The Empress of Mars
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Narrated by:
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Nicola Barber
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By:
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Kage Baker
About this listen
When the British Arean Company founded its Martian colony, it welcomed any settlers it could get. Outcasts, misfits, and dreamers emigrated in droves to undertake the grueling task of terraforming the cold red planet - only to be abandoned when the BAC discovered it couldn't turn a profit on Mars.
This is the story of Mary Griffith, a determined woman with three daughters, who opened the only place to buy a beer on the Tharsis Bulge. It's also the story of Manco Inca, whose attempt to terraform Mars brought a new goddess vividly to life; of Stanford Crosley, con man extraordinaire; of Ottorino Vespucci, space cowboy and romantic hero; of the Clan Morrigan; of the denizens of the Martian Motel, and of the machinations of another company entirely - all of whom contribute to the downfall of the BAC and the founding of a new world. But Mary and her struggles and triumphs are at the center of it all, in her bar, the Empress of Mars.
Based on the Hugo-nominated novella of the same name, this is a rollicking novel of action, planetary romance, and high adventure.
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- Length: 18 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.
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Something for Everyone
- By Nicole on 05-24-17
By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, and others
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The Invaders Plan
- Mission Earth, Volume 1
- By: L. Ron Hubbard
- Narrated by: Full Cast
- Length: 3 hrs and 8 mins
- Abridged
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They are the Voltarians of Voltar - an empire 110 planets strong. They are already among us. And the invasion is about to begin...in a hundred years or so. Or is it? The truth is far more sinister. Undercover, underground, and out of sight, the invaders plan what may in fact be a massive diversion. In the darkest recesses of Voltar’s Coordinated Information Apparatus (otherwise known as the CIA), a tyrant of terror sets out to exploit the invasion in order to seize power. All that stands in his way is a planet that doesn’t exist.
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overly abridged
- By Pielle Szabo on 01-10-17
By: L. Ron Hubbard
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Tess of the Road
- By: Rachel Hartman
- Narrated by: Katharine Lee McEwan
- Length: 16 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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In the medieval kingdom of Goredd, women are expected to be ladies, men are their protectors, and dragons can be whomever they choose. Tess is none of these things. Tess is...different. She speaks out of turn, has wild ideas, and can't seem to keep out of trouble. Then Tess goes too far. Tess's family decide the only path for her is a nunnery. But on the day she is to join the nuns, Tess chooses a different path for herself. She cuts her hair, pulls on her boots, and sets out on a journey. She's not running away, she's running towards something.
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Beautiful and Boring, Both.
- By Ryan on 04-05-19
By: Rachel Hartman
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Superheroes
- By: Peter S. Beagle, Daryl Gregory, James Patrick Kelly, and others
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman, Joe Barrett, Christina Delaine, and others
- Length: 17 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Modern gods and goddesses, remote, revered - and like the pantheon of heroes and heroines of ancient myth - possessing great power tempered with flaws. Now, find within this anthology great tales by gifted and award-winning authors who move superheroes from the four-color panels of comic books to the fantastic pages of fiction, stories that will remind anyone who ever wanted to wear a cape or don a cowl of the extraordinary powers of the imagination!
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Pretentious tired old concepts
- By BookofJoy on 12-29-14
By: Peter S. Beagle, and others
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How Like a God
- By: Brenda W. Clough
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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What would it be like, to get absolute power? Would you wear a cape and fight crime? Rule the planet? Or perhaps you would be like Rob Lewis, and watch your world collapse around you. Does absolute power corrupt absolutely? Rob is going to find out.
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At one point the main character rapes at 13 year old girl
- By Richard Davis on 05-29-21
By: Brenda W. Clough
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The Reluctant Adventures of Fletcher Connolly on the Interstellar Railroad
- By: Felix R. Savage
- Narrated by: Nick Podehl
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Fletcher Connolly hasn't got a lot to lose. Since he and half the galaxy signed on to the rat race of the technological relics trade, Fletch has come to terms with the idea that he will join the ranks of unlucky explorers that perish light years from home without a dime to his name. But bankruptcy is a great motivator. With friends and family counting on him to strike it rich, Fletch embarks on an unwilling quest for alien treasure.
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I wanted to love this book, but I did like it
- By wag more on 07-26-18
By: Felix R. Savage
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Angelmaker
- By: Nick Harkaway
- Narrated by: Daniel Weyman
- Length: 18 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Joe Spork repairs clocks, a far cry from his late father, a flashy London gangster. But when Joe fixes one particularly unusual device, his life is suddenly upended. Joe's client, Edie Banister, is more than just a kindly old lady - she's a former superspy. And the device? It's a 1950s doomsday machine. And having triggered it, Joe now faces the wrath of both the government and a diabolical South Asian dictator, Edie's old arch-nemesis.
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A cure for the modern cynic
- By Maine Colonial 🌲 on 08-28-12
By: Nick Harkaway
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The Dreaming Void
- Void Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Peter F. Hamilton
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 22 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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AD 3580. The Intersolar Commonwealth has spread through the galaxy to over a thousand star systems. It is a culture of rich diversity with a place for everyone. A powerful navy protects it from any hostile species that may lurk among the stars. For Commonwealth citizens, even death has been overcome.
