Stormland, John Shirley
Stormland, John Shirley
List: $22.95 | Sale: $16.07
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Stormland

Author: John Shirley

Narrator: Keith Szarabajka

Unabridged: 12 hr 11 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/13/2021

Synopsis

They call it Stormland: a sprawling, largely abandoned region of the southeastern coast of the USA, where climate change’s extreme weather conditions have brought about a “perfect storm” of perpetual tempests; where hurricane-strength storms return day after day, 365 days a year.The heart of Stormland is Charleston, South Carolina, a flooded ruin where hundreds of people remain for their own peculiar reasons; where thugs prey on the weak, and a strangely benevolent cult tries to keep everyone insanely sane. Here, plutocratic evil takes advantage of Stormland’s lawlessness to cultivate a weirdly puppeted theater of cruelty.Swept into the turbulent vortex of Stormland is an unlikely duo—a former serial killer and a former US Marshal—who must work together to bring light to America’s late twenty-first century heart of darkness.A cyberpunk detective thriller set in a maelstrom of climatic upheaval, classism, and corrupt power, Stormland paradoxically dramatizes the resilience of the human spirit.

About John Shirley

John Shirley is one of the original cyberpunk writers. He is the author of numerous novels, including Demons, Crawlers, Wetbones, Cellars, Bleak History, City Come A-Walkin’, Bioshock: Rapture, and the Song Called Youth trilogy. His story collections include the Bram Stoker Award–winning Black Butterflies. He is coscreenwriter of The Crow, has written an episode of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine television series, as well as animation scripts.

About Keith Szarabajka

Keith Szarabajka has appeared in many films, including The Dark Knight, Missing, and A Perfect World, and on such television shows as The Equalizer, Angel, Cold Case, Golden Years, and Profit. Szarabajka has also appeared in several episodes of Selected Shorts for National Public Radio. He won the 2001 Audie Award for Unabridged Fiction for his reading of Tom Robbins’s Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates and has won several Earphones Awards.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Bradley on January 14, 2021

Without spoiling it for anyone, I'll just go ahead and confirm that the blurb on this book is right on target for what you should expect. Storms, storms, storms. What you should also expect is chaos. Lots of floating bodies. A technothriller with cyberpunk aspects perfectly in line with John Shirley's......more

Goodreads review by David on April 13, 2021

Check out the interview I did with the author for the (PK)Dickheads podcast [URL not allowed] This is the kind of review that can turn into a bit of a history lesson unintentionally. I know many of you will not need a refresher on the award-winning novelist and screenwriter John......more

Goodreads review by Sandy S on April 11, 2021

4.25 stars--STORMLAND by John Shirley is a near-future, sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk detective thriller set in the year 2039. Told from third person perspective following several intersecting paths STORMLAND focuses on what was once Charleston, South Carolina and the eastern seaboard of the US......more

Goodreads review by BreeAnn on April 07, 2021

I love a good post-apocalyptic story, and I completely got one in Stormland! I loved that the story made me feel the danger from the weather, from the travel, and from the people. It created a heart racing, edge-of-your-seat roller-coaster ride that I didn't want to get off of. I really enjoyed the c......more

Goodreads review by Mike on January 20, 2024

Innovative concepts with a boorish presentation. I admit that I did not finish the book, however, my wife did and she told me not to bother. This is one of those books where you keep waiting for it to get better, though it never does. It reads like a first-time author’s attempt at sci-fi, though Shi......more

Quotes

“One of our best and most singular writers. A powerhouse of ideas and imagery.” William Gibson, author of Agency and Neuromancer

“John Shirley’s acerbic humor is a perfect match for his sense of doom and adventure. One of his best. Buckle in!” Greg Bear, author of Blood Music and The Unfinished Land

“Stormland is a headlong sci-fi thriller about the punk squalor of post-disaster situations. It’s also got some remarkably interesting speculative technologies, so I’d say that Mr. Shirley is quite on top of his game with this one.” Bruce Sterling, editor of Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology

“A powerful and necessary story for these times.” Richard Kadrey, author of the Sandman Slim series

“This swampadelic adventure transmogrifies such real-time disasters as Katrina-flooded New Orleans into the stuff of speculative nightmares.” Paul Di Filippo, Locus

“With this gripping dystopian novel, Shirley extrapolates a grim vision of a late-twenty-first-century US wracked by climate change…Howling super-hurricanes, grisly torture scenes, and the horrors of scientific experimentation on human brains make for harrowing reading. This is a sober warning about the seductive dangers of power.” Publishers Weekly

“Set in a nightmarish future where extreme weather perpetually batters the coast, Stormland portrays human tenacity and ingenuity within a Hobbesian universe. John Shirley has created a vivid, hurricane-soaked canvas and a cast of memorable characters, none more so than a reluctant detective and a reformed serial killer who work in tandem to solve a series of perplexing crimes. A feat of dystopian imagination, Stormland cements Shirley’s voice in the upper echelon of the cyberpunk genre.” Jon Bassoff, author of Captain Clive’s Dreamworld

“A tightly paced, well thought-out cyberpunk thriller that entices after the very first chapter…Spare, no-nonsense prose like that of Edgar Rice Burroughs or Karl Edward Wagner, but with a cyberpunk twist that’s all [Shirley’s] own. It’s a sort of cyberpunk noir mixed with a biting commentary on mankind’s greed. Stormland is a big, sprawling read with plenty for just about everyone, a fun way to pass the time if stuck at home or on a bus.” New York Journal of Books

Awards

  • An i09 Pick
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