Soul Catcher

Frank Herbert

Jan 2014 · Blackstone Audio Inc. · Narrated by Scott Brick

About this audiobook

Katsuk, a militant Native American student, has kidnapped thirteen-year-old David Marshall—the son of the US undersecretary of state. He and his young hostage flee into the deepest wilds of the Pacific Northwest, where they must work together to survive as teams of hunters try to track them. Even as he struggles to escape, David begins to feel a certain amount of respect for his captor. What the boy does not know, however, is that he has been chosen as an innocent from the white world for an ancient sacrifice of vengeance. And Katsuk may be divinely inspired—or simply insane.

This tale of vengeance and sacrifice touches upon many Native American myths even as it reveals various truths in its antihero.

Ratings and reviews

Written at a time when the acts of the American Indian Movement (AIM) were frequently covered by all the U.S. national media, Soul Catcher touches on sympathetic themes from then (& now) without romanticizing, at all. The antihero, Katsuk, reveals his motives in direct narrative so that his sacrificial victim is a fully informed one - who must ultimately "ask" for his execution. A great piece of literature that is frequently overshadowed by the Dune saga, I found it absolutely captivating.

About the author

Frank Herbert (1920–1986), winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards and a #1 New York Times bestselling author, was born in Tacoma, Washington, and worked as a reporter and later as an editor for a number of West Coast newspapers before becoming a full-time writer. His first science fiction story was published in 1952, but he achieved fame more than ten years later with the publication of “Dune World” and “The Prophet of Dune” in Analog. The stories were amalgamated in the bestselling novel Dune in 1965.

Scott Brick first began narrating audiobooks in 2000, and after recording almost 400 titles in five years, AudioFile magazine named Brick a Golden Voice and “one of the fastest-rising stars in the audiobook galaxy.” He has read a number of titles in Frank Herbert’s bestselling Dune series, and he won the 2003 Science Fiction Audie Award for Dune: The Butlerian Jihad. Brick has narrated for many popular authors, including Michael Pollan, Joseph Finder, Tom Clancy, and Ayn Rand. He has also won over 40 AudioFile Earphones Awards and the AudioFile award for Best Voice in Mystery and Suspense 2011. In 2007, Brick was named Publishers Weekly’s Narrator of the Year. Brick has performed on film, television and radio. He appeared on stage throughout the United States in productions of Cyrano, Hamlet, Macbeth and other plays. In addition to his acting work, Brick choreographs fight sequences, and was a combatant in films including Romeo and Juliet, The Fantasticks and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. He has also been hired by Morgan Freeman to write the screenplay adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama.