Funny, weird, and touching.
Katharine Chin guides listeners through this SF novel that combines mind-bending physics with down-to-earth family drama. Ellie is a grad student, and she’s also a builder who helps maintain the "skunkworks" that generates the universe. Her cousin, Daniel, is one of the verifiers who ensure it’s all working correctly. Together, they must hunt down the cause of irregularities in the skunkworks—all while Ellie does battle with her older sister, Chris, over their dying mother. Chris, who grew up in Taipei and then in Buffalo, is described as sounding “like a panhandler in 1930s New York,” and Chin nails her accent. Her narration is a steady throughline as the story veers from quantum wackiness to family trauma and back again.
Funny, weird, and touching.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
Duration: 7 hrs, 24 mins
DD ISBN: 9781250436115
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2026
Multiple award winner Card is one of the greatest practitioners of science fiction; here he delivers a history fantasy of the Wabash Valley circa 1800, a world of hexes and folk magic. This is the first book about Alvin Maker, the seventh son of a seventh son, who has remarkable psychic powers. Card is a very good narrator, expressive and well paced. One can hear the excitement of an author as he brings his own well described characters to life. There is one momentary technical glitch, the only slip up in an exemplary presentation. Highly recommended for fiction collections everywhere.
Pub Date: N/A
Duration: 7 hrs
Publisher: The Literate Ear
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
Asimov's sweeping tale of the disintegration and fall of the Galactic Empire has never been more relevant or poignant. In the third book of the original trilogy, Dan Lazar handles the material adequately. He uses his limited range of voices nicely, if sometimes amusingly--he sometimes sounds like a foreigner attempting to mimic American accents. Varying pitch and pacing make for a lively narration, and his reading of a precocious young woman, who is ultimately an important figure, is delightful. Technical and editorial problems plague the title. Hearing Lazar repeatedly mispronounce a word that the text itself explains how to pronounce is very frustrating. Intermittent fade-outs on one channel; inconsistencies when switching sides; and low, rumbling background noise mar the sound quality.
Pub Date: N/A
Duration: 8 hrs
Publisher: Books on Tape
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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