The Bright Sword
A Novel of King Arthur
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo first 3 months
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $29.25
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Nicholas Guy Smith
-
Lev Grossman
-
By:
-
Lev Grossman
About this listen
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A New York Times Editors’ Choice • The #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Magicians Trilogy returns with a triumphant reimagining of the King Arthur legend for the new millennium
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, NPR, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, VANITY FAIR, TIME, OPRAH DAILY, TOWN & COUNTRY, LIT HUB, KIRKUS REVIEWS
“Lev Grossman’s The Bright Sword stands out as the best fantasy of the year.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Grossman, who is best known for his The Magicians series, is at the top of his game with The Bright Sword.”—The New York Times Book Review
“A thrilling new take on Arthurian legend. . . . Marvelous.”—The Washington Post
“If you love King Arthur as much as I do, you’ll love Lev Grossman’s The Bright Sword, a fresh and engrossing take on the Matter of Britain featuring a colorful cast of Round Table knights who don’t often get as much story time as they deserve. The creator of The Magicians has woven another spell.”—George R. R. Martin, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Game of Thrones
A gifted young knight named Collum arrives at Camelot to compete for a place at the Round Table, only to find that he’s too late. King Arthur died two weeks ago at the Battle of Camlann, and only a handful of the knights of the Round Table are left.
The survivors aren’t the heroes of legend like Lancelot or Gawain. They’re the oddballs of the Round Table, like Sir Palomides, the Saracen Knight, and Sir Dagonet, Arthur’s fool, who was knighted as a joke. They’re joined by Nimue, who was Merlin’s apprentice until she turned on him and buried him under a hill.
But it's up to them to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance, even as God abandons Britain and the fairies and old gods return, led by Morgan le Fay. They must reclaim Excalibur and make this ruined world whole again—but first they'll have to solve the mystery of why the lonely, brilliant King Arthur fell.
The first major Arthurian epic of the new millennium, The Bright Sword is steeped in tradition, complete with duels and quests, battles and tournaments, magic swords and Fisher Kings. It's also a story about imperfect men and women, full of strength and pain, trying to reforge a broken land in spite of being broken themselves.
©2024 Lev Grossman (P)2024 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
Persephone
- Into Shadow collection
- By: Lev Grossman
- Narrated by: Kimberly Woods
- Length: 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ever since her dad disappeared five years ago, Persephone has quietly walled off the feelings she’d rather not feel. There’s no room for pain or anger when you’re just trying to get through the hell that is high school. But one day, the crush of taunts and disappointments is finally too much—and a power breaks loose inside her that she never knew was there.
-
-
A day in the life of 2 10th graders gone weirdly bad….
- By Hawaiian 54 on 07-10-24
By: Lev Grossman
-
The Heart in Winter
- A Novel
- By: Kevin Barry
- Narrated by: Kevin Barry
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
October 1891. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city of Butte, Montana is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers. Here we find Tom Rourke, a young poet and ballad-maker of the town, but also a doper, a drinker, and a fearsome degenerate. Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast, Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the extremely devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington.
-
-
Road to nowhere
- By Glenda O'Rourke on 07-29-24
By: Kevin Barry
-
The Familiar
- A Novel
- By: Leigh Bardugo
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 12 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to improve the family's social position.
-
-
The performance was superior!
- By anonymous2812 on 04-14-24
By: Leigh Bardugo
-
Whale Fall
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth O'Connor
- Narrated by: Dyfrig Morris, Gabrielle Glaister, Gwyneth Keyworth, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1938, a dead whale washes up on the shores of remote Welsh island. For Manod, who has spent her whole life on the island, it feels like both a portent of doom and a symbol of what may lie beyond the island's shores. A young woman living with her father and her sister (to whom she has reluctantly but devotedly become a mother following the death of their own mother years prior), Manod can't shake her welling desire to explore life beyond the beautiful yet blisteringly harsh islands that her hardscrabble family has called home for generations.
-
-
Loss of innocence and disillusionment beautifully told
- By SH on 08-07-24
-
Gifted & Talented
- By: Olivie Blake
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 15 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six comes the story of three siblings who, upon the death of their father, are forced to reckon with their long-festering rivalries, dangerous abilities, and the crushing weight of all their unrealized adolescent potential.
