Mecha Samurai Empire Peter Tieryas Ace/Penguin Random House Release Date: September 18, 2018 (USA) ISBN 9780451490995 Mac is a teenager living in Los Angeles in 1994 whose greatest desire is to become a pilot. But his test grades are mediocre, he’s not in the best of shape, and he’s a […]
High Stakes: A Wild Cards Novel George R. R. Martin and Melinda M. Snodgrass, editors Tor Books Release Date: August 30, 2016 ISBN 978-0-7653-3562-3 In 1983, author George R. R. Martin was given a birthday gift: SuperWorld, a roleplaying game. For two years, he and his Albuquerque gaming circle obsessed […]
Ghost Talkers Mary Robinette Kowal Tor Books Release Date: August 16, 2016 ISBN 978-0-7653-7825-5 Mary Robinette Kowal is the absolute queen of historical speculative fiction. First, in her Glamourist Histories series, she invokes Regency England but with a twist – her England includes an elegant magic, known as “glamour”, which […]
The Race Nina Allen Titan Books Release Date: July 19, 2016 ISBN 978-1-785650-36-9 Originally published in 2014 by NewCon Press and rereleased in 2016 by Titan Books, Nina Allen’s novel The Race is hard to describe – but wonderful to read. On the surface, the five sections of the book […]
United States of Japan Peter Tieryas Angry Robot Release Date: March 1, 2016 ISBN 978-0-85766-533-1 Military occupations are never a pretty thing. Add in, however, a “what would it have been like, if….?” and an author has the ability to spin a yarn full of entrenched characters and moral ambiguities […]
Of Noble Family Mary Robinette Kowal Tor Books Release Date: April 28, 2015 ISBN 978-0-7653-7836-1 PLEASE NOTE: This review, by necessity, contains spoilers for the first four books in The Glamourist Histories series. * * * * * It’s been almost six years since the first volume in Mary Robinette Kowal’s lovely […]
Jacaranda Cherie Priest Subterranean Press Release Date: January 31, 2015 ISBN 978-1-59606-684-7 When are we going to learn? You don’t use ancient artifacts as household decorations, you don’t plow over native burial grounds, and, as Cherie Priest so articulately shows us, you don’t cut down a jacaranda tree that honors […]
Aces Abroad: Wild Card IV Edited by George R. R. Martin Tor Books Re-release Date: January 13, 2015 ISBN 978-0-7653-3558-6 In the 1980s, a group of New Mexico residents, many of them writers, were involved in a superhero role-playing game, grand mastered by author George R. R. Martin (of Game […]
Maplecroft – The Borden Dispatches Cherie Priest ROC Release Date: September 2, 2014 ISBN 978-0-451-46697-6 Cherie Priest is a master at taking familiar historical eras and events, and giving them twists and turns that seem utterly realistic and entirely possible, whether that be the Klondike Gold Rush (with a Seattle […]
Life After Life Kate Atkinson Little, Brown and Company Release Date: March 14, 2013 ISBN 978-0-316-17648-4 On a cold, snowy English night in 1910, a stillborn baby is born to upper middle class Sylvie and Hugh Todd. They name her Ursula. On the same night, little Ursula Todd is born […]
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.