A queer fever dream made real by committed narration.
Charli Anne Delores manifests a nameless narrator with a self-destructive streak in this SF reimagining of Moby-Dick. This narrator isn’t particularly great at anything: She’s impulsive, self-damaging, and resistant to love, and her path has inexplicably landed her aboard the Pequod. As she and her shipmates hunt down an enormous leviathan swimming around the planet Jupiter, the narrator grows closer to a harpooner named Q and the ship’s captain, who’s obsessed with hunting the white whale. The story is as much about the horrors of space-monster hunting as it is a rumination on religion, sex, and connection. Delores brings an entire interstellar melting pot to life, sharply voicing characters who represent a range of genders, cultures, and species. While the story stifles at times, Delores keeps listeners on the edge.
A queer fever dream made real by committed narration.Pub Date: March 10, 2026
Duration: 14 hrs, 18 mins
DD ISBN: 9781250411624
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
Together, Butikofer and Gage keep listeners absorbed in a love story set among the stars.
After a four-year wait, fans can celebrate Chambers’ newest novel, sensitively performed by Norma Butikofer and Megan Gage. Life is tough for the inhabitants of the barren planet of Fortune. Signy, voiced by Gage, is a botanist who copes by bio-printing illegal medicine for those in need. Cora, voiced by Norma Butikofer, is a pilot who’s risking a mind bleed with her sentient spaceship. Butikofer’s Cora is clear and strong, and her rendition of the ship’s coursebook is the perfect personification of a smart computer. Gage’s Signy is gentler, as befits a botanist. Their personality differences guide their approaches to increasing danger.
Together, Butikofer and Gage keep listeners absorbed in a love story set among the stars.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2026
Duration: 14 hrs, 28 mins
DD ISBN: 9780063519336
Publisher: Harper Audio
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2026
The Bobs blaze entertainingly through the universe with Porter at the helm.
Luckily for listeners, narrator Ray Porter continues to perform Taylor’s Bobiverse series. The Bobs are sentient space probes that embody Bob Johansson, a software engineer whose mind was uploaded to a probe long, long ago. In this installment, the Bobs face challenges across space, including wormhole networks, abandoned spaceships, and refugees. Over time, replicative drift changes the Bobs, giving Porter ample opportunity to create distinct personalities, be they sincere, snarky, edgy, or comic. These Bobs audibly sigh, grouch, preen, and wrestle with intellectual conundrums. The multifaceted story does wander, so it’s helpful that the often droll writing is enhanced by Porter’s realistic pacing and imaginative portrayals of characters both human and alien.
The Bobs blaze entertainingly through the universe with Porter at the helm.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2026
Duration: 8 hrs, 22 mins
Publisher: Audible, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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