
Assassin of Reality
A Novel (Vita Nostra, Book 2)
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

Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $25.19
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Jessica Ball
About this listen
The eagerly anticipated sequel to the highly acclaimed Vita Nostra takes listeners to the next stage in Sasha Samokhina’s journey in a richly imagined world of dark academia in which grammar is magic—and not all magic is good.
In Vita Nostra, Sasha Samokhina, a third-year student at the Institute of Special Technologies, was in the middle of taking the final exam that would transform her into a part of the Great Speech. After defying her teachers’ expectations, Sasha emerges from the exam as Password, a unique and powerful part of speech. Accomplished and ready to embrace her new role, she soon learns her powers threaten the old world, and despite her hard work, Sasha is set to fail.
However, Farit Kozhennikov, Sasha’s dark mentor, finds a way to bring her out of the oblivion and back to the Institute for his own selfish purposes. Subsequently, Sasha must correct her mistakes before she is allowed to graduate and is forced to do what few are asked and even less achieve: to succeed and reverberate—becoming a part of the Great Speech and being one of the special few who dictate reality. If she fails, she faces a fate far worse than death: the choice is hers.
Years have passed around the Institute—and the numerous realities that have spread from Sasha’s first failure—but it is only her fourth year of learning what role she will play in shaping the world. Her teachers despise and fear her, her classmates distrust her, and a growing love—for a young pilot with no affiliation to the school—is fraught because a relationship means leverage, and Farit won’t hesitate to use it against her.
Planes crash all the time. Which means Sasha needs to rewrite the world so that can’t happen...or fail for good.
©2023 Marina Dyachenko and Sergey Dyachenko (P)2023 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
-
Dungeon Crawler Carl
- A LitRPG/Gamelit Adventure
- By: Matt Dinniman
- Narrated by: Jeff Hays
- Length: 13 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible. In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth - from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds - collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground. The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot.
-
-
A refreshing take on apocalyptical LITRPG
- By Rhexas on 03-01-21
By: Matt Dinniman
-
City of Last Chances
- By: Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Narrated by: David Thorpe
- Length: 19 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There has always been a darkness to Ilmar, but never more so than now. The city chafes under the heavy hand of the Palleseen occupation, the choke-hold of its criminal underworld, the boot of its factory owners, the weight of its wretched poor and the burden of its ancient curse. What will be the spark that lights the conflagration? Despite the city's refugees, wanderers, murderers, madmen, fanatics and thieves, the catalyst, as always, will be the Anchorwood–that dark grove of trees, that primeval remnant, that portal, when the moon is full, to strange and distant shores.
-
-
Occupied Paris during WW2 In Fantasy World?
- By caleb on 06-19-23
-
Babel
- Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution
- By: R. F. Kuang
- Narrated by: Chris Lew Kum Hoi, Billie Fulford-Brown
- Length: 21 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. Babel is the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire’s quest for colonization.
-
-
The novel language lovers have been waiting for
- By LisaLee on 09-06-22
By: R. F. Kuang
-
Ninth House
- By: Leigh Bardugo
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang, Michael David Axtell
- Length: 16 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug-dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. In fact, by age twenty, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most prestigious universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?
-
-
UTTERLY DISAPPOINTED.
- By Tavan Hiestand on 11-21-19
By: Leigh Bardugo
-
The Book That Wouldn't Burn
- By: Mark Lawrence
- Narrated by: Jessica Whittaker
- Length: 22 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The boy has lived his whole life trapped within a book-choked chamber older than empires and larger than cities. The girl has been plucked from the outskirts of civilization to be trained as a librarian, studying the mysteries of the great library at the heart of her kingdom. They were never supposed to meet. But in the library, they did. Their stories spiral around each other, across worlds and time. This is a tale of truth and lies and hearts, and the blurring of one into another.