By: Olivie Blake
-
You Dreamed of Empires
- A Novel
- By: Álvaro Enrigue, Natasha Wimmer - translator
- Narrated by: Gabriel Porras
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés enters the city of Tenochtitlan – today's Mexico City. Later that day, he will meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures.
-
-
Confusing and Difficult to Understand
- By francine steelman on 03-02-24
By: Álvaro Enrigue, and others
-
Persephone
- Into Shadow collection
- By: Lev Grossman
- Narrated by: Kimberly Woods
- Length: 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ever since her dad disappeared five years ago, Persephone has quietly walled off the feelings she’d rather not feel. There’s no room for pain or anger when you’re just trying to get through the hell that is high school. But one day, the crush of taunts and disappointments is finally too much—and a power breaks loose inside her that she never knew was there.
-
-
A day in the life of 2 10th graders gone weirdly bad….
- By Hawaiian 54 on 07-10-24
By: Lev Grossman
-
The Heart in Winter
- A Novel
- By: Kevin Barry
- Narrated by: Kevin Barry
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
October 1891. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city of Butte, Montana is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers. Here we find Tom Rourke, a young poet and ballad-maker of the town, but also a doper, a drinker, and a fearsome degenerate. Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast, Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the extremely devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington.
-
-
Road to nowhere
- By Glenda O'Rourke on 07-29-24
By: Kevin Barry
-
The Familiar
- A Novel
- By: Leigh Bardugo
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 12 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to improve the family's social position.
-
-
The performance was superior!
- By anonymous2812 on 04-14-24
By: Leigh Bardugo
-
Whale Fall
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth O'Connor
- Narrated by: Dyfrig Morris, Gabrielle Glaister, Gwyneth Keyworth, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1938, a dead whale washes up on the shores of remote Welsh island. For Manod, who has spent her whole life on the island, it feels like both a portent of doom and a symbol of what may lie beyond the island's shores. A young woman living with her father and her sister (to whom she has reluctantly but devotedly become a mother following the death of their own mother years prior), Manod can't shake her welling desire to explore life beyond the beautiful yet blisteringly harsh islands that her hardscrabble family has called home for generations.
-
-
Loss of innocence and disillusionment beautifully told
- By SH on 08-07-24
-
Gifted & Talented
- By: Olivie Blake
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 15 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six comes the story of three siblings who, upon the death of their father, are forced to reckon with their long-festering rivalries, dangerous abilities, and the crushing weight of all their unrealized adolescent potential.
By: Olivie Blake
-
You Dreamed of Empires
- A Novel
- By: Álvaro Enrigue, Natasha Wimmer - translator
- Narrated by: Gabriel Porras
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés enters the city of Tenochtitlan – today's Mexico City. Later that day, he will meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures.
-
-
Confusing and Difficult to Understand
- By francine steelman on 03-02-24
By: Álvaro Enrigue, and others
-
The Mercy of Gods
- Captive's War, Book 1
- By: James S.A. Corey
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 14 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Carryx—part empire, part hive—has waged wars of conquest for centuries, destroying or enslaving species across the galaxy in its conflict with an ancient and deathless enemy. When they descend on the isolated world of Anjiin, the human population is abased, slaughtered, and put in chains. The best and brightest are abducted, taken to the Carryx world-palace to join prisoners from a thousand other species. Dafyd Alkhor, assistant to a prestigious scientist, is captured along with his team.
-
-
Incredible
- By Davey Francis on 08-15-24
By: James S.A. Corey
-
James
- A Novel
- By: Percival Everett
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
-
-
Can we ever be free
- By J. Stirling on 04-04-24
By: Percival Everett
-
Black River
- By: Nilanjana Roy
- Narrated by: Sharmila Devar
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Teetapur, an unassuming village just a few hours outside of bustling Delhi, is famous for nothing—until one of its children, eight-year-old Munia, is found dead, hanging from the branch of a Jamun tree. In the largely Hindu village, suspicion quickly falls on an itinerant Muslim man, Mansoor. Suspicion ignites like wildfire, fueled by religious tensions that simmer beneath the surface.
