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Ymir

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About this listen

 A gripping, far-future retelling of Beowulf from an award-winning author, perfect for fans of Richard K. Morgan. Yorick never wanted to see his homeworld again. He left Ymir two decades ago, with half his face blown off and no love lost for the place. But when his employer's mines are threatened by a vicious alien machine, Yorick is shipped back home to hunt it.

All he wants is to do his job and get out. Instead, Yorick is pulled into a revolution brewing beneath Ymir's frozen surface, led by the very last person he wanted to see again—the brother who sent him off in pieces twenty years ago. Adventure Cyberpunk Fiction First Contact Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction

Critic reviews

“An astonishing SF thriller with whiplash surprises and an ending that resonates…Ymir gets all over you and won’t come off.”—James Patrick Kelly, winner of the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards
“Larson is a writer who can do just about anything, and in his second novel he splices Iain M. Banks with Alastair Reynolds…This is brain-busting sci-fi for the hardcore crowd.”—Nick Wolven, author of "Snowflake"
“Original, unpredictable, and starkly beautiful. A screaming dirge of a story.”—Ted Kosmatka, author of The Flicker Men
“Cyberpunk as fuck…I loved every gritty, punishing page of it.”—Tim Miller, director of LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS and Deadpool
“Endlessly inventive, richly textured, and pricked with poignant beauty. If Alien met Neuromancer, and the mutant progeny was birthed in the amniotic fluid of pure myth, Ymir would be the result.”—Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, Hugo and Locus finalist
"[Ymir] hurtles forward at dizzying speeds on an engine of jagged gorgeous writing. I adored Yorick, with his broken heart and his bad attitude and worse decisions...I ached with every twist and turn of his hideous beautiful journey."
-Sam J Miller, Nebula-award-winning author of Blackfish City—Sam J. Miller, Nebula award-winning author of Blackfish City
"Phenomenal, visceral, high-octane scifi... Altered Carbon unsleeves in a dystopian Beowulf."—Derek Künsken, Aurora-award-winning author of The Quantum Magician
“Icy, dangerous, yet darkly hopeful. An exhilarating journey that left me awed.”—Hugo finalist Sheree Renée Thomas, author of Nine Bar Blues: Stories from an Ancient Future
“Sci-fi thriller at its ice-cold coolest... Propulsive, terrifying, and human.”—Tamsyn Muir, New York Times best-selling author of the Locked Tomb series
All stars
Most relevant
I loved Ymir and finished it in a couple of days! It's beautifully written in Rich Larson's distinctive style. The characters are vivid, original and believeable. The protagonist, Yorick, really sucked me in - he's grim, complex and surprisingly compelling for such an "antihero" type character. The setting is dark, gritty and real - think oil rigs/small towns in the Arctic. I also loved the AI hotel - it adds some humour to the story, and for me it evoked The Raven Hotel from Altered Carbon.

I switched back and forth between the ebook and audiobook throughout, and can highly recommend both. With its excellent narration, the audiobook brought an extra dimension to the characters in my mind and helped them to jump off the page even more when I went back to reading.

Beautiful, dark, cyberpunk

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