-
-
Keeps the reader guessing
- By Gr on 08-17-23
By: Mark Lawrence
-
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi
- A Novel
- By: Shannon Chakraborty
- Narrated by: Lameece Issaq, Amin El Gamal
- Length: 16 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the Indian Ocean’s most notorious pirates, she’s survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands, and one actual demon to retire peacefully with her family to a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural.
-
-
Not City of Brass, A Fun Swashbuckling Adventure
- By Pele on 03-23-23
-
Dungeon Crawler Carl
- A LitRPG/Gamelit Adventure
- By: Matt Dinniman
- Narrated by: Jeff Hays
- Length: 13 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible. In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth - from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds - collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground. The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot.
-
-
A refreshing take on apocalyptical LITRPG
- By Rhexas on 03-01-21
By: Matt Dinniman
-
City of Last Chances
- By: Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Narrated by: David Thorpe
- Length: 19 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There has always been a darkness to Ilmar, but never more so than now. The city chafes under the heavy hand of the Palleseen occupation, the choke-hold of its criminal underworld, the boot of its factory owners, the weight of its wretched poor and the burden of its ancient curse. What will be the spark that lights the conflagration? Despite the city's refugees, wanderers, murderers, madmen, fanatics and thieves, the catalyst, as always, will be the Anchorwood–that dark grove of trees, that primeval remnant, that portal, when the moon is full, to strange and distant shores.
-
-
Occupied Paris during WW2 In Fantasy World?
- By caleb on 06-19-23
-
Babel
- Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution
- By: R. F. Kuang
- Narrated by: Chris Lew Kum Hoi, Billie Fulford-Brown
- Length: 21 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. Babel is the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire’s quest for colonization.
-
-
The novel language lovers have been waiting for
- By LisaLee on 09-06-22
By: R. F. Kuang
-
Ninth House
- By: Leigh Bardugo
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang, Michael David Axtell
- Length: 16 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug-dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. In fact, by age twenty, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most prestigious universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?
-
-
UTTERLY DISAPPOINTED.
- By Tavan Hiestand on 11-21-19
By: Leigh Bardugo
-
The Book That Wouldn't Burn
- By: Mark Lawrence
- Narrated by: Jessica Whittaker
- Length: 22 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The boy has lived his whole life trapped within a book-choked chamber older than empires and larger than cities. The girl has been plucked from the outskirts of civilization to be trained as a librarian, studying the mysteries of the great library at the heart of her kingdom. They were never supposed to meet. But in the library, they did. Their stories spiral around each other, across worlds and time. This is a tale of truth and lies and hearts, and the blurring of one into another.
-
-
Keeps the reader guessing
- By Gr on 08-17-23
By: Mark Lawrence
-
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi
- A Novel
- By: Shannon Chakraborty
- Narrated by: Lameece Issaq, Amin El Gamal
- Length: 16 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the Indian Ocean’s most notorious pirates, she’s survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands, and one actual demon to retire peacefully with her family to a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural.
-
-
Not City of Brass, A Fun Swashbuckling Adventure
- By Pele on 03-23-23
-
The Will of the Many
- Hierarchy, Book 1
- By: James Islington
- Narrated by: Euan Morton
- Length: 28 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Catenan Republic—the Hierarchy—may rule the world now, but they do not know everything. I tell them my name is Vis Telimus. I tell them I was orphaned after a tragic accident three years ago, and that good fortune alone has led to my acceptance into their most prestigious school. I tell them that once I graduate, I will gladly join the rest of civilized society in allowing my strength, my drive, and my focus—what they call Will—to be leeched away and added to the power of those above me, as millions already do. As all must eventually do.
-
-
I don’t know what the other reviews are on about
- By Chase on 06-24-23
By: James Islington
-
Library at Mount Char
- By: Scott Hawkins
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 16 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Carolyn's not so different from the other human beings around her. After all, she was a normal American herself once. That was a long time ago, of course - before the time she calls "adoption day", when she and a dozen other children found themselves being raised by a man they learned to call Father.
