Miranda and Caliban Jacqueline Carey Tor Books Release Date: February 14, 2017 IBSN 978-0-7653-9704-1 As a student of Shakespeare, I became familiar with the incredible complexity of many of the Bard’s characters, enlivened by diverse and imaginative interpretations. But some characters are problematic; inchoate, yet peevish if over-analyzed. Ophelia, for […]
Babylon’s Ashes James S. A. Corey Orbit Books Release Date: December 6, 2016 ISBN 978-0-3163-3474-7 NOTE: Babylon’s Ashes is the sixth book of James S. A. Corey’s superlative The Expanse series (out of a planned nine volumes). Before reading any further, realize that it’s virtually impossible to review book #6 […]
Company Town Madeline Ashby Tor Books Release Date: May 17, 2016 ISBN 978-0-7653-8290-0 Go Jung-hwa is my new favorite hero. Hwa is half-Korean and lives in a possible near future, in New Arcadia, a city-sized oil rig off the coast of the Canadian Maritimes. She’s tiny, but tough, a master […]
Thursday 1:17 pm Michael Landweber Coffeetown Press Release Date: May 1, 2016 ISBN 978-1-60381-357-0 Every once in a while a book lands on my desk that I’ve never heard of, where the author is not known to me. Sometimes the premise is intriguing, and I crack it open to give […]
We here at LitStack couldn’t let the day pass without wishing a very happy birthday to our illustrious leader, Editor-in-Chief Tee Tate! Not only is Tee a wonderful boss who has put so much love and effort into this website, but she’s a talented novelist, a good friend, […]
Ancillary Mercy Ann Leckie Orbit Release Date: October 6, 2015 ISBN 978-0-316-24668-2 For those who may not know, Ancillary Mercy is the third book in Ann Leckie’s brilliant Imperial Radch space opera trilogy. The first book, Ancillary Justice, was published in 2013 and promptly won the Hugo Award, the Nebula […]
You’re Never Weird on the Internet (almost) Felicia Day Touchstone Books Release Date: August 11, 2015 ISBN 978-1-4767-8565-3 In 2007, something fun happened on the internet: The Guild, a web series based on the lives of a group of gamers, posted its first season on You Tube. The game upon […]
I Am Princess X Cherie Priest Arthur A. Levine Books Release Date: May 26, 2015 ISBN 978-0-545-62085-7 Is there anything Cherie Priest cannot do? I first got to “know” her through her steampunk alternate history novel Boneshaker, which took me surprise and by storm. I read three other of her […]
A God in Ruins Kate Atkinson Little, Brown and Company Release Date: May 5, 2015 ISBN 978-0-316-17653-8 According to her Author’s Note in A God in Ruins, Kate Atchinson originally wanted to write a novel with World War II as a backdrop; however, she soon realized such an effort was […]
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry Gabrielle Zevin Algonquin Books First Edition: April 1, 2014 ISBN 978-1-61620-321-4 What a lovely gem of a book! A.J. Fikry is a recently widowed fellow who owns a struggling bookstore on tiny Alice Island, Massachusetts. He’s only in his mid-thirties, but seems older due […]
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.