M.M. Bennetts Finalist Review and Interview – 9

Fascinating interview with David Blixt, author of the Star-Cross’d series (historical)

stevewiegenstein

My tour of the M.M. Bennetts Award finalists nears its completion with the shortlisted finalists. First up, David Blixt’s The Prince’s Doom. 

Imagine a world in which the 14th-century historical figures of Italy — the Della Scala family of Verona, the Doge of Venice, Petrarch, the family of Dante Alighieri, the Carrara family of Padua — interacted and lived alongside the characters of Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet, Katherine and Petruchio, the Merchant of Venice, and so forth. It’s a great premise: after all, Shakespeare did use incidents from Italian history for some of his plays, and historical characters pop up in them from time to time. So why not have them coexist in a fictional universe of their own?

That’s the premise of The Prince’s Doom, and I gather of the other books in David Blixt’s “Star-Cross’d” series, of which this novel is the fourth. The book is an…

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Hello World!

Well, hello Worldpress at least.

I’m not new to blogging, I started my LiveJournal blog back in 2006, but I recently decided it was high time to have a dedicated blog for reviews and writing about books in general, so, here comes Outside of Dogs .

The title, of course is a modified take on the classic Groucho Marx quote

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.

The first review is coming, and will be for Kate Elliott’s Court of Fives.