-
-
Not Your Local Library
- By Lorfet on 04-05-16
By: Scott Hawkins
-
Piranesi
- By: Susanna Clarke
- Narrated by: Chiwetel Ejiofor
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has. In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides that thunder up staircases, the clouds that move in slow procession through the upper halls. On Tuesdays and Fridays Piranesi sees his friend, the Other. At other times he brings tributes of food to the Dead. But mostly, he is alone.
-
-
Fascinating Social Study
- By Henry V on 02-26-21
By: Susanna Clarke
-
A Deadly Education
- A Novel (The Scholomance, Book 1)
- By: Naomi Novik
- Narrated by: Anisha Dadia
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
I decided that Orion Lake needed to die after the second time he saved my life. Everyone loves Orion Lake. Everyone else, that is. Far as I’m concerned, he can keep his flashy combat magic to himself. I’m not joining his pack of adoring fans. I don’t need help surviving the Scholomance, even if they do. Forget the hordes of monsters and cursed artifacts; I’m probably the most dangerous thing in the place. Just give me a chance and I’ll level mountains and kill untold millions, making myself the dark queen of the world.
-
-
Intersting concept, way too much self pity
- By Rune on 10-13-20
By: Naomi Novik
-
Gideon the Ninth
- By: Tamsyn Muir
- Narrated by: Moira Quirk
- Length: 16 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth unveils a solar system of swordplay, cut-throat politics, and lesbian necromancers. Her characters leap out of the audio, as skillfully animated as arcane revenants. The result is a heart-pounding epic science fantasy. Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse.
-
-
Fun. Not art, very gory, but 100% fun.
- By Sarah K. on 10-27-19
By: Tamsyn Muir
-
The Maniac
- By: Benjamin Labatut
- Narrated by: Gergo Danka, Eva Magyar
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World electrified a global readership. A Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, and one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of the Year, it explored the life and thought of a clutch of mathematicians and physicists who took science to strange and sometimes dangerous new realms. In The MANIAC, Labatut has created a tour de force on an even grander scale.
-
-
Gergo Danka and Eva Magyar are excellent narrators
- By Barbara S on 11-04-23
By: Benjamin Labatut
-
Nettle & Bone
- By: T. Kingfisher
- Narrated by: Amara Jasper
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Marra never wanted to be a hero. As the shy, convent-raised, third-born daughter, she escaped the traditional fate of princesses, to be married away for the sake of an uncaring throne. But her sister wasn’t so fortunate—and after years of silence, Marra is done watching her suffer at the hands of a powerful and abusive prince. Seeking help for her rescue mission, Marra is offered the tools she needs, but only if she can complete three seemingly impossible tasks:
-
-
If Only I Could Cut Out Half the Story
- By Ree on 04-28-22
By: T. Kingfisher
-
Dear Edward
- A Novel
- By: Ann Napolitano
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One summer morning, twelve-year-old Edward Adler, his beloved older brother, his parents, and 183 other passengers board a flight in Newark headed for Los Angeles. Among them are a Wall Street wunderkind, a young woman coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy, an injured veteran returning from Afghanistan, a business tycoon, and a free-spirited woman running away from her controlling husband. Halfway across the country, the plane crashes. Edward is the sole survivor.
-
-
Stunning characterization and compelling storytelling!
- By Amazon User on 01-29-20
By: Ann Napolitano
-
Ashley Bell
- By: Dean Koontz
- Narrated by: Suzy Jackson
- Length: 17 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Who is Ashley Bell? From number-one New York Times best-selling author Dean Koontz comes the must-listen thriller of the year, perfect for listeners of dark psychological suspense and modern classics of mystery and adventure. Brilliantly paced, with an exhilarating heroine and a twisting, ingenious storyline, Ashley Bell is a new milestone in literary suspense from the long-acclaimed master.
