Dying of the Light cover art

Dying of the Light

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for £0.00
£8.99/mo thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Offer ends 31 July 2025 at 23:59 GMT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

Dying of the Light

By: George R.R. Martin
Narrated by: Iain Glen
Try for £0.00

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 31 July 2025 23:59 GMT. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Before Westeros there was Worlorn....

When Dirk t'Larien is beckoned across space to the distant world of Worlorn by his lost love, Gwen Delvano, a wild hope flares inside him. However, the rogue planet and his long awaited reunion with Gwen are nothing like Dirk ever imagined. Gwen is radically changed from the girl Dirk first fell in love with, and appears to be irrevocably bound to a violent alien savage and his barbaric culture. Worlorn is a desolate ruin of a planet, steadily hurtling through space away from the star system it relies on to support life - each dawn its seven red suns shine a little dimmer.

Once a thriving "festival world", now Worlorn is rapidly falling into decline. Nothing remains but scavengers and their prey. With no laws to govern it, it is a place where the hunters and the hunted are often interchangeable. It is a dying world steadily speeding towards its own destruction. Can Dirk protect Gwen and save her from this decaying planet and its dangerous inhabitants? Does she even want him to try?

Discover George R. R. Martin's acclaimed debut novel Dying of the Light.

©1977 George R. R. Martin (P)2012 Random House Audio Inc Adventure Fantasy Fiction Science Fiction Space Opera Solar System

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Ghost Stories: Stephen Fry's Definitive Collection cover art
Rogues cover art
Wild Cards I cover art
Crucible of Stars cover art
The Silmarillion cover art
Gods of Earth cover art
The Golden Queen cover art
Robinson Crusoe 2244 cover art
The Midnight Sea cover art
Trial and Retribution cover art
Hyperion cover art
Ravenor cover art
The Gods of H. P. Lovecraft cover art
Treason cover art
Demon in the Wood cover art
Midnight at the Well of Souls cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
This is a great story, but how can anybody seriously write a cliffhanger EPILOGUE?
Lose one star for unsatisfactory ending.

Beware

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
brilliant story telling brought to life by Iain Glenn. Deep, rich lore Albeit camp in a sense. Full of action although slightly Anticlimactic.

Somewhat anticlimactic.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Iain Glenn (Jorah Mormont from Game of Thrones TV show) is fantastic. If you are curious about Martins work before GOT and enjoy sci-fi, this is the one to try. Possibly the Dreamsongs collection of short stories is a nice alternative by Martin, but this evolves into a fantastic experiance.

Most enjoyable audiook so far this year for me.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A wonderful use of words, almost nordic saga but a pathetic hero. too wordy though.

An Odd Ode

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
An interesting & absolutely fascinating tale about a dying planet & the evolution of a cruel & viscious code of honour which - though outdated - struggles to survive as relevant & justified. It reminds me of the Samurai!

A compelling story of old, brutal chivalry & code

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The story is very well narrated and Iain Glen really makes this listen. The story however lacks any real plot. if you haven't already, listen/read George R R Martin's Tuf Voyaging, still his best book in my opinion

Okay

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The author has written an interesting story about a dying world and a very interesting Kavalar society. A number of characters have similar or related names (often they have several names) and, without being able to easily flick back a few pages to check, it was sometimes hard to be immediately clear on who was talking/being talked about.

Also the motivation of one of the important secondary characters was hard to fathom even after the story tried to cover it. This might be related to the point above in forgetting who was who.

Interesting cultures and premise

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
George R.R. Martin clearly excels as a science-fiction author just as much as he does as a writer of fantasy; I hope he returns to this genre after the culmination of his asoiaf series.

This rich 1000 worlds universe he developed in the 1970s through short stories and novellas reaches its apex here, and this novel truly deserves a movie adaptation. To me the characters seem to derive a deal of inspiration from Aurthurian legend as well as Shakespearean tragedy (not to mention the sci-fi books the author himself had previously read) but are extremely original in and of themselves.

Worlorn is a rogue planet and Dirk t'Larien is a rogue protagonist; neither is truly part of the place they inhabit and both have changed into something else from what they once were. Even as the prologue progresses before the main body of the story the listener should get a sense of the vast amount of galactic background and the immensity of the fictional history that has gone into creating the setting of this singular work. As the story and plot progress so too do the characters develop, something new is uncovered in each chapter and by the end all have gone through even more change.

All that said and while I absolutely loved this novel it took me a while to get into it. I found that I had to get a copy out of the library to read along as I listened - while Iain Glen does a brilliant narration (he should do Winds of Winter if it ever comes out), it is difficult for a single voice speaking at pace to convey the vast visual landscapes and cities of this imagined world and the galaxy it inhabits; the prose is sometimes so well written that it demands to be read.

The physical copy I procured had a glossary of terms at the back of it which turned out to be very useful in conveying both the history and the aspects of the different planets which weren't elaborated upon in the text; i.e. ai (as in ai-Emerel) means After Interregnum, and the glossary elaborates both of the period called the Interregnum and the planet, people and culture of ai-Emerel, among other worlds. This audio recording could be improved with the inclusion of the glossary in PDF form.

Also the cover image of this audiobook does not do any favours to the imagination - Worlorn is not a yellow sanded desert world with a giant white moon, but a diverse planet which in the daytime has the big, red star called Fat Satan hanging in its sky.

Dying of the Light

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Some pacong issues early. But fantastic story overall and truly marvellous narration by Iain Glenn

Must read for GRRM fans

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Read the ASOIAF series and loved it but never read any of GRRM's sci-fi work. Saw this and thought the authors first book would be a great choice and I wasn't disappointed. Iain Glens narration could have been a bit of a gimick that doesn't work but it is spot on, definitely worth a listen

Iain Glen really brings this to life

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews