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Dhalgren
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 34 hrs and 32 mins
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- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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After her father's funeral, Zoe moved to the big city with her mother to start over. But change always brings trials, and life in the city is not so easy. Money is tight, and Zoe's only escape, as has always been the case, is in her dreams - a world apart from her troubled real life where she can spend time with her closest companion: her lost brother, Valentine.
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Cool idea that wanders around.
- By Caseym on 04-03-16
By: Richard Kadrey
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Magic to the Bone
- Allie Beckstrom Series, Book 1
- By: Devon Monk
- Narrated by: Emily Durante
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Everything has a cost. And every act of magic exacts a price from its user---maybe a two-day migraine, or losing the memory of your first kiss. But some people want to use magic without paying, and they Offload the cost onto innocents. When that happens, it falls to a Hound to identify the spell's caster---and Allison Beckstrom is the best there is.
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Good start to a Great series
- By Dana on 12-30-11
By: Devon Monk
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The Happy Man
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- Narrated by: Matt Godfrey
- Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins
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Charles Ripley has a good job as an engineer, a pretty wife, and an expensive house in a fashionable San Diego suburb. But it isn't until Ruskin Marsh moves in next door that Ripley realizes how passionless his life really is. Marsh, a connoisseur of the arts, high-powered lawyer, model husband and father, and effortless seducer of women, is so supremely alive that Ripley finds himself irresistibly drawn to him. But after Marsh's arrival, local girls begin to vanish, marriages end violently, and horribly mutilated corpses are found.
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a neighborhood friend telling you a crazy story
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By: Eric C. Higgs
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Good People
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The $400,000 would take care of the mortgage payments that are starting to back up on Tom and Anna Reed. It would cover the credit-card debt they can't get out from under. It would help them find a way to have the child they desperately want but can't seem to conceive. It is more money than either of them has ever seen in one place. But they have no idea what it's doing in their house.
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What were the producers thinking?
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Passenger
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Best friends Jack and Conner can’t stay away from Marbury. It’s partly because of their obsession with this alternate world and the unresolved war that still wages there. But it’s also because forces in Marbury - including the darkest of the dark, who were not revealed in The Marbury Lens - are beckoning the boys back in order to save their friends… and themselves.
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plot twist at the end of the book 🤤🤤
- By melanie on 11-10-17
By: Andrew Smith
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The Replacement
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Mackie is a Replacement — left in the crib of a human baby sixteen years ago. Now, because of fatal allergies to iron, blood, and consecrated ground, Mackie is slowly dying in the human world. Mackie would give anything to live among us. He just wants to play bass guitar and find out more about an oddly intriguing girl named Tate. But when Tate’s baby sister goes missing, Mackie is drawn irrevocably into the underworld of Gentry, known as Mayhem....
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Undecided
- By K on 01-07-11
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The Marbury Lens
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Sixteen-year-old Jack gets drunk and finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time: he is kidnapped, but escapes, narrowly. The only person he tells is his best friend, Conner. When they arrive in London as planned for their summer break, a stranger hands Jack a pair of glasses. Through the lenses, he sees another world called Marbury. There is war in Marbury, which is a desolate and murderous place where Jack is responsible for the survival of two younger boys.
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Like an addiction, I just couldn't stop listening.
- By Gini McKellar on 11-24-10
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Zombies: More Recent Dead
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The living dead are more alive than ever! Zombies have become more than an iconic monster for the 21st century: They are now a phenomenon constantly revealing as much about ourselves - and our fascination with death, resurrection, and survival - as our love for the supernatural or post-apocalyptic speculation. Our most imaginative literary minds have been devoured by these incredible creatures and produced exciting, insightful, and unflinching new works of zombie fiction.
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A well blended mix
- By The Lone Mopper on 07-30-15
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Brighton
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Kevin Pearce - baseball star, honor student, the pride of Brighton - was 15 when he left town in the back of his uncle's cab. He and his buddy, Bobby Scales, had just committed heinous violence for what they thought were the best of reasons. Kevin didn't want a pass, but he was getting it anyway. Bobby would stay and face the music; Kevin's future would remain as bright as ever. At least that was the way things were supposed to work, except in Brighton things never work the way they're supposed to.
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Mystery gets no better.
- By William H. Harrington on 10-27-18
By: Michael Harvey
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What listeners say about Dhalgren
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- kwdayboise (Kim Day)
- 04-08-17
A classic I return to every few years
I am required to go back to this book every few years. The first book by Delany I ever read was Babel-17 when I was in high school. I enjoyed it. I and several high school friends also read Einstein Intersection and were blown away. One step closer to fanboy. Shortly after high school it seemed like every time I went to the drug store or supermarket the book rack had a copy of Dhalgren. This gigantic book with a strange cover. I finally broke down and bought it and was immediately hooked.
