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Narrated by Shaun Grindell.
Handry is severed from his village and his twin sister by an unfortunate incident and forced to wander from village to village as a starving outcast, suddenly unable to stomach most of his world’s regular food. Eventually he stumbles across a village willing to offer food in return for work, and there he meets another outcast, but one who seems to know what’s going on. The world is not what it seems. Their origins are far stranger, almost unbelievable, except there is proof. Things come to head when Hendry’s sister follows him. The story is interesting, though it’s a bit of a slow starter, revelations not coming until well into the book. When they do come, it all makes sense. However, what makes it difficult to like is the narrator, Shaun Grindell. Sorry to say I found his reading lifeless to the extent that, had it not been a short book, I might have given up, or at least found a written version instead of an audio one.
Audiobook narrated by Zachary Quinto
Audiobook narrated by Ric Jerrom
Narrated by Carolina Hoyos.
Narrated by Rebecca Norfolk
Audiobook read by Amber Benson.
Written and narrated by Tom Baker, as you would expect this audio version brings the 4th Doctor to life beautifully.
Narrated by Wil Wheaton.
Narrated by George Wilson
When her sister, Jules, is left let-down and pregnant by a wealthy young man on a space-tourist liner, Ruth Johnson, an experienced con artist, poses as Lady Evelyn Ojukwu to con Esteban Mendez-Yuki out of some of his family fortune in order to give her sister and impending baby some financial security. Arriving on the artificial world of New Monte, Lady Eve sets about wooing Esteban, but she has reckoned without Sol Mendez-Yuki, Esteban’s unconventional half-sister with whom she is developing an interesting relationship. Unfortunately, Sol has borrowed a substantial sum from the shady Alfred Alonzo for a business venture that’s hours away from failing, and Alonzo recognises Lady Eve for who she really is, so things get complicated. Alonzo wants Sol to be in debt over her head, but Ruth is not so sure she’s happy with that idea. Sol is not the spoilt rich kid that she expected a Mendez-Yuki to be. To be honest this book took me a while to chew through, but that says more about my personal circumstances than it does about the book.
Audiobook read by Sally Darling.
Narrated by: Alma Cuervo
Narrated by Ray Porter
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This is the origin story of Lady Amelia Smallhope and Pennyroyal, butler of many talents. When Millie Smallhope’s brother George marries a fortune hunter and her family falls apart, she’s shuffled off to a finishing school. Trying to get her diamonds back from her sister-in-law, she comes nose to nose with a burglar who turns out to be much better at thievery than she is, and she ends up throwing her lot in with him – Pennyroyal – who just happens to have a time-travelling pod, and be a product of Butler school, though Millie suspects he learned all he knows in the nick. The two embark on a career as bounty hunters – err – recovery agents – and we follow their exploits, including where their story intersects with the St Mary’s crew of disaster-magnet historians, and the Time Police, especially Team Weird. This is very engaging, and I stayed up far too late into the night because I couldn’t put it down. Shades of Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin with a time pod.
Narrated by Ben Allen
Narrated by Chris Abernathy and Chelsea Stephens
They say you should never go back. This used to be one of my favourite Norton juveniles, but I haven't read it for the best part of forty years. Sadly, the sucks fairy has visited it in the intervening time. The story is slight but interesting enough, but the language is stilted, especially the dialogue. This is something I was always aware of in Nortons, but forgave for the sake of the stories. Because this is an audiobook it's a lot more difficult to ignore. I suspect I previously glossed over the style for the content. The narrators do the best with what they've got, but they have to stick to the script, and they sound awkward doing so. This audiobook is a two-part collection, but I'm stopping at the end of Moon of Three Rings and will not be listening to Exiles of the Stars.
The Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships and a load of SecUnits to a newly-colonized planet in danger. Unfortunately the B-E version of rescue is shipping the colonists off to become indentured labour. Murderbot, the rogue sec-unit/cyborg who dismantled its own governor chip to become autonomous, is developing some kind of fault akin to PTSD. Can it figure out what's wrong with itself in time to help save not only the colonists they know, but also the separatists who haven't a clue what's happening? Murderbot ad some of its humans travel halfway around the planet hoping to reach the separatists before a Barish-Estranza extraction team can whisk them away. Unfortunately, B-E beats them to it, and they not only have more fire-power but they also have more sec-units, killing machines that will do exactly as their humans tell them to do. Murderbot's quirky voice is what makes these books so good. I've always been a sucker for self-deprecating dark humour.
Charles is a robot valet, the latest in robot service technology, working for the master in a large but seemingly isolated manorial-style house. Everything is going very well. Each day he repeats the same tasks, quietly content, until one day he cuts Master’s throat with a razor, for no apparent reason. After that he’s on his own, heading for diagnostics to find out what’s wrong, and to hopefully be reassigned (since he’s only committed one small murder, so far). But many mansions are in decay and diagnostics has queues that could take hundreds of years to work through, even supposing they were working at all. Then Charles meets The Wonk, a rather strange robot with a rather strange agenda, and his situation begins to change. The Wonk is determined to find the reason for the full-scale collapse of society, and drags Charles (or Un-Charles) along with her until they reach a place where questions might be answered and all is revealed. A quirky, engaging story with some interesting thoughts on AI and the parameters of robot programming. 
Ten years ago, the criminal gang known as the Cannibal Club split up after a job-gone-wrong. Now Cayce, son of their former leader, Strange, wants to get the band back together to break his dad out of a top security facility in the Kuiper Belt. After ten years, for various reasons, some of them aren't quite up to the job any more, but Cayce is persuasive. To finance the rescue they undertake a series of jobs, each more perilous than the last. Each character takes it in tourn to take the viewpoint, and finally they get to the Kuiper Belt facility to discover that it's not quite as simple as Cayce made out. This was action packed, quirky and fun, and I enjoyed the different viewpoints, though in the end it left me not knowing which character to focus on. There was, however, a good twist at the end.
Sam Anderson, one of the inventors of time travel, is subject to his own invention as a punishment for murdering his girlfriend. He’s innocent, but he does it to save his daughter from being accused. He’s sent back to the time of dinosaurs with no hope of getting back. There’s a twist. Interesting story and good narration.
I read some good reviews of this, but I simply didn't get on with it. Stopped at Chapter Nine and did not finish. Not sure whether it was the narrator, Moira Quirk, or the very slow story, Possibly a combination of both. The writeup offered a heart-pounding, epic science fantasy, but it didn't deliver, or it was just such a slow-starter that I got bored before the good bits. Really sorry.
Audiobook, read by Ray Porter
Narrated by Mark Boyett. In the 25th century humans have colonised hundreds of planets. War is a thing of the past, so the Black Fleet is being wound up and the obsolete battleships decommissioned. Captain Jackson Wolfe, captain of the last warship, will soon be out of a job. Wolfe, cursed with a commanding officer who hates him, a crew renowned for its disciplinary problems, and a tendency to take solace in alcohol is not in the best position to repel a powerful alien vessel, but he’s the only one on the spot when two colonies are destroyed by something that looks like an asteroid, but is definitely an alien ship, one that outclasses Wolfe and his crew in every way. Despite the tendency to go into great detail about the ship’s nuts and bolts and how they all wor (which seems to be a feature of military SF) this fairly zips along. The narration is well done and it kept me listening.
Ivan Pritchard, an impoverished computer programmer, buys into an asteroid mining expedition, a last throw of the dice to keep his wife and kids out of poverty on a troubled future Earth. It's all going well, a big strike is going to make them all billionaires until Ivan touched something unusual. It coats the arm of his space suit with a chrome-like substance and continues to work its way into his body, replacing flesh, bone and blood with alien nanites until Ivan is a silver effigy of himself, but with movement and mind intact. From then on things get complicated with the scientific community and military at odds. And,,, could it be that Ivan is not alone in his new body. Does whatever he has become intend to save or destroy humankind and what can Ivan do about it? Tense and exciting, this grabs your interest and holds on to it. Excellent narration by Ray Porter.
I seem to have become a Dennis E. Taylor fan judging by the number of his audiobooks I’ve listened to, ably read by Ray Porter. The combination of Taylor’s literary voice and Porter’s reading is a winner. Porter brings out the quirkiness in Taylor’s stories. This is a standalone in which Jack, driving his father’s delivery truck, accidentally hits an invisible alien and kills him. On discovering that the thing he hit was seven feet tall and furry, Jack goes back to the scene of the accident and finds an invisible alien flying saucer that’s bigger on the inside. Together with his two friends they discover that the ship has a self-aware AI whom they name Sheldon, and then discover that there’s an plot by a different species of alien to take over Earth on a thin pretext of stepping in for humanity’s own good. A thoroughly enjoyable listen via Audible.
Audiobook, read by Ray Porter
The students we first met in Outland are busy trying to make their new colony work on alternate Earth after the Yellowstone supervolcano has all but destroyed our own, but life in Rivendell is getting complicated, especially when a bunch of older refugees think that their age entitles them to run the place.
Sorry to say I didn't engage with the two main characters and gave up after four chapters.
