Sword of the Dark God... Illustration by Daren Bader ... Sword of the Dark God Tuesday, February 24, 2009With her masterful Skaith trilogy wrapped up in The Reavers of Skaith, it's time for Leigh Brackett to take us away to yet another world—or rather, another era. For while her latest release from Planet Stories, The Sword of Rhiannon, takes place on the same strange and populous Mars as The Secret of Sinharat, the story draws us far back into the past, when Mars was a lush world of oceans, pirates, and...Tags: Leigh Brackett Mars Planet Stories Rhiannon George Lucas On Leigh Brackett... George Lucas On Leigh Brackett Tuesday, January 6, 2009When we started publishing Planet Stories, one of our goals (in fact, the primary goal) was to publish books that were not just great stories, but also historically significant. Books that altered the course of science fiction history, that helped invent genres and whose authors managed to indelibly alter the way we think about SF. ... Yet sometimes the impact of a given novel isn't felt immediately—as with music or any other...Tags: Eric John Stark George Lucas Leigh Brackett Planet Stories Reavers of Skaith Star Wars ...and we're back!... ...and we're back! Tuesday, December 30, 2008Howdy, all! In the wake of Snowpocalypse 2008, in which we got inches—inches!—of snow and therefore couldn't possibly make it into the office, but rather holed up in our houses waiting for the imminent apocalypse, we're all rushing a bit to catch up and get our latest books off to press. Books like The Reavers of Skaith, Leigh Brackett's epic conclusion to the Eric John Stark novels which began with The Secret of Sinharat. For a...Tags: Eric John Stark James Ryman Leigh Brackett Planet Stories Reavers of Skaith Skaith Don't Fear the Reavers... Don't Fear the Reavers Wednesday, December 17, 2008Well, folks, it's finally here. One year and three books later, we've reached the last of Leigh Brackett's amazing Eric John Stark novels, which began with our introduction to the wildman-turned-mercenary in The Secret of Sinharat and continued in her epic Skaith trilogy. In The Reavers of Skaith, her final installment on the world of the dying ginger star, Brackett doesn't pull any punches. Not only do we get more strange landscapes,...Tags: Eric John Stark Leigh Brackett Reavers of Skaith Skaith Ryman For The WinRyman For The Win Tuesday, December 9, 2008Covers are important. Not only do they help popularize books and win over new readers—and believe me when I say that the first thing the book industry drills into you is that a book with a bad cover Will Not Sell, no matter how amazing the content—they also go a long way toward establishing the feel of a series. There are a number of authors and series that I can recognize from the cover art alone, and I'm always distraught when some...Tags: Hounds of Skaith James Ryman Leigh Brackett Planet Stories Reavers of Skaith Skaith Riding the Wave... Riding the Wave Tuesday, September 23, 2008It's that time again—time for me to point out that nothing new I can say about The Hounds of Skaith can recommend it any better than it recommends itself and jump straight to an excerpt from the novel. In The Ginger Star, everyone's favorite mercenary and wild man Eric John Stark ventured to the dying world of Skaith in search of his foster father, only to find himself the subject of a revolutionary prophecy. Now, reunited with his mentor...Tags: Eric John Stark Leigh Brackett Planet Stories Skaith Men of the Broken Towers... Men of the Broken Towers Tuesday, May 13, 2008In trying to choose a topic for today's blog post on Leigh Brackett's The Ginger Star, I had a rough time. After raving about Brackett's prose in my last post, I knew that I wanted to share an excerpt—but which one? The scene depicted on the cover, where Stark and the mysterious wise woman face execution? Perhaps his fight with the Children of the Sea? Or his escape from the subterranean world of humanity's ferret-faced descendants?...Tags: Eric John Stark The Ginger Star Leigh Brackett Planet Stories Playing FavoritesPlaying Favorites Tuesday, April 29, 2008For me, trying to pick a favorite author in the Planet Stories line is like trying to pick my favorite child: impolite, but still totally doable. (At least, I presume that's what the expression means—I don't have kids.) And while each of my literary children is a unique and beautiful snowflake, for me, the favorite is Leigh Brackett. ... It's not just because she was a master of many genres, writing everything from westerns to sword and planet to...Tags: Eric John Stark The Ginger Star Leigh Brackett Planet Stories Skaith |