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What can I say
- By Randall on 05-08-18
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Stations of the Tide
- By: Michael Swanwick
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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The Jubilee Tides will drown the continents of the planet Miranda beneath the weight of her own oceans. But as the once-in-two-centuries cataclysm approaches, an even greater catastrophe threatens this dark and dangerous planet of tale-spinners, conjurers, and shapechangers. From author Michael Swanwick—one of the most brilliantly assured and darkly inventive writers of contemporary fiction—comes a masterwork of radically altered realities and world-shattering seductions.
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Hard to categorize, hard to put down
- By Robert L. on 03-25-12
By: Michael Swanwick
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Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds
- The First Adventure of Alacrity Fitzhugh & Hobart Floyt
- By: Brian Daley
- Narrated by: Brian Holsopple
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Mankind was beginning its third leap into the Galaxy, but Old Earth had so long kept to herself that her people were unable to travel safely among the rough-and-tumble cultures that had evolved on distant worlds. That annoyed Earth's rulers, for Hobart Floyt--a minor Terran bureaucrat-- had been left a mysterious inheritance by the deceased ruler of a small but wealthy interstellar empire.
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Best Sci Fi Fun anywhere!
- By A. Foxter on 07-07-15
By: Brian Daley
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Sten
- Sten Series, Book 1
- By: Chris Bunch, Allan Cole
- Narrated by: Jerry Sciarrio
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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The first book in an action–packed new SF adventure series. Vulcan is a factory planet, centuries old, Company run, ugly as sin, and unfeeling as death. Vulcan breeds just two types of native: complacent or tough. Sten is tough. When his family is killed in a mysterious accident, Sten rebels, harassing the Company from the metal world’s endless maze-like warrens. He could end up just another burnt–out Delinquent. But people like Sten never give up.
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THE MASTERPIECE BY JERRY SCIARRIO
- By Professor on 10-31-12
By: Chris Bunch, and others
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The Colour of Magic
- Discworld, Book 1
- By: Terry Pratchett
- Narrated by: Colin Morgan, Peter Serafinowicz, Bill Nighy
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Somewhere on the frontier between thought and reality exists the Discworld, a parallel time and place that might sound and smell very much like our own, but which looks completely different. Particularly as it’s carried though space on the back of a giant turtle (sex unknown). It plays by different rules. But then, some things are the same everywhere. The Disc’s very existence is about to be threatened by a strange new blight: the world’s first tourist, upon whose survival rests the peace and prosperity of the land.
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TERRIBLE Narration!
- By Kayla I on 07-08-22
By: Terry Pratchett
What listeners say about The Empress of Mars
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Elisabeth Carey
- 12-01-17
Fun adventure on frontier Mars
Mary Griffith went to Mars as a biologist for the British Aerean Company, but when BAC pulled back from a full on push to terraform and colonize, she found herself out of work. Unfortunately, her severance package was only about half what she needed to cover a trip back to Earth.
So she opened a bar, The Empress of Mars.
The beer isn't great, but it's not just the best beer on Mars, but the only beer on Mars. She and her three daughters, along with a collection of similarly displaced people, earn a decent living running the bar--despite repeated challenges and efforts to shut them down for selling a "controlled substance," i.e., the beer.
This is a very episodic book. I haven't check its history, but it feels a lot like a fix-up, built out of related short stories. Regardless, it's a fun book, with good characters that are fun to get to know. Heroes, villains, eccentric geniuses, corrupt corporate villains, frontier settlers with loose ethics that will be familiar to anyone familiar with westerns, in a book built around the colonization of a cold, dry planet with very thin atmosphere.
Lots of fun. Read it, or listen to it.
I bought this audiobook.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Thijis
- 10-28-12
Beer Brewer's on Mars!
If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
MARS. Going Boldly Where No Brewer Has Gone Before.
Any additional comments?
I loved this stand alone book. It was smart, clever and funny too. That helps when listening to a book. It helps that the Narrator was well spoken and her voice didn't gain high pitches. There are not many book about Mars that are not just straight science fiction. (yes i realize this is one) but it felt plausible. Plus its got beer brewer's! Completely enjoyed this book. I recommend it to anyone with a feel for sci-fi and a sense of British humor.
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- Arthur Lueder
- 07-31-12
Reminds Me Of Early Heinlein
Made me nostalgic for some of the first SciFi I read back in my youth.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Ellenaeddy
- 07-09-12
Better as an Audio Book
Kage Baker is one of the best. I like her longer work better. But this is so silly and so well done. It's about life against the corporate system mixed with Pioneer Go Home. Just lovely.It's also a lovely description of your science club gone geek in space. Just read it. But do it where you can laugh out loud.
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3 people found this helpful
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- David
- 12-05-14
Worthy peer of Bradbury and Robinson
My first Kage Baker novel, and this is apparently a later entry in her "Company" series, but I found it stood alone just fine. The Empress of Mars is set in an alternate history, where Mars was settled by the British Arean Company, and then mostly left to dry up as unprofitable. A few hardscrabble settlers, emigrating to Mars for the usual reasons that misfits emigrate to backwater frontiers, or else abandoned by the Company when they were no longer useful, are now scratching out a living there.
Although there are multiple story arcs running through this book, it reads more like a collection of linked short stories than a single novel, probably because it's based on a novella (which I haven't read).
The central figure is Mary Griffith, formerly a scientist for the British Arean Company who came to Mars as a single mother with two daughters, and found herself stranded when the company no longer had need of her services. Now she runs a bar, has to contend with Clan Morrigan, a band of homesteaders who are Celtic tribesmen run like a corporation, and the always conniving and grasping antics of the BAC.
A range of interesting characters come to Mars — miners, con men, secret agents, and missionaries from the Mother Church (which in this universe is the "Mother Goddess Church" — Christians are a minority subject to considerable prejudice). The stories weave through years of the life of Mary and the Martian colony, ending with the bankruptcy of the British Arean Company, only to be replaced by another company, just as mercenary, and Mary's attempt to move her bar, the Empress of Mars.
The Empress of Mars inevitably reminded me a bit of Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, and a bit of Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, but Baker's book is more character-driven, and has the added element of that alternate history, for which the point of divergence is never described. I found it to be lots of fun from start to finish, one of those books with a large cast of characters, all of whom become familiar friends by the end.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Donaithnen
- 03-27-13
Short, simple, light-hearted and fun
This is not an overly complex book, and you can kinda guess based on the title and the tone of the story how things are going to turn out, but it's still a fun ride.
It's pretty much your typical story of the people versus The Corporation. The Corporation is the group that started the Mars colony, and the people are the colonists who always get the short end of the stick when the Corporation decides it needs to improve the balance sheets. And first amongst the people is Mary Griffith, proprietor of the only bar on Mars.
The book is also set at some undetermined point in the future where Christianity is on the down and out and Organized paganism is now the popular religion. (Which might seem like a good thing depending on your personal beliefs, but as usual it seems that there's very little good about a religion that getting Organized can't fix.) It seems like there may be some tie-ins to other books she's written, but since this is the first book of hers i've read i can't be certain of that.
It turns out that Organized pagans frown on intoxicants and it seems that beer (and thus bars) are illegal in a lot of places on Earth and aren't looked at too fondly on Mars either.. On top of that as the story progresses Mary and her unusual friends and patrons become more and more of an impediment to the Corporation's goals.
The conflict isn't all light and cheery, there is some drama and tragedy, but one gets the feeling that one way or another Mary is going to come out on top in the end, and the fun is in seeing how exactly that will be accomplished.
As for the performance of the book, it's quite well done. This is one of the few cases where a strong accent for one of the characters seems appropriate, perhaps because the character in question is such an outsider, and yes, because the language difficulties are sometimes used for comic relief.
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1 person found this helpful
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- ginger
- 11-21-12
Highly Imaginative, yet Lacks Excitement
Listening to the author's description of the civilization that was built on Mars is intriguing, imaginative, and interesting. Select citizens of Earth have wound up on Mars for various reasons and are trying to hash out the best lives they can with what they have to work with there - where the environment is lacking what is needed to survive and and the atmosphere is quite brutal. The author conjures up some very detailed images of their establishments and traveling systems necessary for the residents of Mars. This novel was interesting and off to a solid start. However, I just couldn't get into the story. Not a lot was happening and i eventually lost interest in the book. One of the most eventful occurrances mid story was when a farm animal had significant trouble in the Mars travel system (vaguely speaking). This just did not cut it for me. I struggled to get through the majority of this novel. It was well written, had a solid foundation, and a lot of potential, so I am still giving it 3 stars.
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- Geri Keyser
- 05-27-12
Classic... Just Classic
Would you listen to The Empress of Mars again? Why?
This is a wonderful character driven sci-fi that in many ways feels like Heinlein's work. This is a wonderful little novel. Really... this is worth the credit.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Matthew
- 10-08-12
Very average
Not a bad book, and somewhat interesting, but not gripping and compelling. I enjoy scifi short story anthologies more, so pleasant but bland stories like this can be easily skipped over.
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- Robin
- 04-11-14
Space Western with a woman's viewpoint
What made the experience of listening to The Empress of Mars the most enjoyable?
The humor is delightful and there are plenty of twists and turns in the plot. The characters are a collection of misfits stuck in a place that is a cross between the North Pole and the Wild West.
What other book might you compare The Empress of Mars to and why?
It's a lot like John Scalzi's books, like The Android's Dream or Redshirts, in that there is a futuristic outer space setting, yet what really counts are old-fashioned relationships. And the sense of humor is also similar.
What does Nicola Barber bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Her accents are great, she has to do everything from Incan to Nepali to the American West and she does them delightfully.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Not really but it was engaging and I could see listening to it again.
Any additional comments?
The audio really brings out the humor.
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1 person found this helpful