-
-
A truthful review
- By Christina on 01-11-16
By: Dean Koontz
-
Ink Blood Sister Scribe
- A Novel
- By: Emma Törzs
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
All magic comes with a price, though, and for years the sisters have been separated. Esther has fled to a remote base in Antarctica to escape the fate that killed her own mother, and Joanna’s isolated herself in their family home in Vermont, devoting her life to the study of these cherished volumes. But after their father dies suddenly while reading a book Joanna has never seen before, the sisters must reunite to preserve their family legacy.
-
-
The most difficult audiobook I've ever listened 2
- By John on 06-04-23
By: Emma Törzs
-
Land of Milk and Honey
- A Novel
- By: C Pam Zhang
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world’s troubles. There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch, and her own body.
-
-
Started strong
- By Quinn on 09-29-23
By: C Pam Zhang
-
Head Like a Hole
- By: Andrew Van Wey
- Narrated by: Tom Jordan
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s the mid-'90s. Grunge and flannel are fading as the Spice Girls and Hot Topic conquer the malls. Cherry gloss glistens on the lips of the youth. Modems hiss as America comes online. And in a fog-drenched cove at the edge of New England, something terrible awakens when a fisherman reels in a gruesome catch: the remains of a young woman. Remains still pulsing with furious life.
-
-
Very Original Horror Story
- By Mistsofjade on 12-12-22
By: Andrew Van Wey
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Vita Nostra
- A Novel
- By: Sergey Dyachenko, Marina Dyachenko, Julia Meitov Hersey - translator
- Narrated by: Jessica Ball
- Length: 18 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sasha Samokhina meets the mysterious Farit Kozhennikov under the most peculiar circumstances. The teenage girl is powerless to refuse when this strange and unusual man with an air of the sinister directs her to perform a task with potentially scandalous consequences. He rewards her effort with a strange golden coin. As the days progress, Sasha carries out other acts for which she receives more coins from Kozhennikov. As summer ends, her domineering mentor directs her to move to a remote village and use her gold to enter the Institute of Special Technologies.
-
-
Dark but beautiful
- By J. OBrennan on 11-19-18
By: Sergey Dyachenko, and others
-
School of Shards
- A Novel
- By: Sergey Dyachenko, Marina Dyachenko
- Narrated by: Jessica Ball
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Institute of Special Technologies teaches students just one thing: the magic that allows them to become parts of speech, and in doing so, transforming into a specific piece of grammar (a verb, or an adjective, or an article) so they will be able to shape the world around them. As the new provost, though, Sasha is facing an enormous problem: the students in the world she just created, her “world without fear,” are unable to master the curriculum. Whether it’s the magic or the natural order of things, what they need to learn and become—Speech—is the basis of the material world.
By: Sergey Dyachenko, and others
-
The Son of Good Fortune
- A Novel
- By: Lysley Tenorio
- Narrated by: Reuben Uy
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Excel spends his days trying to seem like an unremarkable American teenager. When he’s not working at The Pie Who Loved Me (a spy-themed pizza shop) or passing the time with his girlfriend, Sab, (occasionally in one of their town’s 17 cemeteries), he carefully avoids the spotlight. But Excel knows that his family is far from normal. His mother, Maxima, was once a Filipina B-movie action star who now makes her living scamming men online. The old man they live with is not his grandfather, but Maxima’s lifelong martial-arts trainer.
-
-
TNT
- By Tim on 11-24-20
By: Lysley Tenorio
-
Dead of Night
- Harry Bauer, Book 1
- By: Blake Banner
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harry Bauer has been kicked out of the military, the only job he's ever loved. Now he’s back in New York, and unemployed—until Russian Mafia boss Peter Rusanov offers him a job wiping out the Albanian Mafia. It’s a job he figures could make him rich, until Colonel Jane Harris shows up, takes him for a ride to Pleasantville, and tells him about Cobra. Then all hell breaks loose.
-
-
I can’t wait for the next!!!!
