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LitStack Review: Borderline by Mishell Baker

Borderline Mishell Baker Saga Press Release Date: March 1, 2016 ISBN 978-1-4814-5306-6 How to write a kick ass novel: 1) Create a main character that is flawed but grudgingly admirable; maybe have her be a double amputee due to a botched suicide attempt that puts her in a psychiatric center. […]

Review & Giveaway: Grail of the Summer Stars by Freda Warrington

Grail of the Summer Stars Freda Warrington Tor Books First Edition: April 23, 2013 ISBN: 978-0-7653-1871-8 If you like your fantasy science fiction deeply layered, sparkling and ethereal, do I have a book for you. Grail of the Summer Stars, Freda Warrington‘s newest installment of her Aetherial Tales series packs a […]

Birthdays

On this day, March 5, in 1952, Margaret Astrid Lindholm (better known under the pen names of Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm) was born in Berkeley, California. As Robin Hobb, she is the author many works of epic traditional fantasy, including The Farseer Trilogy (which began with Assassin’s Apprentice), The Liveship Traders Trilogy, and the Tawny Man Trilogy. She also writes as Megan Lindholm, and her works under that name have been finalists for the Hugo award, the Nebula Award and the Endeavor award. She has won an Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Readers’ Award twice, and in 2014 she was a Guest of Honor at the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention in London. Today, she turns 69.

Birthdays

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.