Another full length outing for Murderbot. Read in chronological rather than publication order, this follows on from Murdewrbot #6, Fugitive Telemetry. Murderbot, the rogue SecUnit is now effectively 'owned' by Dr Mensah as a way to preserve its autonomy. It's on a mission with Mensah's family members and colleagues, Thiago, Mensah's bother in law, Amena, Mensah's sort-of daughter, and Drs Arada, Oversee and Ratthi. Their ship is attacked by a hostile vessel crewed by grey humanoids. The others escape, but Murderbot and Amena are taken on board the hostile. Then it gets complicated. Murderbot discovers that the hosatile ship is actually ART, the AI of which is Murderbot's friend from a previous book, now severely compromised, maybe even dead. Alien remnant tech is involves and even when Murderbot rescues and reboots ART, the deadly remnant tech, not to mention ART's missing human crew have to be found. Murderbot is its usual snarky self, baffled by human emotions yet beginning to experience something similar itself. The ending set things up for a new phase in Murderbot's life. The reader is Kevin R Free
When Temperance, an old flame of Jayne Cobb's, sends a help-come-quick message Mal and the crew of Serenity, despite Mal's reservations, answer the call. On the backwater
I skipped Murderbor #5 and will go back to it as I understand Fugitive Telemetry comes before it in internal chronological order, This is a murder mystery set on Preservation, a space station with a low crime rate. ill equipped to deal with a grisly murder, and twists arising. Sec-Unit, i.e. Murderbot, is sent by Dr Mensah to work with station security. It has to navigate human fear and suspicion, but gradually wins trust and does what it does to solve the crime. No spoilers as to what develops and how the crime is solved. There's pleny of the usual Murderbot snark in this full length novel. I love Murderbot, and will be moving on to Murderbot #5, Network Effect, which I already have downloaded from Audible.
Audiobook, read by the author This is a light-hearted, cosy fantasy abourtcommunity, found family and the luck you make for yourself. Viv is am Orc mercenary who decides to get out of the fighting-for-money game and open a coffeeshop in the city of Thune. On the face of it, not such a great idea because the Thune residents don't even know what coffee is. She gradually gathers a bunch of new friends (a succubus, a magic student, a hob, a musician) who are all fundamentally nice people. (Did I say it was cosy?) Everything seems to be going well. Of course there are problems, one of her ex-mercenary chums is determined to find and take the source of her luck.
The third Bobiverse book sees even more Bobs (all computer replicants of original human Bob) out there in the Galaxy establishing human colonies, finally sorting out the antagonistic Brazilians, and battling a terrifying, world-killing species of aliens known simply as the Others. We follow a few familiar Bobs, Original Bob, Ryker, Bill and Howard, who falls in love. Original Bob spends most of his time with an emergent primitive species, just developing stone age tech. His long-time friend, Archimedes is aging, and that’s the big problem for the Bobs in general, flesh-people age and die, but the Bobs are immortal. Howard has to face this too as his lady-love ages. I know there’s a fourth Bob book, but this one rounds off a lot od story arcs, so I’m looking forward to find out what happens next as the Bobs spread across the galaxy. The tome is light, though the subject matter is often serious. Ray Porter has just the right tone for the Bobs. It’s a good listen. Start at the beginning, though.
A selection of short stories dramatized with a full cast. Occasionally bringing back some of the original cast. This is a reboot, so it starts from Blake’s incarceration, trial and the journey to the penal colony on the London. It’s a slightly fresh take and the characters are voiced by new actors including Colin Salmon as Avon and Derek Riddell as Blake, with a gentle Scottish accent and distinctive voice. I like the way he plays the part, almost better than the original (if that won’t bring a ton of hate-mail down on my head). Colin Salmon is excellent, though I do miss Paul Darrow’s distinctive Avon-ness. (He will always be my definitive Avon no matter how many times it’s rebooted.) There’s a new crew-member, Mezzin, and, of course Zen. Callie doesn’t appear in the first season. The second season consists of a selection of character backstories (including Callie). It’s all very interesting. Some stories are shorter than others, some more complex and absorbing. I must admit I enjoyed ‘When Vila met Gan’ which featured Michael Keating (the original Vila). Many of the stories are written by Ben Aaronovitch, who apart from writing the Rivers of London series, was a Dr Who writer, so has a lot of experience with drama scripts. I gather from the making-of feature at the end, he also oversaw the other writers to bring coherence to the project. Well worth a listen, if, like me, you are a Blake’s 7 fan.
Audiobook narrated by Dina Pearlman
Narrated by a young bowman, Camlin, this is a slight story of a gang of outlaws who take in a stranger who then fights for leadership. It could be our world (Medieval) or it could be a secondary world. Hard to tell unless you've read other works by John Gwynne.