-
-
Good but not a mystery
- By ascot on 10-11-24
By: Nilanjana Roy
-
The City and Its Uncertain Walls
- A Novel
- By: Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel - translator
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 17 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We begin with a nameless young couple: a boy and a girl, teenagers in love. One day, she disappears . . . and her absence haunts him for the rest of his life. Thus begins a search for this lost love that takes the man into middle age and on a journey between the real world and an other world—a mysterious, perhaps imaginary, walled town where unicorns roam, where a Gatekeeper determines who can enter and who must remain behind, and where shadows become untethered from their selves.
-
-
Easily One of His Best, Maybe Even the Best
- By Buddy Lamorey on 11-24-24
By: Haruki Murakami, and others
-
The Road from Belhaven
- A Novel
- By: Margot Livesey
- Narrated by: Ell Potter
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small child that she can see into the future. But her gift is selective—she doesn’t, for instance, see that she has an older sister who will come to join the family. As her “pictures” foretell various incidents and accidents, she begins to realize a painful truth: she may glimpse the future, but she can seldom change it. Nor can Lizzie change the feelings that come when a young man named Louis, visiting Belhaven for the harvest, begins to court her.
-
-
Historical cultural context
- By Tullamore on 05-09-24
By: Margot Livesey
-
Creation Lake
- A Novel
- By: Rachel Kushner
- Narrated by: Rachel Kushner
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A thirty-four-year-old American woman—a secret agent—is sent to do dirty work in France. “Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct.
-
-
Author should not have been the reader
- By Raj A. on 09-11-24
By: Rachel Kushner
-
Orbital
- By: Samantha Harvey
- Narrated by: Sarah Naudi
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A slender novel of epic power, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men hurtling through space—not towards the moon or the vast unknown, but around our planet. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below.
-
-
Dull
- By ELLEZEE on 02-03-24
By: Samantha Harvey
-
Colored Television
- A Novel
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: Kristen Ariza
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she, her painter husband, Lenny, and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home high in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,” she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp. But things don’t work out quite as hoped.
-
-
Frustrating
- By Carolyn White on 12-12-24
By: Danzy Senna
-
Vanishing Treasures
- A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures
- By: Katherine Rundell
- Narrated by: Lenny Henry, Katherine Rundell
- Length: 3 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world is more astonishing, more miraculous, and more wonderful than our wildest imaginings. In this brilliant and passionately persuasive book, Katherine Rundell takes us on a globe-spanning tour of the world's most awe-inspiring animals currently facing extinction. This urgent, inspiring book of essays dedicated to 23 unusual and underappreciated creatures is a clarion call insisting that we look at the world around us with new eyes.
-
-
Passionate and Impassioning
- By Anonymous on 12-11-24
-
May the Wolf Die
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth Heider
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nikki Serafino is enjoying the sunset from her boat in her beloved port city of Naples, Italy, when she discovers the body of a man in the warm waters of the bay. An investigator working as the liaison between local police and American troops, Nikki is certainly no stranger to violence and organized crime, but this case grows complicated when the victim turns out to be a U.S. Navy captain stationed at the nearby military base—and the autopsy reveals foul play.
-
-
Gripping story from the first page!
- By L. Roach on 08-07-24
By: Elizabeth Heider
-
Martyr!
- A Novel
- By: Kaveh Akbar
- Narrated by: Arian Moayed
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest.
-
-
One of the best novels I have ever read/heard.
- By James on 04-06-24
By: Kaveh Akbar
-
Over Sea, Under Stone
- Book 1 of The Dark Is Rising Sequence
- By: Susan Cooper
- Narrated by: Alex Jennings
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On holiday in Cornwall, the three children discover an ancient map in the attic of the house that they are staying in. They know immediately that it is special. It is even more than that - the key to finding a grail, a source of power to fight the forces of evil known as the Dark. And in searching for it themselves, the Drews put their lives in peril.
-
-
A short but excellent tale.
- By Bryan J. Peterson on 06-02-12
By: Susan Cooper
Interview: "The Bright Sword" reimagines the legend of King Arthur for today’s age
Editorial Review
Related to this topic
-
Project Hail Mary
- By: Andy Weir
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 16 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
-
-
Bazinga
- By Davidgonzalezsr on 05-04-21
By: Andy Weir
-
The Martian
- By: Andy Weir
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive - and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet.
-
-
I love Wil Wheaton but why not R. C. Bray?
- By L. Newman on 01-11-20
By: Andy Weir
-
Starter Villain
- By: John Scalzi
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.
