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The Orpheus Descent
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong, Kris Milnes, Sarah Feathers
- Length: 14 hrs and 57 mins
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Publisher's summary
Would you pay the ultimate price for the ultimate knowledge? I have never written down the answers to the deepest mysteries, nor will I ever....
The philosopher Plato wrote these words more than 2,000 years ago, following a perilous voyage to Italy - an experience about which he never spoke again, but from which he emerged the greatest thinker in all of human history. Today, 12 golden tablets sit in museums around the world, each created by unknown hands and buried in ancient times, and each providing the dead with the route to the afterlife.
Archaeologist Lily Barnes, working on a dig in southern Italy, has just found another. But this tablet names the location to the mouth of hell itself. And then Lily vanishes. Has she walked out on her job, her marriage, and her life - or has something more sinister happened? Her husband, Jonah, is desperate to find her. But no one can help him: not the police, and not the secretive foundation that sponsored her dig. All Jonah has is belief, and a determination to do whatever it takes to get Lily back.
But like Plato before him, Jonah will discover the journey ahead is mysterious and dark and fraught with danger. And not everyone who travels to the hidden place where Lily has gone can return.
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Love is Language
- By Jennie Smith on 02-19-21
By: Patricia Forde
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The Watchers
- By: A.M. Shine
- Narrated by: Jacqueline Milne
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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This forest isn't charted on any map. Every car breaks down at its treeline. Mina's is no different. Left stranded, she is forced into the dark woodland only to find a woman shouting, urging Mina to run to a concrete bunker. As the door slams behind her, the building is besieged by screams. Mina finds herself in a room with a wall of glass, and an electric light that activates at nightfall, when the watchers come above ground. These creatures emerge to observe their captive humans and terrible things happen to anyone who doesn't reach the bunker in time.
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Surprising and original
- By Leia Schoeck on 10-08-22
By: A.M. Shine
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The Wild Hunt
- By: Emma Seckel
- Narrated by: Ruth Urquhart
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Leigh Welles has not set foot in on the island in years, but when she finds herself called home from a disappointing life on the Scottish mainland by her father's unexpected death, she is determined to forget the sorrows of the past and start fresh. Fellow islander Iain MacTavish, a RAF veteran with his eyes on the sky and his head in the past, is also in desperate need of a new beginning. A young widower, Iain struggles to return to the normal life he knew before the war. But this October is anything but normal. This October, the sluagh are restless.
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Beautiful narration of a powerful story.
- By 67solstice on 09-03-24
By: Emma Seckel
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The Autumn Castle
- By: Kim Wilkins
- Narrated by: Richard Aspel
- Length: 19 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Berlin in autumn: Christine Starlight lives in an artists' colony with her lover Jude, whose patience and beauty have eased her battle with chronic pain. But Christine begins to be haunted by childhood recollections of a little girl's disappearance and the flapping of a blackbird's wings. Then her world is rocked by the return of a childhood friend... Mayfridh rules over a land where a wolf is the queen's counsellor, fate turns on the fall of an autumn leaf and mortals feel no pain.
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Great Story, Horrible Narration
- By KathyDB on 03-24-15
By: Kim Wilkins
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The Ninth Rain
- The Winnowing Flame Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Jen Williams
- Narrated by: Jot Davies
- Length: 20 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Jen Williams, acclaimed author of The Copper Cat trilogy, featuring The Copper Promise, The Iron Ghost and The Silver Tide, returns with the first in a blistering new trilogy. The great city of Ebora once glittered with gold. Now its streets are stalked by wolves. Tormalin the Oathless has no taste for sitting around waiting to die while the realm of his storied ancestors falls to pieces - talk about a guilt trip. Better to be amongst the living, where there are taverns full of women and wine.
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Couldn’t put it down!
- By Renae on 09-09-22
By: Jen Williams
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The Trees
- By: Ali Shaw
- Narrated by: Ben Onwukwe
- Length: 18 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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There came an elastic aftershock of creaks and groans and then, softly softly, a chinking shower of rubbled cement. Leaves calmed and trunks stood serene. Where, not a minute before, there had been a suburb, there was now only woodland standing amid ruins. There is no warning. No chance to prepare. They arrive in the night: thundering up through the ground, transforming streets and towns into shadowy forest. Buildings are destroyed.
