The City of Lost Fortunes A Crescent City novel Bryan Camp Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Release Date: April 17, 2018 ISBN 978-13-2881-079-3 Every year, a crop of new books come out, with imaginative plots and memorable characters, deftly written and wonderfully wrought. A very few rise to become exceptional. The City […]
The Buried Giant Kazuo Ishiguro Alfred A. Knopf Release Date: March 3, 2015 ISBN 978-0-307-27103-7 It’s the dusk of Arthurian England; an uneasy peace lies over the land. Britons Axl and Beatrice, an elderly couple, leave their village to travel to the town where they believe their estranged son lives. […]
The City & the City China Miéville Del Rey Release Date: May 26, 2009 ISBN 978-0-345-49751-2 I enjoy exploring literary works whose titles have been short-listed for awards in my preferred genre; the Hugos and the Nebulas, the World Fantasy Awards. Doing so has led me to many talented authors […]
Roar (Stormheart #1) Cora Carmack Tor Teen ISBN-10: 0765386313 In a land ruled and shaped by violent magical storms, power lies with those who control them. Aurora Pavan comes from one of the oldest Stormling families in existence. Long ago, the ungifted pledged fealty and service to her family in exchange for […]
Borne Jeff VanderMeer Farrar, Straus and Giroux Release Date: April 25, 2017 ISBN 978-0-3741-1524-1 Jeff VanderMeer is an author who defies easy categorization. His fiction is easier to describe by adjective rather than genre: strange, complex, unsettling, and yet familiar, affecting, literate. Of Annihilation, the first book in his Southern […]
A Conjuring of Light Shades of Magic, Book 3 V. E. Schwab Tor Books Release Date: February 21, 2017 ISBN 978-0-7653-8746-2 If you like magic, if you like epic fantasy, if you enjoy tales of magicians both light and dark, of brothers and kings, of thieves and pirates, then you […]
Skullsworn (Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne series) Brian Staveley Tor Books Release Date: April 25, 2017 ISBN 978-0-7653-8987-9 One of the major strengths of Brian Staveley’s Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne epic fantasy series (The Emperor’s Blades, The Providence of Fire, The Last Mortal Bond), is his characters. While often […]
Brother’s Ruin Industrial Magic, Book #1 Emma Newman Tor.com Release Date: March 14, 2017 ISBN 978-0-7653-9396-8 It’s probably not politically correct to illustrate something literary by using a television reference, but I couldn’t help but think what a wonderful TV pilot Emma Newman’s first book in her Industrial Magic series, […]
Phantom Pains The Arcadia Project, Book 2 Mishell Baker Saga Press Release Date: March 21, 2017 ISBN 978-1-4814-8017-8 Millie Roper, the central character in Mishell Baker’s Arcadia Project urban fantasy series, is a very intriguing hero, not because of her virtues, but because she perseveres despite her challenges. In the […]
Within the Sanctuary of Wings A Memoir by Lady Trent Marie Brennan Tor Books Release Date: April 25, 2017 ISBN 978-0-7653-7765-4 What a lovely way to end a wonderful fantasy series! Since 2013, with the publication of Lady Trent’s first installment of her memoirs in A Natural History of Dragons, […]
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.