-
-
Volcanic Lairs, Death Rays & Cats… Oh My! 😼
- By C. White on 09-19-23
By: John Scalzi
-
The Signal
- By: Eric Buchman, Gabriel Urbina, Sarah Shachat
- Narrated by: Paget Brewster, full cast
- Length: 2 hrs and 39 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two astronomers have detected a strange, pulsing signal from deep space. Within hours, the US government goes into lockdown, restricting airspace and scrubbing scientific data. Was the signal an intercepted communication revealing alarming plans for an enemy’s military strike? Or has humanity at long last found proof of extraterrestrial life?
-
-
it did a good job keep me listening but disappointed at the ending
- By Tristan M. on 12-21-24
By: Eric Buchman, and others
-
George Orwell’s 1984
- An Audible Original adaptation
- By: George Orwell, Joe White - adaptation
- Narrated by: Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 27 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.
-
-
A Revelation!
- By wotsallthisthen on 04-07-24
By: George Orwell, and others
-
Artemis
- By: Andy Weir
- Narrated by: Rosario Dawson
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jazz Bashara is a criminal. Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent. Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down.
-
-
A ferrari with no motor
- By will on 11-18-17
By: Andy Weir
-
Project Hail Mary
- By: Andy Weir
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 16 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
-
-
Bazinga
- By Davidgonzalezsr on 05-04-21
By: Andy Weir
-
The Martian
- By: Andy Weir
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive - and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet.
-
-
I love Wil Wheaton but why not R. C. Bray?
- By L. Newman on 01-11-20
By: Andy Weir
-
Starter Villain
- By: John Scalzi
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.
-
-
Volcanic Lairs, Death Rays & Cats… Oh My! 😼
- By C. White on 09-19-23
By: John Scalzi
-
The Signal
- By: Eric Buchman, Gabriel Urbina, Sarah Shachat
- Narrated by: Paget Brewster, full cast
- Length: 2 hrs and 39 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two astronomers have detected a strange, pulsing signal from deep space. Within hours, the US government goes into lockdown, restricting airspace and scrubbing scientific data. Was the signal an intercepted communication revealing alarming plans for an enemy’s military strike? Or has humanity at long last found proof of extraterrestrial life?
-
-
it did a good job keep me listening but disappointed at the ending
- By Tristan M. on 12-21-24
By: Eric Buchman, and others
-
George Orwell’s 1984
- An Audible Original adaptation
- By: George Orwell, Joe White - adaptation
- Narrated by: Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 27 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.
-
-
A Revelation!
- By wotsallthisthen on 04-07-24
By: George Orwell, and others
-
Artemis
- By: Andy Weir
- Narrated by: Rosario Dawson
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jazz Bashara is a criminal. Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent. Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down.
-
-
A ferrari with no motor
- By will on 11-18-17
By: Andy Weir
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Codex
- By: Lev Grossman
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
About to depart on his first vacation in years, Edward Wozny, a hotshot young investment banker, is sent to help one of his firm's most important and mysterious clients. His task is to search their library stacks for a precious medieval codex, a treasure kept sealed away for many years and for many reasons.
-
-
Brilliant entry for Grossman's "Magicians" series
- By Phebe on 08-13-12
By: Lev Grossman
-
Blue Ruin
- A Novel
- By: Hari Kunzru
- Narrated by: Hari Kunzru
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Once, Jay was an artist. Shortly after graduating from his London art school, he was tipped for greatness, a promising career already taking shape before him. Now, undocumented in the United States, he lives out of his car and makes a living as an essential worker, delivering groceries in a wealthy area of upstate New York. The pandemic is still at its height—the greater public panicked in quarantine—and though he has returned to work, Jay hasn’t recovered from the effects of a recent COVID case.
-
-
An excellent dead ringer of the ridiculous depths of the art world
- By JLB on 11-15-24
By: Hari Kunzru
-
The Heart in Winter
- A Novel
- By: Kevin Barry
- Narrated by: Kevin Barry
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
October 1891. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city of Butte, Montana is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers. Here we find Tom Rourke, a young poet and ballad-maker of the town, but also a doper, a drinker, and a fearsome degenerate. Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast, Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the extremely devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington.
