Audio-books
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I cannot find the time to sit and read anymore, and that makes me very sad.
However, I've enjoyed audio books, and find I can do other things while listening and still feel like I've read a book.
I'm on my second listen-through of The Wheel of Time, and need some suggestions.
I've listened to Mistborn and Roshar everything from Brandon Sanderson and love them.
I tend to like darker fantasy/scifi stuff when I was reading actual books.
Any suggestions? -
The Sandman is pretty good.
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@bluebird Joe Abercrombie's stuff. All of it is pretty good and the audiobooks well done.
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A Memory Called Empire is a science fiction book about Mahit Dzmare, an ambassador sent from her home (a space station, Lsel) to the neighboring empire when the station's previous ambassador was found dead. The position is important because Lsel is an easy target for the empire's expansion, and it's the ambassador's job to try and keep that from becoming a reality. The book itself is mostly about political intrigue, as Mahit is racing to figure out why her predecessor died and whether she's in danger, all while the situation at the empire's capital continues to destabilize.
I ADORE the Imago machines and their influence on the story. Because Lsel is such a small station they developed a form of technology that permits taking an 'imprint' of a person's psyche and memory. As people mature in the station's society, they take aptitudes to slot into a role and then acquire (one of) that role's imago lines, so an ambassador isn't just an ambassador, she's an ambassador carrying some of the traits and memories from each of her predecessors. It allows for a lot of exploration into the concept of identity in the book, and I think the author does marvelously.
Gideon the Ninth has been mentioned in other threads recently, but I'll just quickly say that the audiobook's narrator is divine.
Only the first few of the Culture series books are available in the US for audiobooks for whatever reason, but I thought they were pretty good.
Seveneves and The Diamond Age are both narrated well, although that's probably true for all of Neal Stephenson's books since he's a pretty big name.
Phoenix Extravagant is a fantasy book rather than sci-fi and I'd recommend its narration as well. I loved the book too! It follows a third-gendered painter in a kingdom that has been recently occupied by a neighboring empire (it's very much modeled after Korea being occupied by China). Jebi, the artist, is reluctantly drawn into a conflict between the occupying forces and the revolutionaries.
All of Ann Leckie's books are worth listening to. I particularly enjoyed Provenance, which stands on its own although it shares a universe with her Ancillary books.
I could go on for ages but those all come to mind right away.
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I'll second A Memory Called Empire being a great audiobook.
Of Banks' Culture novels, The Hydrogen Sonata is my absolute favorite, and the audiobook for it is stunningly good. That one is his last, but they are all mostly stand-alone.
The best audiobooks I've listened to in the last year was The Daevabad Trilogy by S. A. Chakraborty (The City of Brass, The Kingdom of Copper, and The Empire of Gold). The narrator is just fantastic, perfect for the language and lyric descriptions. The story starts out in eighteenth century Cairo but quickly moves to a magic-filled landscape and city of djinn. The series is an interesting alternative to typical Western fantasy.
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The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway is one of my favorites, I listen to it every couple of years.
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The sequel to A Memory Called Empire just came out. It's called A Desolation Called Peace.
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If you don't mind podcasts, I have lately been listening to Old Gods of Appalachia. It definitely scratches that dark fantasy itch for me.
Just a warning, the good folks rarely win, but they still manage a victory sometimes
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@duntada That feels so Call of Cthulu to me, I'm using it to run a PnP game soon as the setting.
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@duntada
I've heard good things about this one! Well ..rather that it was just good. A couple acquaintances of mine listen to it. Didn't realize it was a story type of thing...?
I'll have to check it out. Thanks! -
@bluebird Pratchett. Any of them.
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I have heard good things about the audio books for the Dresden Files being narrated by James Marsters.
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If you're looking for good non-fiction audiobooks as well, Astrophysics For People In A Hurry is actually narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson, and it's very cool. Covers a lot of ground, and he has a way of speaking about the subject matter that is very engaging.
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@wizz
For a while when I was a kid, I was convinced I was going to be a theoretical astro physicist. So that sounds very cool.
Thanks! -
I've been enjoying the heck out of the Grishaverse in audio format lately.
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@bluebird Less like a book and more like camp fire stories. Those were always my favorite kind of stories though.
