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Hopeland
- Narrated by: Esther Wane
- Length: 19 hrs and 35 mins
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A time-traveling, futuristic saga of a family trying to outlast and remake a universe with a power unlike any we’ve seen before
When Raisa Hopeland, determined to win her race to become the next electromancer of London, bumps into Amon Brightbourne―tweed-suited, otherworldly, guided by the Grace―in the middle of a London riot, she sets in motion a series of events which will span decades, continents, and a series of events which will change the world.
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The award-winning and critically-acclaimed master of horror returns with a pair of chilling tales - both never-before-published in print or audio - that examine the violence and depravity of the human condition. Bringing together his acclaimed novella The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky and an all-new short novel My Heart Struck Sorrow, John Hornor Jacobs turns his fertile imagination to the evil that breeds within the human soul.
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Great idea, tarnished by modern politics
- By Phil on 04-28-21
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Where They Wait
- A Novel
- By: Scott Carson
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Recently laid-off from his newspaper and desperate for work, war correspondent Nick Bishop takes a humbling job: writing a profile of a new mindfulness app called Clarity. It’s easy money, and a chance to return to his hometown for the first time in years. The app itself seems like a retread of old ideas — relaxing white noise and guided meditations. But then there are the “Sleep Songs.” A woman’s hauntingly beautiful voice sings a ballad that is anything but soothing — it’s disturbing, and more of a warning than a relaxation — but it works.
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A Mixed Bag
- By Psychoprofessor101 on 12-27-21
By: Scott Carson
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Valhalla
- By: Robert J. Mrazek
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In remote, icy Greenland, ex-Air Force General Steven Macaulay helps lead an expedition to recover a lost World War II plane. Encased in ice below is a find that will astonish the world - a perfectly-preserved Viking ship, buried for nearly a thousand years, along with the frozen corpses of nine crewmen. Assembling the foremost Viking scholars, Macaulay tasks the gorgeous Lexy Vaughan to translate the ship’s markings - until her work is cut short when her colleagues are murdered.
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Still can't get my head around it...
- By Matthew on 11-04-14
By: Robert J. Mrazek
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Dry Bones
- By: Peter May
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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What happened to Jacques Gaillard? The brilliant teacher at the École Nationale d’Administration, who trained some of France’s best and brightest as future prime ministers and presidents, vanished ten years ago, presumably from Paris. This ten-year-old mystery inspires a bet—one that Enzo Macleod, a biologist teaching in Toulouse, France, instead of pursuing a brilliant career in forensics back home in Scotland, can ill afford to lose.
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Engaging hero, stellar narration
- By Janice on 11-01-13
By: Peter May
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Beatlebone
- By: Kevin Barry
- Narrated by: Kevin Barry
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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It is 1978, and John Lennon has escaped New York City to try to find the island off the west coast of Ireland he bought nine years prior. Leaving behind domesticity, his approaching 40s, his inability to create, and his memories of his parents, he sets off to find calm in the comfortable silence of isolation. But when he puts himself in the hands of a shape-shifting driver full of Irish charm and dark whimsy, what ensues can only be termed a magical mystery tour.
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Nooooo way
- By James on 11-17-15
By: Kevin Barry
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Three Parts Dead
- By: Max Gladstone
- Narrated by: Claudia Alick
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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A god has died, and it’s up to Tara, a first-year associate in the international necromantic firm of Kelethras, Albrecht, and Ao, to bring him back to life before his city falls apart. Her client is Kos, recently deceased fire god of the city of Alt Coulumb. Without him, the metropolis’ steam generators will shut down, its trains will cease running, and its four million citizens will riot. Tara’s job: resurrect Kos before chaos sets in.
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Great story, but the narrator was off
- By John on 07-27-14
By: Max Gladstone
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Agents of Dreamland
- Tinfoil Dossier, Book 1
- By: Caitlin R. Kiernan
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell, Chelsea Stephens
- Length: 2 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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A government special agent known only as the Signalman gets off a train on a stunningly hot morning in Winslow, Arizona. Later that day he meets a woman in a diner to exchange information about an event that happened a week earlier for which neither has an explanation but which haunts the Signalman. In a ranch house near the shore of the Salton Sea, a cult leader gathers up the weak and susceptible - the Children of the Next Level - and offers them something to believe in and a chance for transcendence. The future is coming, and they will help to usher it in.
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I Really Enjoyed It
- By KC Miller on 10-22-20
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Mortal Engines
- Mortal Engines, Book 1
- By: Philip Reeve
- Narrated by: Barnaby Edwards
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Welcome to the astounding world of Predator Cities! Emerging from its hiding place in the hills, the great Traction City is chasing a terrified little town across the wastelands. Soon, London will feed. In the attack, Tom Natsworthy is flung from the speeding city with a murderous scar-faced girl. They must run for their lives through the wreckage - and face a terrifying new weapon that threatens the future of the world.