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Post apocalypse with a little bit of magic
- By Tam on 09-20-16
By: Ali Shaw
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Edge of Eternity
- By: Randy Alcorn
- Narrated by: Roger Marsh, Phil Ross
- Length: 4 hrs and 25 mins
- Abridged
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Nick Seagrave is a disillusioned business executive who has lost loved ones to tragedy and his family to neglect. Now, at a point of great crisis, he finds himself inexplicably transported to what appears to be another world. Suddenly he's confronted with profoundly clear views of his own past and personality. And he's enabled to see, hear, taste, and smell the realities of both heaven and hell - realities that force him to face dangers and trials far greater than any he's known before.
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AMAZING
- By Julie R. VanderMate on 08-12-10
By: Randy Alcorn
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A Shadow on the Glass
- By: Ian Irvine
- Narrated by: Grant Cartwright
- Length: 21 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Once there were three worlds, each with their own human species. Then, fleeing out of the void came a fourth species, the Charon. Desperate, on the edge of extinction, they changed the balance between the worlds forever. Karan, a sensitive with a troubled heritage, is forced to steal an ancient relic in repayment of a debt. It turns out to be the Mirror of Aachan, a twisted, deceitful thing that remembers everything it has ever seen.
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Not quite good enough.
- By Scott S. on 03-13-12
By: Ian Irvine
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Void Star
- By: Zachary Mason
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Tristan Morris, Sean Pratt, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Not far in the future, the seas have risen, and the central latitudes are emptying. But it's still a good time to be rich in San Francisco, where weapons drones patrol the skies to keep out the multitudinous poor.
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if you're That Guy
- By Zachary on 06-18-17
By: Zachary Mason
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The Book of Magic
- By: Gardner Dozois - editor, Scott Lynch, Elizabeth Bear, and others
- Narrated by: Karissa Vacker, Sile Bermingham, Maxwell Caulfield, and others
- Length: 24 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Hot on the heels of Gardner Dozois's acclaimed anthology The Book of Swords comes this companion volume devoted to magic. How could it be otherwise? For every Frodo, there is a Gandalf... and a Saruman. For every Dorothy, a Glinda... and a Wicked Witch of the West. What would Harry Potter be without Albus Dumbledore... and Severus Snape? Figures of wisdom and power, possessing arcane, often forbidden knowledge, wizards and sorcerers are shaped - or misshaped - by the potent magic they seek to wield.
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Very Good, With One Objection
- By Kindle Customer on 05-05-20
By: Gardner Dozois - editor, and others
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Shadow Show
- All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury
- By: Sam Weller - editor, Mort Castle - editor
- Narrated by: George Takei, Edward Herrmann, Kate Mulgrew, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Ray Bradbury - peerless storyteller, poet of the impossible, and one of America's most beloved authors - is a literary giant whose remarkable career spanned seven decades. Now 26 of today's most diverse and celebrated authors offer new short works in honor of the master; stories of heart, intelligence, and dark wonder from a remarkable range of creative artists.
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THE MAN WHO FORGOT RAY BRADBURY
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-27-17
By: Sam Weller - editor, and others
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The Lost Army of Cambyses
- By: Paul Sussman
- Narrated by: Gordon Griffin
- Length: 16 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In 523 BC, the Persian pharaoh Cambyses dispatched an army across Egypt's western desert to destroy the oracle at Siwa. Legend has it that somewhere in the middle of the Great Dune Sea his army was overwhelmed by a sandstorm and lost forever. Two and a half millennia later, a mutilated corpse is washed up on the banks of the Nile at Luxor, an antiques dealer is savagely murdered in Cairo, and a British archaeologist is found dead at the ancient necropolis of Saqqara.