-
-
Road to nowhere
- By Glenda O'Rourke on 07-29-24
By: Kevin Barry
-
Warp
- By: Lev Grossman
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne, Lev Grossman
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twentysomething Hollis Kessler languishes in a hopelessly magician-less world (with the exception of a fleet-footed nymph named Xanthe) not too far from where he graduated college. His friends do, too. They sleep late, read too much, drink too much, talk too much, and work and earn and do way too little. But Hollis does have an obsession: There's another world going on in his head, a world of excitement and danger and starships and romance, and it's telling him that it's time to stop dreaming and get serious.
-
-
Don't waste your money!
- By Scott on 09-26-16
By: Lev Grossman
-
Help Wanted
- A Novel
- By: Adelle Waldman
- Narrated by: Amanda Ronconi
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When store manager Big Will announces he is leaving, the members of Movement spot an opportunity. If they play their cards right, one of them just might land a management job, with all the stability and possibility for advancement that that implies. The members of Team Movement―including a comedy-obsessed oddball who acts half his age, a young woman clinging on to her “cool kid” status from high school, and a college football hopeful trying to find a new path―band together to set a just-so-crazy-it-might-work plot in motion.
-
-
Compelling story of life in retail
- By MRM on 08-20-24
By: Adelle Waldman
-
The Book of Love
- A Novel
- By: Kelly Link
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 23 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the acclaimed first novel from short story virtuoso and Pulitzer Prize finalist Kelly Link, three teenagers become pawns in a supernatural power struggle.
-
-
Held me hostage for way too long without payoff
- By Fay on 12-25-24
By: Kelly Link
-
Codex
- By: Lev Grossman
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
About to depart on his first vacation in years, Edward Wozny, a hotshot young investment banker, is sent to help one of his firm's most important and mysterious clients. His task is to search their library stacks for a precious medieval codex, a treasure kept sealed away for many years and for many reasons.
-
-
Brilliant entry for Grossman's "Magicians" series
- By Phebe on 08-13-12
By: Lev Grossman
-
Blue Ruin
- A Novel
- By: Hari Kunzru
- Narrated by: Hari Kunzru
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Once, Jay was an artist. Shortly after graduating from his London art school, he was tipped for greatness, a promising career already taking shape before him. Now, undocumented in the United States, he lives out of his car and makes a living as an essential worker, delivering groceries in a wealthy area of upstate New York. The pandemic is still at its height—the greater public panicked in quarantine—and though he has returned to work, Jay hasn’t recovered from the effects of a recent COVID case.
-
-
An excellent dead ringer of the ridiculous depths of the art world
- By JLB on 11-15-24
By: Hari Kunzru
-
The Heart in Winter
- A Novel
- By: Kevin Barry
- Narrated by: Kevin Barry
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
October 1891. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city of Butte, Montana is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers. Here we find Tom Rourke, a young poet and ballad-maker of the town, but also a doper, a drinker, and a fearsome degenerate. Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast, Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the extremely devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington.
-
-
Road to nowhere
- By Glenda O'Rourke on 07-29-24
By: Kevin Barry
-
Warp
- By: Lev Grossman
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne, Lev Grossman
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twentysomething Hollis Kessler languishes in a hopelessly magician-less world (with the exception of a fleet-footed nymph named Xanthe) not too far from where he graduated college. His friends do, too. They sleep late, read too much, drink too much, talk too much, and work and earn and do way too little. But Hollis does have an obsession: There's another world going on in his head, a world of excitement and danger and starships and romance, and it's telling him that it's time to stop dreaming and get serious.
-
-
Don't waste your money!
- By Scott on 09-26-16
By: Lev Grossman
-
Help Wanted
- A Novel
- By: Adelle Waldman
- Narrated by: Amanda Ronconi
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When store manager Big Will announces he is leaving, the members of Movement spot an opportunity. If they play their cards right, one of them just might land a management job, with all the stability and possibility for advancement that that implies. The members of Team Movement―including a comedy-obsessed oddball who acts half his age, a young woman clinging on to her “cool kid” status from high school, and a college football hopeful trying to find a new path―band together to set a just-so-crazy-it-might-work plot in motion.
-
-
Compelling story of life in retail
- By MRM on 08-20-24
By: Adelle Waldman
-
The Book of Love
- A Novel
- By: Kelly Link
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 23 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the acclaimed first novel from short story virtuoso and Pulitzer Prize finalist Kelly Link, three teenagers become pawns in a supernatural power struggle.
