By Amanda Leduc
Reading books in audio brings a whole new level of immersion to the reading experience. For myself, the opportunity to be read to, and to let someone’s voice and storytelling take you away, brings back memories of being read to when younger—bright and happy memories that I’m all too eager to cling to in these pandemic days.
For March, we’re delving into audiobooks by some of the authors appearing at FOLD 2021 this year. From tales of magic and legend through to thrilling tales of deception and horror, here are some of the ways that we’re escaping into the world of audiobooks for the FOLD Challenge.
1) Return of the Trickster — Available on Audible Canada
In the third book of her brilliant and captivating Trickster Trilogy, Eden Robinson delivers an explosive, surprising and satisfying resolution.
All Jared Martin had ever wanted was to be normal, which was already hard enough when he had to cope with Maggie, his hard-partying, gun-toting, literal witch of a mother, Indigenous teen life and his own addictions. When he wakes up naked, dangerously dehydrated and confused in the basement of his mom’s old house in Kitimat, some of the people he loves–the ones who don’t see the magic he attracts–just think he fell off the wagon after a tough year of sobriety. The truth for Jared is so much worse.
He finally knows for sure that he is the only one of his bio dad Wee’git’s 535 children who is a Trickster too, a shapeshifter with a free pass to other dimensions. Sarah, his ex, is happy he’s a magical being, but everyone else he loves is either pissed with him, or in mortal danger from the dark forces he’s accidentally unleashed, or both. The scariest of those dark forces is his Aunt Georgina, a maniacal ogress hungry for his power, who has sent her posse of flesh-eating coy-wolves to track him down.
Even though his mother resents like hell that Jared has taken after his dad, she is also determined that no one is going to hurt her son. For Maggie it’s simple–Kill or be killed, bucko. Soon Jared is at the centre of an all-out war–a horrifying place to be for the universe’s sweetest Trickster, whose first instinct is not mischief and mind games but to make the world a kinder, safer, place.
2) Ring Shout, by P. Djéli Clark – Available on Audible Canada
In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan’s ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die.
Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan’s demons straight to Hell. But something awful’s brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up.
Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?
3) Polar Vortex, by Shani Mootoo – Available on Audible Canada
Some secrets never die…
Priya and Alexandra have moved from the city to a picturesque Countryside town. What Alex doesn’t know is that, in moving, Priya is running from her past—from a fraught relationship with an old friend, Prakash, who pursued her for many years, both online and off. Time has passed, however, and Priya, confident that her ties to Prakash have been successfully severed, decides it’s once more safe to establish an online presence. In no time, Prakash finds Priya and contacts her. Impulsively, inexplicably, Priya invites him to visit her and Alex in the country, without ever having come clean with Alex about their relationship—or its tumultuous end. Prakash’s reentry into Priya’s life reveals cracks in her and Alex’s relationship and brings into question Priya’s true intentions.
Are we ever free from our pasts? Can we ever truly know the people we are closest to? Seductive and tension-filled, Polar Vortex is a story of secrets, deceptions, and revenge.
4) The Fires of Vengeance, by Evan Winter – Available on Audible Canada
Game of Thrones meets Gladiator. In order to reclaim her throne and save her people, an ousted queen must join forces with a young warrior in the second book of this epic fantasy series from breakout author Evan Winter.
Tau and his Queen, desperate to delay the impending attack on the capital by the indigenous people of Xidda, craft a dangerous plan. If Tau succeeds, the Queen will have the time she needs to assemble her forces and launch an all out assault on her own capital city, where her sister is being propped up as the ‘true’ Queen of the Omehi.
If the city can be taken, if Tsiora can reclaim her throne, and if she can reunite her people then the Omehi have a chance to survive the onslaught.
Jonisha Lewinson