
By Michele Hauf; Read by Montana Chase
Audible Download – Approx. 1 Hour 24 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.
Published: 2010
Vampire Alexandre Renard never met a more intriguing woman than Veronica Marshall. He waited for weeks for the mysterious woman to make her move…and wasn’t disappointed when they shared a seductive dance at a Paris tango club. Their passion made him want to savor their embrace forever–even though he knew that Veronica was a slayer waiting for her chance to destroy him… Faced with an early death, Veronica became a vampire hunter to do some good in the world before being forced to leave it. But as her game of cat-and-mouse with Alexandre turned into nights of unforgettable pleasure, how could she destroy the man she came to love? With time–and their enemies–against them, vampire and slayer will have to fight to win just one more day in each other’s arms…

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Sunrise Alley by Catherine Asaro

Wednesday, February 24, 2010Saturday, February 27, 2010 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Review

Sunrise Alley
By Catherine Asaro; Read by Hillary Huber
10 CDs – Approx. 11.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks
Published: December 2007
ISBN: 1433213007
Themes: / Science Fiction / Romance / Androids / Artificial Intelligence / California / Cyborgs /

When a shipwrecked stranger washed up on the beach near research scientist Samantha Bryton’s home, she was unaware that he was something more than human. He said his name was Turner Pascal—but Pascal was dead, killed in a car wreck. This man only held the remainder of Pascal’s consciousness in a technologically-enhanced humanoid body. He was, in fact, an experiment by the notorious criminal Charon, a practitioner of illegal robotics and android research. Charon has been secretly copying human minds into android brains, with plans to make his own army of slaves. On the run from this most ruthless criminal, Samatha and Turner seek help from Sunrise Alley, an underground organization of AIs and androids that have gone rogue. But these cybernetic outlaws are rumored to have their own hidden agenda.

It may not be so much that women and men are from different planets as women and men care about different things. Or it may be just that Catherine Asaro and I care about different things. Very different things. I have this hypothesis: people, even when they are lying to you, or writing fiction, can tell you a lot about themselves by what they focus on over and over. The word that kept coming up over and over again in Sunrise Alley was “trust.” Catherine Asaro, or at least her viewpoint character, Samantha Bryton, cares a whole helluvalot about trust. Me, I don’t care about trust, at least not in the way Asaro seems to wants me to. Based on the scenes in Sunrise Alley Asaro seems to think that being chased is also of great interest to a reader. Maybe it is to some readers. It isn’t to me. Turner Pascal, the mobile MacGuffin, is being chased prior to the novel’s start. Then Turner, the bellboy turned android, and Samantha, the scientist turned beachcomber, are chased all over the globe. They are chased in cars, by helicopter, by jet, on foot, in cars again.

The meme of an artificial person, android or evolving intelligence as Asaro dubs it, is often an interesting idea to work with in fiction. Philip K. Dick did some amazing things with it Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? as did Alfred Bester in Fondly Fahrenheit. Even later career Robert A. Heinlein managed to tell a compelling story with an artificial person in Friday. William Gibson’s Neuromancer is a globe trotting adventure with an artificial intelligence as the MacGuffin. But Catherine Asaro’s take on AI and androids leaves me empty and depressed.

When Samantha and Turner aren’t being chased by unseen foes they are usually making love in one of Samantha’s many beds (in one of her many houses), or in a tastefully decorated secure facility bedrooms (where they are being held prisoner). But those looking for scene after scene of socially redeeming hot piston on human action will also be sadly disappointed. The order of the day in Sunrise Alley is for the scientist and the bellboy to show each other their emotions, their vulnerable sides and speak essentially the same dialogue over and over.
The android, Turner, has an inferiority complex and his savior/companion/scientist girlfriend is needed to shore up his insecurities. The central problem in the novel, other than their being chased, comes when Turner starts to modify his body in order to solve their problems and escape their captors (because apparently Samantha has no skills herself). In doing this Turner is increasingly loosing the handsome human looks he was given by his evil maker (the bad guy who we don’t get to meet for more than half the novel). This makes Samantha have to deal with the increasing repulsion she feels towards Turner’s increasingly mechanical-looking body. And that is basically encapsulates my big problem with this story. Writing sentences about a character’s emotional life and his/her feelings towards another character’s body parts makes me really, really annoyed.

I like idea fiction, stories that tell me something on an intellecutal level. Asaro’s Sunrise Alley seems to be merely operating on the level of wish-fulfillment. Samantha Bryton is beautiful, wealthy, and unemployed by choice. When the novel begins a handsome, insecure man has just washed up on her beach. She rescues him and drags him to the safety of her inviting home. Did I mention that Samantha also has two homes in the woods? One is near the beach in a forest, another is in some other forest, just a convienient chapter’s distance away. Both homes are filled with top-notch security, lovely decor and garages full of vehicles to make James Bond greatly envious. The explanation of why a quietly retired scientist needs to own two woodsy homes within a few hours driving distance of each other isn’t at all satisfactory. And neither is the explanation as to why she has a spy cars with built-in cloaking devices, bulletproof glass, oil slick droppers and mortars.