This short ghost story is a classic, featuring Mr Garrett, a librarian who, while searching for a book requested by John Eldred, encounters a black-clad mouldering clergyman, so strange it causes him to pass out and be given recovery leave. On the train to the seaside he meets the Simpsons, a mother and daughter, who offer him lodgings. He learns that they are in an inheritance struggle over the missing will of a clergyman called Rant, and Garrett pieces together their story with John Eldred's search for a very particular book, and the spectre of the long-dead clergyman. Beautifully read, as might be expected, by David Suchet.
Murderbot., a rogue sec-unit, part organic, part cyborg, learns that its friend/former owner Dr Mensah, has been kidnapped by the evil GrayCris corporation, and makes its way across the galaxy to help. Murderbot prefers to watch soap stories on downloaded media, and has never been programmed to work on its own initiative, without instruction. It hasn’t been programmed to care, but it is growing as a person, making decisions contrary to its original programming. I’ve always thought of Murderbot as female, even though it is genderless, but Kevin Free has a neutral enough voice that his narration works well. This is a novella length story, easily consumed in a day. I’ve really enjoyed all the Murderbot stories so far. Highly recommended.
Yet another re-reading of one of my favourite books. Miles Vorkosigan at his chaotic best. He flunks out of Military academy by breaking both legs in a rash jump on the physical test, gets sent to stay with his Betan grandmother, takes on an obsolete cargo freighter and its near obsolete jump pilot, attempts to smuggle arms into a war zone and accidentally ends up running a mercenary fleet in his alter ego personality as Admiral Miles Naismith. Miles is a great character to read about, though if he were mine in real life, I’d probably want to strangle him. The fact that he is so real to me is testament to Lois McMaster Bujold’s excellent writing. Science fiction or fantasy, I heartily recommend everything she writes. This is the third book in the Vorkosigan series. The first two are about Miles’ parents. This is the first Miles book, so it’s one of the good starting points for the whole series. Read them all. You won’t be sorry.
A short story set on a mining asteroid in the world of Murderbot, a sentient, near-homicidal android who has hacked its own system and gained autonomy, though mostly it would rather download and watch its favourite TV series than do anything constructive. Even so, when Murderbot is faced with effecting a rescue against company orders, it has to make a tough decision.
Tom Stein is a smart-ass Hollywood agent who's just pulled off a major coup - getting a milti-million dollar deal for one of his actress-clients. He's feeling a bit smug when his boss drops a bombshell. The space-faring Yherajk are in orbit around Earth and they want the agency to negotiate for their entire alien race. Rhey want to be introduced to humanity in a non-threatening way. The problem is that they're ugly blobs of jelly and they communicate by farting. Oh joy! Enter Joshua, Yherajk ambassador and nmow Tom's most important client. Part satire, part quirky comedy with a science fictional core (aliens!) . This is light, fast-paced and enjoyable. The audio book is well read by Wil Wheaton.
This is the first of Karen Traviss Star Wars books dealing with the chaps in white armour. They are all clones of the same person, grown to maturity in 12 years and trained by a Mandalorian drill sergeant, so you might expect them to be very similar to each other, but withing the first page Ms Traviss has four very individual characters on the page, Niner, Fi, Atin and Darman. This particular squad of commandos is comprised of surviving leftovers of other squads following a devastating battle (in the Clone Wars timeline), so rather than being trusted teammates, they are still getting used to each other. They have been tasked with destroying a separatist bioweapon. Darman is separated from the rest and meets a very inexperienced Jedi Padawan, Etain Tur-Mukan. A bond begins to develop (definitely a no-no as far as their bosses are concerned) and they are separated at the end. I don't usually read tie-in fiction, but I've loved Karen Traviss' other books so so reading this was a no-brainer and I was not disappointed. She gets under the skin of the squaddies and presents fully rounded characters as well a breakneck action. Highly recommended.
Audiobook read by Adam Sims
Darrow is a young, daredevil hell-diver, a Red living underground, and working in the mines of Mars. He has friends and he's happily married to the love of his life and unwilling to disturb the status quo. They are working to terraform the planet for the future of humanity. It's a harsh life, but he's content, not really recognising that the Reds exist as slaves. His wife rebels and is executed by their overlords - the Golds, and he discovers it's all been a lie, Mars has been successfully terraformed for generations. There's a whole society living on the surface, and the Golds rule it. Taken in by rebels he's transformed into the very thing he now hates, a Gold, and sent up above to infiltrate Gold society and bring it down from the inside. This first book follows him through the academy where training is more or less kill or be killed. Only the tough survive to earn placements in the great houses. Darrow must rise to lead his squad, and then they must beat the other squads, except that's not what happens. Darrow goes rogue, building his own team from the dregs and deserters from the others. Expect grief, violence, betrayal, unexpected loyalty, and more violence. Tim Gerard Reynolds does a good job on the narration.