It’s interesting coming back to the book after several years. The book is overtly sexual. And not just sexual but polyamorous with what ends up being a threesome among the main character Kidd, a woman named Lanya, and a gang member named Denny. I think that was a partial draw, but the book in general with its setting in a mysterious city of Bellona and the odd interaction in the entire city kept me sailing through what, at that time, was the longest book I’d ever read.
It’s important to state that the book makes no real sense. It’s as psychedelic a book as you might get from the era (it was first published in 1975). I worried that I might be missing something or was too dense to understand some subtext. I was relieved, then, that the latest edition I read included an introduction by William Gibson, no illiterate regarding science fiction, in which he said that as much as he loved the book he didn’t understand it. The book is an enigma, It has a plot, carries along that plot. But what happened in Bellona? No one knows. It’s a city with its own individual apocalypse that doesn’t seemed to have gone beyond the city’s borders. The inhabitants are drawn from different places as if the city demanded their presence. They also seem to have difficulty leaving, or at least of finding their way out. Within the city limits there are codes but no laws. People scrounge for food but no one goes hungry. It’s a dangerous place and yet there’s a newspaper, a higher society, and some semblance of being a city but with no true government. Sexuality is casual and random, but Kidd’s threesome has familial affection for each other.
Kidd is a mystery throughout the book. Arriving in the city with amnesia after an apparent stay in a mental hospital. He finds a partially filled notebook and begins writing poetry on the blank pages. Almost as suddenly he stops writing but a book of his poems manages to get published. He takes work with a family in which the wife, at least, seems to be in denial about what’s happening around her, trying to live a normal life despite the strange noises outside her apartment. Even the name of the book is a mystery, with one fleeting reference to a man with the surname Dhalgren on a list of names.
After finishing the book I became a Delany addict, tearing through all the books I could find. (I’ve seen similar obsessions with Frank Herbert fans.) But I don’t think until I read Aye, and Gomorrah: And Other Stories that I got a grip about what I loved in Delany and sought out in other science fiction or fiction in general: a sense of freedom and a traveler’s eye. I don’t think one really understands their surroundings until they leave them for awhile. And while travelling or experiencing another country (or another world) one gets perspective on what has been so entwined with you that it becomes invisible. The new world, too, seems brighter. Every small detail has meaning and consequence that have been lost in the things you leave behind. This is wonder. This is magic. Delany’s writings have that sense of wonder and magic while still managing to have taken on some of the deeper themes in literature.
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36 people found this helpful
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- Michael W
- 02-11-16
Yeasayers say yes. Naysayers say no.
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes. It is experimental literature that has worn the test of time. If we shall fall for the fallacy of credentialism, Umberto Eco, Theodore Sturgeon, David Bowie, endorse this delicate fragile, imperfect yet bold unabashed and honest work.If it ain't for you then you don't have a place in Bellona.Go somewhere else.As for the rest of us, you are welcome here.Look, you'll know right away if this is not for you. Don't expect anything from Dhalgren. It is more suggestive than expressive. If you expect anything, be prepared for disappointment.However, if you take it as it comes, if you say yes, you are in for a treat. This is something unlike anything that came before it.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Dhalgren?
Sex with trees, the banality of prose. The beauty of it.
What about Stefan Rudnicki’s performance did you like?
His deep cadence plays well with the essence of this peculiar and noteworth work..
If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
What you see is incomparable to what you think.
Any additional comments?
This is a landmark work that while imperfect, its contrivances suggests so much it must not be overlooked.All you have to do it let it.
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24 people found this helpful
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- T. J. Mathews
- 05-08-16
An enduring classic or the Emperor's new clothes?
Any additional comments?
Dhalgren is one of those books where I was left wondering if it was a “literary marvel and a groundbreaking work of American magical realism.” or a literary version of the emperor’s new clothes. Based on hundreds of glowing reviews and its placement high on most must-read sci-fi lists, there are many who believe this is a classic. One reader in my discussion group said “It's enough to me that odd and interesting events happen, characters have interesting conversations/insights, and there are occasional hot sex scenes.”
I’m not so sure.
Weighing in at over 800 pages, much of what happens takes place in Bellona, a city devastated by some unknown calamity and follows the wanderings, adventures, discussions and passionate encounters of a homeless young man who cannot remember his name and assumes the moniker Kidd, or Kid depending where you are in the book. While Bellona and the people Kidd encounters are interesting, the book is essentially plotless with Delaney teasing readers frequently with inexplicable events and possibly profound insights that flutter just outside of the reader’s understanding.
Written in the mid-1970s , Dhalgren shares the aimlessness and lack of purpose that permeated that decade between the sexual revolution and the AIDS epidemic, when physical passion replaced the passion engendered by a sense of purpose. The conversations about such still-debated topics as race, gender and sexuality may have been groundbreaking and original when written but now seem to be shallow and selfish. Maybe the most profound thing Delaney says is his statement on page 685 that “balling a couple of dozen people in one night is merely a prerequisite for understanding anything worth knowing.”