- By shelley on 12-15-21
By: Blake Banner
-
Wounds
- Stories
- By: Nathan Ballingrud
- Narrated by: Corey Brill, Danny Campbell, Matthew Lloyd Davies, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wounds is a confounding, strange, and utterly entrancing collection of six stories, including one new novella from Shirley Jackson Award-winning author Nathan Ballingrud. From the eerie dread descending upon a New Orleans dive bartender after a cell phone is left behind in a rollicking bar fight in The Visible Filth to the search for the map of hell in “The Butcher’s Table”, Ballingrud’s beautifully crafted stories are riveting in their quietly terrifying depictions of the murky line between the known and the unknown.
-
-
Amazing collection
- By V on 04-18-19
-
Maybe Later
- The Spearman Family, Book 1
- By: Claudia Burgoa
- Narrated by: Sebastian York, Grace Grant
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Billionaire Jackson Spearman is impatient, demanding, and private. He’s practically a recluse. When his assistant goes on maternity leave, Amy Walker, virtual assistant extraordinaire, arrives to save the day. Or does she? Amy is inquisitive and far too optimistic. She isn’t impressed with Jackson at all. Is she even real? They can’t stand each other. Unfortunately, they can’t seem to resist each other, either. Soon, their work relationship starts to feel like something more.
-
-
This is my new favorite romance!
- By Libby on 04-18-21
By: Claudia Burgoa
-
Vita Nostra
- A Novel
- By: Sergey Dyachenko, Marina Dyachenko, Julia Meitov Hersey - translator
- Narrated by: Jessica Ball
- Length: 18 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sasha Samokhina meets the mysterious Farit Kozhennikov under the most peculiar circumstances. The teenage girl is powerless to refuse when this strange and unusual man with an air of the sinister directs her to perform a task with potentially scandalous consequences. He rewards her effort with a strange golden coin. As the days progress, Sasha carries out other acts for which she receives more coins from Kozhennikov. As summer ends, her domineering mentor directs her to move to a remote village and use her gold to enter the Institute of Special Technologies.
-
-
Dark but beautiful
- By J. OBrennan on 11-19-18
By: Sergey Dyachenko, and others
-
School of Shards
- A Novel
- By: Sergey Dyachenko, Marina Dyachenko
- Narrated by: Jessica Ball
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Institute of Special Technologies teaches students just one thing: the magic that allows them to become parts of speech, and in doing so, transforming into a specific piece of grammar (a verb, or an adjective, or an article) so they will be able to shape the world around them. As the new provost, though, Sasha is facing an enormous problem: the students in the world she just created, her “world without fear,” are unable to master the curriculum. Whether it’s the magic or the natural order of things, what they need to learn and become—Speech—is the basis of the material world.
By: Sergey Dyachenko, and others
-
The Son of Good Fortune
- A Novel
- By: Lysley Tenorio
- Narrated by: Reuben Uy
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Excel spends his days trying to seem like an unremarkable American teenager. When he’s not working at The Pie Who Loved Me (a spy-themed pizza shop) or passing the time with his girlfriend, Sab, (occasionally in one of their town’s 17 cemeteries), he carefully avoids the spotlight. But Excel knows that his family is far from normal. His mother, Maxima, was once a Filipina B-movie action star who now makes her living scamming men online. The old man they live with is not his grandfather, but Maxima’s lifelong martial-arts trainer.
-
-
TNT
- By Tim on 11-24-20
By: Lysley Tenorio
-
Dead of Night
- Harry Bauer, Book 1
- By: Blake Banner
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harry Bauer has been kicked out of the military, the only job he's ever loved. Now he’s back in New York, and unemployed—until Russian Mafia boss Peter Rusanov offers him a job wiping out the Albanian Mafia. It’s a job he figures could make him rich, until Colonel Jane Harris shows up, takes him for a ride to Pleasantville, and tells him about Cobra. Then all hell breaks loose.
-
-
I can’t wait for the next!!!!
