Embers of War, Gareth L. Powell
Embers of War, Gareth L. Powell
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Embers of War

Author: Gareth L. Powell

Narrator: Nicol Zanzarella, Amy Landon, Greg Tremblay, Soneela Nankani, Natasha Soudek, various narrators

Unabridged: 10 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/19/2018

Synopsis

From BSFA Award–winning author Gareth L. Powell comes the first in a new epic sci-fi trilogy exploring the legacies of warThe sentient warship Trouble Dog was built for violence, yet following a brutal war, she is disgusted by her role in a genocide. Stripped of her weaponry and seeking to atone, she joins the House of Reclamation, an organization dedicated to rescuing ships in distress. When a civilian ship goes missing in a disputed system, Trouble Dog and her new crew of loners, captained by Sal Konstanz, are sent on a rescue mission.Meanwhile, light years away, intelligence officer Ashton Childe is tasked with locating the poet, Ona Sudak, who was aboard the missing spaceship. What Childe doesn’t know is that Sudak is not the person she appears to be. A straightforward rescue turns into something far more dangerous, as Trouble Dog, Konstanz, and Childe find themselves at the center of a conflict that could engulf the entire galaxy. If she is to save her crew, Trouble Dog is going to have to remember how to fight …

About Gareth L. Powell

Gareth L. Powell has written nine novels, including the Embers of War trilogy and the Ack-Ack Macaque series, as well as somehow finding the time to produce two short story collections, the nonfiction guide About Writing, and the novellas Ragged Alice, Downdraught, and Light Chaser (co-written with Peter F. Hamilton). He has twice won the British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novel and been finalist for both the Locus and Seiun Awards.

About Amy Landon

Amy Landon is a classically trained actress with numerous off-Broadway, film, and television credits. Her voice can also be heard on many television and radio commercials. She has an easy facility with dialects, which she also coaches and teaches, and she is happy to find her lifelong obsession with books is matching up with her acting and vocal work.

About Greg Tremblay

Born in one far-flung corner of the U.S., near Portland, (no, the other Portland), Greg Tremblay has worked in diverse fields, including paramedicine, blacksmithing, acting, SCUBA, and even a few practical jobs. Trained in vocal and stage performance, Greg brings a passion for educational nonfiction and character-intensive fiction stories to his audiobook work. Critically recognized and listener-beloved, Greg's work has been praised by AudioFile magazine and numerous blogs, and is the recipient of a 2016 GoodReads Reader's Choice award for best narrator in m/m romance. He lives in the FingerLakes region of New York with his family, and a slowly rotating menagerie of animals.

About Natasha Soudek

If you've watched TV at all in the past ten years, you've definitely seen her face and heard her voice countless times in any number of wildly successful national, global, and Super Bowl commercials, as well as playing the first blond Vulcan in Star Trek history. The daughter of two English professors, Natasha Soudek was raised in the South, speaks native German, lived in Berlin and Vienna, and finally settled in the Lower East Side of New York City as a teenager. After honing her stage presence by studying acting and playing hundreds of sold-out live music shows (singing and playing bass), she moved to LA to record with Channel/DreamWorks and act on TV. Favored on KCRW, Chris Douridas compared her voice and songwriting to the Beatles' Let it Be in meaning and soulfulness . . . qualities that translate especially well into her career as an audiobook narrator. Her voice is as distinct and memorable as the range of characters she's played on-screen, which gives listeners an immediate familiarity to connect to, along with a warmth and intimacy that spans and uplifts any genre.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Gary on August 04, 2018

Gareth Powell’s new space opera Embers of War is the story of the reformed warship Trouble Dog and her crew. After participating in a terrible genocide that brought an end to a brutal, destructive war, Trouble Dog leaves her sister warships behind and joins the House of Reclamation, an interstellar......more

Goodreads review by Bradley on February 05, 2019

At first, I felt like this was going to be a single-track MilSF with big spaceships and disgruntled warriors, but soon I was very happy to discover multidimensional characters representing a much wider kind of cast than I usually see in these types of novels. Poetry, spies, sentient ships, (remindin......more

Goodreads review by Tim on June 23, 2019

Hey, I *like* sentient spaceships. I've devoured all of Banks and Leckie and Asher and others. And superficially this is similar. It bops along well, with action but also some moral dilemmas and crises. The Trouble Dog is good, Nod is tedious, Clay is a cardboard all-anger-all-the-time, Konstanz is w......more

Goodreads review by Jamie on August 15, 2022

3.5 stars. Not quite inspiring or groundbreaking, but very competently and straightforwardly executed military themed space opera sci-fi with many familiar tropes. I'm in no great hurry to read the sequels.......more

Goodreads review by Oleksandr on April 23, 2020

This is a military SF with a twist that won British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novel in 2018. Currently I prefer British SF to the USA one and therefore decided to read it. I read is as a Buddy read for April 2020 at SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases group. The story starts with a......more

Quotes

“A nice blend of hardware and humanity…with elements of today and a logically projected far future…Leaves a group of enthralled readers hungry for more.” New York Journal of Books

“This is a true space opera, full of suspense, and mystery, and stuff blowing up real good—but it’s the humanity of Powell’s vision that truly makes it something special.” Barnes&NobleSFF.com

“A smart, funny, tragic, galloping space opera that showcases Powell’s wit, affection for his characters, world-building skills and unpredictable narrative inventions.” Locus magazine

“A quintet of narrators brings Powell’s magnificent space opera to vivid life…It’s a bold, ambitious story, with shifting points of view and multiple far-flung locales, and the audio adaptation would probably have been a mess if it had been the job of a single narrator. The team of five distinctive voices keeps listeners oriented—each of the narrators creates an easily recognizable character—and helps us know when the setting or POV has changed…An elegantly constructed sf story, beautifully written and expertly narrated.” Booklist (audio review)

“It takes a village in this space-opera audiobook, the first volume in a new trilogy that examines the impact of war…The five narrators alternate chapters, voicing the rescue mission’s captain, an intelligent warship turned rescue vessel, a war criminal turned poet, a disillusioned spy, and an alien mechanic who can’t figure out these humans. The commonalities that come through their stirring performances are world-weariness and regret—and, in the end, hope. This series shows great promise, with its detailed surface barely scratched in this intriguing first novel.” AudioFile

“A book dominated by strong women, hairs-breadth escapes, interpersonal conflicts, and ultimately, the dogged determination of human beings, and others, to become better versions of themselves.” Sci-Fi magazine

“An emotionally wrenching take on life in a war-torn far future…The pace picks up as the threads begin to come together, leading to an explosive finale with strong series potential.” Publishers Weekly

“A big book that hits all of the buttons that make space opera one of my favorite genres—a cold war ready to turn hot again, Big Dumb Objects, interesting and thorny interstellar plots and problems, and a set of compelling characters (including, memorably, an excellently depicted ship AI) caught in it.” Tor.com

“Fast, exhilarating space opera, imaginative and full of life.” Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of Children of Time

Awards

  • Tor.com Reviewers' Choice
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