William Gibson was known to say that Dhalgren is a riddle never meant to be solved. Maybe it is, like Russia, a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. Or maybe, like several of the denizens of Bellona, the Emperor has no clothes. Who’s to say?
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18 people found this helpful
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- RR
- 06-27-18
Trigger warning: rape
Full disclosure I didn’t finish this book but I got about ten hours in and heard enough of a young woman who loved being raped and was “asking for it” to wish I had a physical copy to throw in the garbage. Not worth any investment of time.
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- Jeffrey S.
- 04-13-18
eh? uh... Sheesh! Did I miss something?
It's pretty damn disappointing. The first half of the book is so strange, with a haunting, disjointed but flowing semi-randomness and almost a complete lack of any conventional narrative structure that would normally be employed to set up a science fiction story. This drew me in with a sense of wonder to allow for it all, even the graphic, often homo-erotic descriptions of random sex. I mistook it for a masterful forging of a completely unique platform that I expected gradually would yield amazing, phantasmic science fiction. What is really happening in this city? Who is our protagonist? What afflicts his sanity and how does his struggle fit in with these beguiling circumstances? It keeps building and mystifying with nothing suddenly making too much sense and only more questions arising. I thought that being such a long book there was no hurry. I expected that eventually something magnificent would emerge. Then by the second half of the book it keeps degrading and no longer seems to be going anywhere. The random flow of similar, pointless-seeming events (and non-events) becomes tedious. Even worse, the author has decided to introduce a new device of the narrative being collected from incomplete, poorly-edited scraps. It's the last straw. A royal cop-out that also lends itself very poorly to the audio format. And sure enough it all just drizzles on and winds down to a big NOTHING. Seesh! Boo-hisss. Just "art" or dated, feeble, counter-culture exposition. No satisfaction as a story.
Rudnicki, as always, does a great job although it's hard not getting a little tired of anyone's voice when it goes on for sooo long in such a disappointing story.
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- epiphanyp7a
- 02-28-16
Not for casual readers
Would you try another book from Samuel R. Delany and/or Stefan Rudnicki?
Samuel R Delany's Sci-Fi books are great. However Dhalgren is not really a sci-fi book. It is an exploration of experimental prose and poetry. Don't get me wrong, there are moments of genius in the chaos.
What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?
There are a handful of powerful scenes in the book that are highly realistic. In fact, it is believed that some of the content has been adapted from Delany's own personal experiences. This would not be surprising.The weakest aspect of Dhalgren is it's length. If the book was cut in half, it would be more mainstream.
Any additional comments?
Overall Dhalgren is worth your time if you are a general lover of the written word, who is looking for something a little bit different, maybe even slightly insane.
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- Brice
- 02-08-16
This should be in Gay Erotica (not my cup of tea)
What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?
This is NOT Science Fiction Fantasy
Place this in a different section and change the description
What was most disappointing about Samuel R. Delany’s story?
This seems like free verse not really a story Pages of description on walking, thinking, singing to one's selfNot description to draw one into the story or to build suspenseJust inane babbling trying to be deep and meaningful with out having anything to say
Have you listened to any of Stefan Rudnicki’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
Stefan Rudnicki’s performance is fine - Great he can read all of this with out walking out
What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?
Is this a failed poet turned writer, that forgot to plan out a story line before starting writing // was he paid by the word???
Any additional comments?
Skip This Book - and hope publishers back better writers in the future
Read good writer like Brandon Sanderson
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- Christopher
- 04-17-20
Great book, made more accessible by a great reader
This review is mostly about Rudnicki as narrator.
Dhalgren is an experimental novel in every way--form, genre, ethics, erotics, tone, temporal structure, you name it. No matter who voices this book, it will challenge a lot of readers. But honestly, I think Rudnicki gives first timers a lot of help. Rudnicki is a "heavy" reader, slow and careful. But in passage after passage, he helps cue the listener to multiple levels of meaning. Honestly, this is one of the best enhancements of a difficult novel by an intelligent narrator; five stars aren't enough for what Rudnicki accomplishes here.
Note: Delany plays with typescript and page design in a few places in Dhalgren, and there's no way Rudnicki can really "voice" those things. So if you want the full experience of every single passage, especially in the last section of the book, you'll have to get a paper copy (the Vintage one is fine). But, that aside, there's nothing lacking here.
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- Hillis
- 03-13-16
Don't
This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?
Most disappointing book I have heard/read in a long time. I tried but half way thru the book I had to give up and jump to last chapter. It plodded along with more focus on words to paint a picture of the world but never really developed characters I could relate to or even like or dislike. Sex seemed placed in the book as a distraction and added very little ro story line.
What could Samuel R. Delany have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?
Make better characters, develop them and don't let them wander.
What didn’t you like about Stefan Rudnicki’s performance?
It was good and I have enjoyed him on other books.
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- John
- 12-14-20
Not for me
I lasted through the first three hours and just had to give up. Not the type of story nor the characters of which I prefer. Performance was great as always with this narrator. But the story itself goes into areas of which I do not like. Will not listen to again.
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