- By shelley on 12-15-21
By: Blake Banner
-
Wounds
- Stories
- By: Nathan Ballingrud
- Narrated by: Corey Brill, Danny Campbell, Matthew Lloyd Davies, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wounds is a confounding, strange, and utterly entrancing collection of six stories, including one new novella from Shirley Jackson Award-winning author Nathan Ballingrud. From the eerie dread descending upon a New Orleans dive bartender after a cell phone is left behind in a rollicking bar fight in The Visible Filth to the search for the map of hell in “The Butcher’s Table”, Ballingrud’s beautifully crafted stories are riveting in their quietly terrifying depictions of the murky line between the known and the unknown.
-
-
Amazing collection
- By V on 04-18-19
-
Maybe Later
- The Spearman Family, Book 1
- By: Claudia Burgoa
- Narrated by: Sebastian York, Grace Grant
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Billionaire Jackson Spearman is impatient, demanding, and private. He’s practically a recluse. When his assistant goes on maternity leave, Amy Walker, virtual assistant extraordinaire, arrives to save the day. Or does she? Amy is inquisitive and far too optimistic. She isn’t impressed with Jackson at all. Is she even real? They can’t stand each other. Unfortunately, they can’t seem to resist each other, either. Soon, their work relationship starts to feel like something more.
-
-
This is my new favorite romance!
- By Libby on 04-18-21
By: Claudia Burgoa
-
An Academy for Liars
- By: Alexis Henderson
- Narrated by: Tracie Frank
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lennon Carter’s life is falling apart. Then she gets a mysterious phone call inviting her to take the entrance exam for Drayton College, a school of magic hidden in a secret pocket of Savannah. Lennon has been chosen because—like everyone else at the school—she has the innate gift of persuasion, the ability to wield her will like a weapon, using it to control others and, in rare cases, matter itself.
-
-
A Dizzying story
- By Adrienne King on 10-14-24
By: Alexis Henderson
-
The Prefect
- By: Alastair Reynolds
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 19 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a law enforcement officer with the Panoply. His beat is the multifaceted utopian society of the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone, the teeming hub of a human interstellar empire spanning many worlds. His current case: investigating a murderous attack against one of the habitats that left 900 people dead, a crime that appalls even a hardened cop like Dreyfus.
-
-
Best yet of the Revelation Space series
- By Michael G Kurilla on 04-03-11
-
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty
- A Novel
- By: Akwaeke Emezi
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s been five years since the accident that killed the love of her life and she’s almost a new person now—an artist with her own studio and sharing a brownstone apartment with her ride-or-die best friend, Joy, who insists it’s time for Feyi to ease back into the dating scene. Feyi isn’t ready for anything serious, but a steamy encounter at a rooftop party cascades into a whirlwind summer she could have never imagined: a luxury trip to a tropical island, decadent meals in the glamorous home of a celebrity chef, and a major curator who wants to launch her art career.
-
-
Very well written but...
- By Sasha on 05-31-22
By: Akwaeke Emezi
-
The Borrowed World Box Set, Volume One: Books 1-3
- By: Franklin Horton
- Narrated by: Kevin Pierce
- Length: 25 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
If society fell apart, could your family survive? Jim Powell thought he was ready. He was a regular guy who travelled a lot for work and hated every second he was away from his young family. But when ISIS operatives unleashed a coordinated attack on America’s infrastructure, his entire world shattered. The electrical grid collapsed, communication networks were damaged, critical bridges and dams were destroyed, and major fuel refineries have gone up in massive fiery clouds.
-
-
the negative reviews clinched it for me.
- By joseph m. mills on 02-14-23
By: Franklin Horton
-
This Is Our Story
- By: Ashley Elston
- Narrated by: Amy Melissa Bentley, Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No one knows what happened that morning at River Point. Five boys went hunting. Four came back. The boys won't say who fired the shot that killed their friend, Grant; the evidence shows it could have been any one of them. Kate Marino's senior year internship at the District Attorney's Office isn't exactly glamorous - more like an excuse to leave school early that looks good on college applications. Then the DA hands her boss, Mr. Stone, the biggest case her small town of Belle Terre has ever seen.