-
-
Held me hostage for way too long without payoff
- By Fay on 12-25-24
By: Kelly Link
-
The Map of Tiny Perfect Things
- By: Lev Grossman
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 1 hr and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mark is 17 years old and trapped in a time loop, and that’s just fine with him. It’s summertime and he’s spending this one infinitely repeating day reading his way through the town library. Then he discovers someone else in the loop with him: the brilliant, haunted Margaret. Together Mark and Margaret set out to find every wonderful, amazing, perfect thing that happens in that one day - a journey that will take them to the dark secret that waits at the very heart of their endless day.
-
-
A Wonderful Short Suprise
- By Kindle Customer on 02-10-21
By: Lev Grossman
-
You're Dead
- By: Chris Knopf
- Narrated by: Kevin Kenerly
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Organizational psychologist Dr. Waters is a happily solitary guy with a few deep attachments, including to his boss Paresh Rajput, the owner of a thriving hi-tech aerospace company. Until something really bad happens to CEO Rajput, which throws Waters into a lunatic swirl of murderous stalkers, corporate intrigue, amorous female executives, and crafty cops who see the inscrutable psychologist as murder suspect number one.
-
-
Plot thumbs up-narration painful
- By LeAnn on 03-15-21
By: Chris Knopf
-
Persephone
- Into Shadow collection
- By: Lev Grossman
- Narrated by: Kimberly Woods
- Length: 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ever since her dad disappeared five years ago, Persephone has quietly walled off the feelings she’d rather not feel. There’s no room for pain or anger when you’re just trying to get through the hell that is high school. But one day, the crush of taunts and disappointments is finally too much—and a power breaks loose inside her that she never knew was there.
-
-
A day in the life of 2 10th graders gone weirdly bad….
- By Hawaiian 54 on 07-10-24
By: Lev Grossman
-
Our Evenings
- A Novel
- By: Alan Hollinghurst
- Narrated by: Prasanna Puwanarajah
- Length: 16 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dave Win, the son of a Burmese man he’s never met and a British dressmaker, is thirteen years old when he gets a scholarship to a top boarding school. With the doors of elite English society cracked open for him, heady new possibilities emerge, even as Dave is exposed to the envy and viciousness of his wealthy classmates.
-
-
The writing, the pace.
- By Susan on 11-22-24
-
Rejection
- Fiction
- By: Tony Tulathimutte
- Narrated by: Micky Shiloah, Allyson Ryan, Quincy Surasmith, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sharply observant and outrageously funny, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the touchiest problems of modern life. The seven connected stories seamlessly transition between the personal crises of a complex ensemble and the comic tragedies of sex, relationships, identity, and the internet.
-
-
The utter darkness
- By larux on 10-02-24
-
Martyr!
- A Novel
- By: Kaveh Akbar
- Narrated by: Arian Moayed
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest.
-
-
One of the best novels I have ever read/heard.
- By James on 04-06-24
By: Kaveh Akbar
-
The Familiar
- A Novel
- By: Leigh Bardugo
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 12 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to improve the family's social position.
-
-
The performance was superior!
- By anonymous2812 on 04-14-24
By: Leigh Bardugo
-
Rakesfall
- By: Vajra Chandrasekera
- Narrated by: Shiromi Arserio
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Some stories take more than one lifetime to tell. There are wrongs that echo through the ages, friendships that outpace the claws of death, loves that leave their mark on civilization, and promises that nothing can break. This is one such story. Annelid and Leveret met as children in the middle of the Sri Lankan civil war. They found each other in a torn-up nation, peering through propaganda to grasp a deeper truth. And in a demon-haunted wood, another act of violence linked them and propelled their souls on a journey throughout the ages.
-
Dead in Long Beach, California
- A Novel
- By: Venita Blackburn
- Narrated by: Lynnette Freeman
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Coral is the first person to discover her brother Jay’s dead body in the wake of his suicide. There’s no note, only a drably furnished bachelor pad in Long Beach, California, and a cell phone with a handful of numbers in it. Coral pockets the phone. And then she starts responding to texts as her dead brother. Over the course of one week, Coral, the successful yet lonely author of a hit dystopian novel, Wildfire, becomes increasingly untethered from reality. Blindsided by grief and operating with reckless determination, she doubles—and triples—down on posing as her brother.