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Panorama in words
- By ggmomma on 06-03-19
By: Paul Sussman
What listeners say about The Orpheus Descent
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- kaylady
- 01-24-17
Very strange
An interesting mix of alternating chapters of a current day story and the time of Sophocles. Archeological digs, dreams, alternate reality sequences are sometimes confusing and hard to follow, but become clearer toward the end of the book. The two stories come to satisfactory conclusions at the end, but go through hell to get there. Perfect for students of philosophy.
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- Mel
- 05-19-14
To Hell and (almost) Back
I'm going to start with a quasi-contradiction to my rating -- because somewhere in that blurriness between fact and fiction, history and mythology, I learned to love a good story. The fuzzy area gives *possibility* the power to challenge *probability* -- it gives storytellers license to go for it and tell readers to hang on and enjoy a fantastical ride. Harper inhabits that gray area with verve, combining history, philosophy, mythology, mysticism, archeology into a dual-timeline thriller. So, contrary to my 2* rating, I say if you like the premise, go for it and enjoy the ride. The mythology Harper has built his story on has stood the test of time; it's entertaining with a dose of a contemporary mystery thrown in, and this audio version is well produced. I'd also warn you to prepare for a shift. Listening got more tedious as I went on, and I have to blame that on Harper's literal descent.
Orpheus was a musician that had the "ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music." [Wikipedia ..."To be a rock and not to roll"...Led Zeppelin] "No one under the spell of his voice could refuse him anything." When he dared to attempt to bring his wife Eurydice back from the realm of the underworld, he strummed his golden lyre and it was said all the inhabitants of Hell were charmed. And as the legend goes, he alone made it out. Throughout the story, the ancient philosopher Plato is on the heels of friend Agathon, who has disappeared while on a journey for a mysterious *book*. We learn the book is actually a golden tablet said to contain sacred information about the meaning of life and the afterlife: *the ultimate knowledge of the universe,* and the *keys to Hell.* Plato tells the reader this part of the tale in a distant echo-y quality (perhaps to simulate the sound of speaking from a cave; as in Plato's Allegory of the Cave).
Interspersed with Plato's chapters is the contemporary storyline of Jonah and Lily. Jonah is just returning from a semi-successful world tour with his disintegrating rock band when he learns that his wife Lily has disappeared from a mysteriously funded archeological dig to unearth a legendary golden tablet. The tablet is surrounded in myth, linked to several similar golden tablets already in museums around the world, each providing parts of the *ultimate knowledge* that so changed Plato's teachings. This one may hold keys to immortality, and Lily's whereabouts.
Like Eurydice and Orpheus, Jonah and Lily were young and in love. "So deep was their love that they were practically inseparable. So dependent was their love that each felt they could not live without the other." His family and friends tell Jonah Lily has left the marriage, but his heart tells him she loves him, and that there is trouble afoot. Indeed, we learn, there is trouble, cabals, and even a sorceress conspiring against the couple. Friends can't be trusted, neither can his own sense of reality.
It's commendable that Harper keeps the integrity of the classical Greek mythology in his ambitious plotting. By constructing parallel, yet independent stories, that seem to be racing neck and neck toward similar thematic conclusions, he has written a book that holds your attention...for the most part. From an engaging and promising beginning, Harper seems to lurch ahead, losing finesse and sophistication. It is almost as if there was a change of authors. The form slackens, mysteries unravel, and suddenly it feels like a shift into one of Percy Jackson's Olympian adventures. In between the two storylines appears a threatening middle specter...the harbinger of anticlimax (that may be in part due to the foreknowledge of the story of Orpheus). And if that isn't enough of a buzz kill, you face the challenges of melding the authors grand concepts with your own comprehension, and hanging in there with a read that seems to have been hijacked for a YA audience -- which wasn't what I was looking for, as much as I enjoyed all of Percy's exploits.
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15 people found this helpful
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- Matthew
- 06-27-13
Accent Accessible!
If you could sum up The Orpheus Descent in three words, what would they be?
Didn't read the book.
Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?
Wasn't sure how it was to be resolved until the very end.
Which character – as performed by the narrators – was your favorite?
The Sophist was very impressive.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
Fascination.
Any additional comments?
A unique listen, with enough mystery and history to keep the listener engaged. I really enjoyed this presentation, and the narration is outstanding. Recommended!
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