-
-
A solid story!
- By Crystal Sanchez on 08-21-20
By: Ashley Elston
-
The Pale Dreamer
- A Bone Season Novella
- By: Samantha Shannon
- Narrated by: Alana Kerr Collins
- Length: 2 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A dreamer is born - the exhilarating prequel to the ground-breaking, extraordinary Bone Season series. In the perilous heart of Scion London, a dangerous and valuable poltergeist is on the loose - and it must be caught before chaos erupts on the streets of the capital. Here, the clairvoyant underworld plays by its own rules, and rival gangs will stop at nothing to win such a magnificent prize. Sixteen-year-old Paige Mahoney is working for Jaxon Hall, the most notorious mime-lord in the city. He thinks she is hiding a powerful gift.
-
-
A great novella
- By Sabrina Williams on 05-01-21
By: Samantha Shannon
Waited for years, and doesn’t let down.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I was right, but not in the way I feared. The romance in this book recontextualized how I viewed the romances in the previous book. Where before I thought they were poorly done, now I think the choices that went into writing those romances weren’t mistakes, but very deliberate made to achieve a specific goal, and I think it did so admirably. This book actually makes me like the first book even more than I did before, which is saying something.
Now, this was a very personal experience and had a lot to do with my own biases and experiences, so I doubt anyone else is going to have the same experience, but I wanted to leave this review anyway, because this book made me quite happy.
Recontextualized the first book.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Still recommend, but sadly did not meet expectations.
The narrator totally nailed it though.
Rambles a bit towards a rushed ending
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
too tame
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Disapointing
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
And yet, here Sasha is, back in her human skin, dealing with mostly human problems. There's still psychedelic schoolwork and the occasional glimpse of higher reality, but there no longer seems to be much point or direction to it. The first book had an excellent plot structure, where all the confusing and seemingly random details actually led up to Sasha's moment of transcendence and helped us understand her transformation. Every detail had been there for a reason. It was honestly a masterpiece of "show, don't tell," and managed to pull off the tremendous feat of obliquely showing us a completely alien intelligence. But, alas, this sequel seems to mostly wander in repetitive circles and never get anywhere. Gone is the sense of direction from book 1. Even the ending was unsatisfyingly ambiguous. Is this because the story is intended to continue into a third book? If it is, then, again, where could it possibly go? Why does it need to?
I would say that this felt like very high-quality fanfiction. It's not a bad story per se. It's well written, and it even recaptures some of the spark and spirit of the original, but it is still completely, utterly superfluous. The internal momentum of the story had already been exhausted in book 1. Book 2 is by no means bad, but I still really wish I hadn't read it.
This was a letdown...
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The premise from the first book is wonderful, and we don't mind being perpetually confused, because the Institute is mysterious and we're learning its motives along with Sasha.
However, Sasha becomes so difficult for the reader to relate to, as she uses powers of time loops, reality distortion, flight, memory-planting, and omniscience. As Sasha becomes less human, we care less about her, and answers about the Institute are never really given to us.
Further, the majority of tense situations in the story are simply "resolved" by a jump cut to a different scene. These began to be predictable, and the story suffers from this lack of resolution.
Ultimately, we cared about Sasha in the first book because her circumstances felt unfair, and because the mysterious Institute threatened her human nature. Sasha feels danger in the first book - physical danger and the danger of becoming less human. In the second book, we learn to expect that we will either jump-cut out if the danger, or that the metaphysics of this world are fluid enough to remove the danger.
Does not live up to the standard of the first book
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A solid, interesting story
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Be Brave
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Loads and loads of unparalleled energy that o couldn’t stop at the first one.
This book was an excellent continuation
The entire thing
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.