-
-
Great Literary Work
- By Dr Ag on 02-25-24
By: Venita Blackburn
-
State of Paradise
- A Novel
- By: Laura van den Berg
- Narrated by: Megan Tusing
- Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Along with her husband, a ghostwriter for a famous thriller author returns to her mother's house in the Florida town where she grew up. As the summer heat sets in, she wrestles with family secrets and memories of her own troubled youth. Her mercurial sister spends a growing amount of time using MIND’S EYE, a virtual reality device provided to citizens of the town by ELECTRA during the doldrums of a recent pandemic. But it’s not just the ominous cats, her mother’s burgeoning cult, or the fact that her belly button has become an increasingly deep cavern—something is off in the town.
-
-
Fantastic, philosophical, reflects the times
- By Laurel Waterson on 11-01-24
-
Beautyland
- By: Marie-Helene Bertino
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she's different: she possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of earthlings.
-
-
Unforgettable
- By Amazon Customer on 02-04-24
-
Navola
- A Novel
- By: Paolo Bacigalupi
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 20 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Navola, a city-state dominated by a handful of influential families, business is power, and power is everything. For generations, the di Regulai family—merchant bankers with a vast empire—has nurtured tendrils that stretch to the farthest reaches of the known world. And though they claim not to be political, their wealth has bought cities and toppled kingdoms. Soon, Davico di Regulai will be expected to take the reins of power from his father and demonstrate his mastery of the games of Navolese diplomacy. But in Navola, strange and ancient undercurrents lurk behind the gilt and grandeur.
-
-
Needlessly brutal
- By David Thurlow on 10-06-24
By: Paolo Bacigalupi
What listeners say about The Bright Sword
Highly rated for:
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Simon Bailey
- 08-24-24
High hope but disappointed
I normally enjoy this author but found this story long winded and somewhat boring. Too bad
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Chance R. Mullins
- 09-19-24
Fun take on Authorian Legend
Creative storytelling with a clear performance. Fun take on the knights and happenings of Camelot.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 11-03-24
A Bright Story
Lev Grossman displays his writing prowess yet again with The Bright Sword. He gets a lot done in a single book, and has left me feeling hopeful and melancholic both. The narrator is also fantastic, one of the best I’ve heard.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Mr. Big
- 12-19-24
Lost interest a lot
Was a series of short stories, wasn’t expecting that. I lost focus. Attention drifted. I needed more connection to keep interest
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Dan Shay
- 12-25-24
good old fashioned adventure
loved this book! a few of the origin chapters were better than the overall novel, but there's something really lovely about this journey.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 08-28-24
A new twist on King Arthur
I have read & listened to many many books on King Arthur. This by far was the most entertaining and the most original King Arthur story I've encountered! It has elements of some really old and accurate information that pertains to his story, plus loads of fun bits & bobs that will make you laugh out loud! Don't hesitate on this one, it's a gem!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- angela
- 08-13-24
Absolutely PERFECT!
I’m sure I would have enjoyed the hard copy just as much, but the narration is fabulous. A real treat!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Matt Feeley
- 08-27-24
Wonderful
A rollicking adventure that I could not stop listening to. The author does a wonderful job breaking the main narrative up with chapters reveling important facts about each character.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 10-15-24
Meh
Lots of good things but I struggled to care or stay awake. I loved the magicians but the large ensemble of characters in this one and a rather oafish main character who didn’t really transform in a meaningful way except he got good at fighting.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Samuel Montgomery-Blinn
- 07-16-24
Outstanding retelling and addition to Arthuriana
We get not only a fantastic addition to the legend of King Arthur and his Knights -- that of Callum, arriving weeks after Arthur has fallen and Camelot hosts only a handful of remaining heroes, and the adventure that befalls them -- but also fantastic retellings and renderings of Arthur, Bedivere, and more. We see through Bedivere's devoted eyes the young boy Arthur pulling the sword from the stone, growing into his kingship. And many other glimpses besides which I dare not begin to spoil the delight of here. Wonderful narration from Nicholas Guy Smith, and just a hint of modern snark from Grossman atop Abercrombian duels and battles and realism.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful