Try free for 30 days

1 credit a month to use on any title, yours to keep (you’ll use your first credit on this title).
Stream or download thousands of included titles.
Access to exclusive deals and discounts.
$16.45 a month after 30 day trial. Cancel anytime.
Kiteworld cover art

Kiteworld

By: Keith Roberts
Narrated by: Gideon Emery
Try for $0.00

$16.45 per month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $28.99

Buy Now for $28.99

Pay using voucher balance (if applicable) then card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions Of Use and Privacy Notice and authorise Audible to charge your designated credit card or another available credit card on file.

Publisher's Summary

Kiteworld was the last major work from Keith Roberts, one of the 20th century's great masters of science fiction, whose classic Pavane was selected by Anthony Burgess in Ninety-Nine Novels as one of the best works of fiction published in the English language since World War II. The Sunday Times (London) has characterized Roberts' work as "something like a cross between Thomas Hardy and Russell Hoban... powerfully imaginative and absorbing."

A panoramic novel of men and machines, Kiteworld presents a future world in which sturdy, highly trained crews launch daring pilots into the stratosphere, borne aloft on giant Cody manlifter kites to watch the horizon and the skies for demonic monsters strikingly suggestive of guided missiles and aircraft. Intense, detailed, and meticulously observed, the world of the novel is a future in which our world, after a catastrophe that has severed humanity from its past, is such a vague memory that details survive only as myth.

Against this background, several lives and stories unfold: Raoul, the Kite cadet, who has killed a strange and unsettling mutant and is doomed to suffer pangs of guilt that ground him; Tan, the "special" child, whose brother, Kitecaptain Manning, is devoted to her protection at any cost; and the child-woman Velvet, orphan, procuress, and thief.

As the world of the Realm resolves and becomes clear and sharp, all the conflicts heighten, and it is everywhere evident that a great battle is to come, in which the whole world will be altered forever.

©1985 Keith Roberts (P)2011 Wildside Press LLC

More from the same

What listeners say about Kiteworld

Average Customer Ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    0
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    0
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.