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Sign up todayTropic of Kansas
Length
12 hours 13 minutes
Language
English
Narrators
Josh Bloomberg & Bahni Turpin
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreAcclaimed short-story writer and editor of the World Fantasy Award nominee Three Messages and a Warning eerily envisions an American society unraveling and our borders closed off—from the other side—in this haunting and provocative novel that combines Max Barry’s Jennifer Government, Philip K. Dick’s classic Man in the High Castle, and China Miéville’s The City & the City.
The United States of America is no more. Broken into warring territories, its center has become a wasteland DMZ known as “the Tropic of Kansas.” Though this gaping geographic hole has no clear boundaries, everyone knows it’s out there—that once-bountiful part of the heartland, broken by greed and exploitation, where neglect now breeds unrest. Two travelers appear in this arid American wilderness: Sig, the fugitive orphan of political dissidents, and his foster sister Tania, a government investigator whose search for Sig leads her into her own past—and towards an unexpected future.
Sig promised those he loves that he would make it to the revolutionary redoubt of occupied New Orleans. But first he must survive the wild edgelands of a barren mid-America policed by citizen militias and autonomous drones, where one wrong move can mean capture … or death. One step behind, undercover in the underground, is Tania. Her infiltration of clandestine networks made of old technology and new politics soon transforms her into the hunted one and gives her a shot at being the agent of real change—if she is willing to give up the explosive government secrets she has sworn to protect.
As brother and sister traverse these vast and dangerous badlands, their paths will eventually intersect on the front lines of a revolution whose fuse they are about to light.
Christopher Brown’s debut novel Tropic of Kansas was a finalist for the Campbell Award for best science fiction novel of 2018, and he was a World Fantasy Award nominee for the anthology Three Messages and a Warning. His short fiction and criticism has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including MIT Technology Review, LitHub, Tor.com and The Baffler. He lives in Austin, Texas, where he also practices law.
Josh Bloomberg, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, is a trained professional actor with extensive audiobook experience as a director and narrator. Having worked with some of the biggest publishers in the audiobook industry, he is used to performing at high standards. He speaks English, French, and Hebrew fluently and is a member of the Audio Publishers Association. He also records his voice for commercial spots and other types of voice-over. In his spare time, he loves making homemade almond milk.
Bahni Turpin is a Los Angeles–based audiobook narrator and actress with many television and film credits. Bahni is a two-time Odyssey Award winner and a two-time recipient of the Audie Award for Best Solo Female Narration. She was named an Audible Narrator of the Year in 2016, and The American Library Association’s Voice of Choice for 2017, and in 2018 she was inducted into the Audible Hall of Fame. Bahni is also an ensemble member of Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles.
Reviews
“The dual narration of Josh Bloomberg and Bahni Turpin adds to this sci-fi story. Both have distinct voices that help each part they narrate stand out…Bloomberg and Turpin’s narration develops the setting that is the focus of the novel, a war-torn dystopian wasteland. They also give verisimilitude to the dual sides of the story and the revolution that Sig and Tania are about to cause.”
“Timely, dark, and ultimately hopeful: it might not ‘make America great again,’ but then again, it just might.”
“Futurist as provocateur!…A truly hallucinatorily envisioned environment.”
“Like a modern dystopian buffet. It plays out in a world where all of our terrors have become manifest…A frighteningly believable portrait of an American future that is closer than you want it to be.”
“A powerful vision of an America that might be, an America that some nights seems as though it is all too likely to be, filled with powerful characters and a chilling presentiment of how far our country could fall…A novel well worth reading.”
“A great novel. Brown’s writing is tightly composed and flows nicely…Definitely recommended.”
“Eerily prescient…The author does a stellar job subtly weaving the world’s rules into the plot, leaving the reader feeling appropriately embroiled yet disoriented by the politics.”
“Brown brings a mordant sensibility to his depiction of a ‘flyover country’ that is no longer willing to have its patriotism exploited and its land degraded for other people’s profits.”
“A unique blend of Philip K. Dick, Kafka (just a smidgen), and a whole lot of Christopher Brown. Adventure novel meets political satire and the finest elements of realistic sci-fi, and it’s so well written it goes down like a greased eel. It’s hopeful dystopia. What a book.”
“The great American novel about the end of America. This book is marvelously propulsive, big-hearted, and whip smart.”
“This stunning novel…highlights a few of the keen-voiced, brave-souled women and men who balance like subversive acrobats on society’s whirling edges…Read it to burn with the joy of realistic hope.”
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