The worst sin that Asaro commits, in my opinion, is the final revelation which comes in the form of a pathetic pseudoscience, namely repressed memory.Sunrise Alley is not just a bad novel, but badly conceived, badly written and generally bad. This is the worst novel I have ever read. This is the worst I have ever reviewed. This is the worst I have ever finished.

Narrator Hillary Huber is tasked with making Samantha Bryton’s neurotic thoughts come alive. She pitches her voice a little deeper when voicing Turner Pascal. Huber is a fine narrator, this material is beneath her skill.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Skybreaker by Kenneth Oppel

Tuesday, January 26, 2010Tuesday, January 26, 2010 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Review

Skybreaker SFFaudio Essential
By Kenneth Oppel; Read by a full cast
10 CDs – 11.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Full Cast Audio
Published: 2008
ISBN: 9781934180150
Themes: / Fantasy / Airships / Adventure / Parallel World / Romance / Alternate History / Zoology / Paris / Pirates / Parkour /

High in the sky, far above the normal lanes of travel, drifts a ghost ship carrying unbelievable treasure. Matt Cruise, hero of the wildly popular Airborn, is on the trail of that treasure, with the help of his charming society friend Kate de Vries and a mysterious gypsy girl named Nadira. With them flies Hal Slater, roguish captain of a boldly designed Skybreaker aircraft that can reach heights previously undreamed of. But between Matt and his destination stand ruthless pirates, and an even more ruthless businessman. And what Matt’s crew will find when they finally do reach the Hyperion is far more valuable, far more exciting, and far more dangerous than they ever imagined.

Do you love airships? I know I do. If I had my way I’d double the number of all science fiction and fantasy novels being written with airships. This one, set shortly after the events of Airborn |READ OUR REVIEW|, stars our returning hero Matt Cruse. At the opening of Skybreaker Matt has been attending the world’s premier airship academy in Paris. This last semester his practicum began as assistant navigator on an old cargo airship called the Flotsam. And it’s there, whilst high over the Indian Ocean, that Matt, and the crew of the Flotsam, spot a famous ghost airship called the Hyperion. Supposedly the Hyperion is loaded with the treasures of it’s notorious billionaire inventor (kind of a cross between Howard Hughes and Thomas Edison). Upon his return to Paris, Matt discovers there are several interested parties desirous of the Hyperion’s last known coordinates. Fatefully, this is information that now only Matt knows! Determined to cash in on the knowledge and hunt down the Hyperion’s treasure Matt teams up with a rougish sky-captain named Hal Slater. Slater is the owner of a recently commissioned “skybreaker” called the Sagarmāthā. (which is the nepalese name for Mount Everest). Skybreakers are high performance, high altitude airships. Matt will need one just like it to reach the high drifting Hyperion. But Matt won’t be alone as Paris is full of both dangers and would-be competitors in the hunt for Hyperion. And what kind of a novel set in Paris would be complete without some Parkour? Kenneth Oppel doesn’t disappoint there. When Matt meets Nadira, a girl wjho quite literally holds the key to the Hyperion’s treasure, the first thing do together is jump around, off buildings, running away from some bad dudes.

One thing to bear in mind while reading this fast paced adventure, Kenneth Oppel is far less interested in the rigors of telling a scientifically plausible story than in getting on with the storytelling itself. Despite this Skybreaker does have some rudimentary science in it, notably in the areas of fluid physics (displacement), biology (human adaptability to high altitude) and even some of the zoological sciences. And though the story contains no magic it is probably still best classified as a Fantasy novel due to some very unscientific realities. The lifting gas employed in the Skybreaker universe, for example, is non-flammable (like helium gas), naturally scented of mango (like no high lifting gas on our periodic table), naturally occurring (from deep within the earth and in some animals biologically) and absolutely non-existent in our universe. Some inventions that are featured in the story are not only implausible, but also long discredited in our reality (notably Phrenology). On the plus side it contains a fun Parkour sequence fairly early in the novel. Parkouring-up a scene like that is really cool. Thanks Mr. Oppel!

As with every Full Cast Audio production that I’ve hear I come away from the novel forgetting that it is an audiobook. Skybreaker feels like a full blown audio drama. This is a rather odd realization. There are no sound effects that would normally be created for an audio drama production – they are merely described by the narrator using the actual words written by Kenneth Oppel. One technical difference in the production, as compared with Airborn is what sounds like a bit more bed music. The actors who performed in the first book in this series all return, reprising their roles as appropriate but there are some new actors too. The addition of Hal Slater, for example, is a fine one, voiced by Mark Holt, he comes off very Han Solo-ish. The actress playing Nadira, Ailsa McCaughrean, would be a fine additon to future FCA productions, she portrays a young, brash and impulsive young woman. The actors playing the Sherpas, the crew of the Sagarmatha, present what sounds to my ears as a distinct and possibly even authentic accent. Malcolm Ingram, who plays a villonous sky-pirate turned sky-mercenary sounds a bit like Sean Connery. David Kelly (Matt) and Mark Holt (Hal) even have a chance to sing a sea-shanty turned sky-shanty. This is an aurally rich production that’s a must listen for any fan of airshippery and piratical daring do.

Posted by Jesse Willis