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Creative but hard to stay engaged in
- By Karissa Eckert on 11-26-17
By: Philip Reeve
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Hunters in the Dark
- By: Lawrence Osborne
- Narrated by: Stephen Hogan
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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From the novelist the New York Times compares to Paul Bowles, Evelyn Waugh, and Ian McEwan, an evocative new work of literary suspense. Adrift in Cambodia, Robert Grieve - pushing 30 and eager to sidestep a life of quiet desperation as a small-town teacher - decides to go AWOL. As he crosses the border from Thailand, he tests the threshold of a new future.
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Graham Greene
- By Foxhuntingman on 02-26-16
By: Lawrence Osborne
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Elixir
- By: Davis Bunn
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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When Revell Pharmaceuticals approaches Taylor Knox and his company with the possibility of a merger, the future has never looked better. Not only will the merger benefit Taylor and his company, but in order to obtain this personal share, Taylor must find the missing pharmaceutical heiress, Kirra Revell (once the love of his life) who seems to have disappeared without a trace. According to her sister, Kirra has been kidnapped. But as Taylor travels the globe, he realizes that Kirra simply doesn't want to be found.
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Bunn simply delivers…
- By David on 02-17-24
By: Davis Bunn
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Sixteen-year old Hazel lives in the Daedalus, a starship that is flying in search of a new world. The ship has been traveling for 500 years, searching for a world to settle in after having to abandon its last world. Everyone on board Daedalus lives a very simple existence in farming villages. The age of machines supplying their needs was lost during a mutiny 500 years ago.
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What listeners say about Hopeland
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- bruce
- 08-07-23
Took awhile for me to get into it. Really enjoyed the last half.
Slow start with the multiple narratives. I suddenly started to enjoy it. Probably around 60% in
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1 person found this helpful
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- Michael G Kurilla
- 11-26-23
Climate problems and solutions
Ian McDonald’s Hopeland is a tale of future climatic impact and at the same time a simple boy meets girl. The title refers to an extended family that seems to become a part by choice. One woman from the Hopeland clan develops a relationship with a boy who has musical abilities as well as the ‘grace’ which brings him good luck, but bad luck to everyone else around him. The girl runs off to Iceland and embarks on a succession of one successful business after another eventually using volcanos as a source of carbon-free energy. The boy ends up in the Pacific on a nation island which becomes unsustainable due to weather. The entire nation transition to Iceland to work there.
McDonald seems to have started the book with one direction and then headed off to another as glob-al warming progressed. Both characters are somewhat larger than life and seem to be blessed with a Midas touch. The story rambles around and while engaging never seems to focus on resolution of central issues.
The narration is well done with solid character distinction. Pacing is relaxed.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Frank R.
- 05-27-23
So much to love, but ultimately flawed
This is a book full of wonderful ideas, prose, characters, but it is also a slog to get through. It’s not quite a novel, more like a collection of micro narratives with recurring themes and characters, the whole thing connected together mostly by the passage of time. There is a beginning, a middle and an end, but the beginning is too slow, the middle devoid of significance and the end is too long in coming. As a novel it simply doesn’t quite work, a discussion of pacing seems almost besides the point. Overall it’s never quite clear why you should care. All that being said, it has a quiet, patient music all of its own that I think will stay with me for a while. It’s not a waste of time, but it asks much of the reader and gives back only slowly and on its own terms.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Jason van Niekerk
- 04-02-23
Weaves together the best strands of McDonald’s work
I love Ian McDonald’s work across various things he does, but I think this might be the most I’ve paused to either laugh or wonder at the lyricism of phrasing since Desolation Road.
This book has the playfulness, magical realism, and spunky girl protagonist of Ares Express, but chooses to follow her and other protagonists as they mature through Anthropocene turbulence. There’s the view-from-the-South of Chaga, Brasyl, and River of Gods, the love of cosmopolitanism and fluid identities of Luna, and the near-future immediacy of The Dervish House.
If you’ve liked anything McDonald’s written before, it’s all blended perfectly here, wrapped into the story of love and tragedy and a moiety that might save the world.
Esther Wane does an enviable job of keeping up with McDonald’s densely eclectic vocabulary, and brings life and accent to Irish, English, Polynesian, Icelandic and Inuit characters.
This has been my favourite fiction experience of 2023.
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2 people found this helpful
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- D.R.
- 02-05-24
Tainted By Identity Politics
The story—published in 2023—is obsessed with pronouns and "blankslatism" identity politics. For example, it promotes the idea that a child isn't a boy or a girl until they decide what they are. It also promotes the normalization of promiscuous sexuality.
I'm not surprised this story was free to listen, as I would have returned it if I had spent a credit on it. I stopped listening about half way through.
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