She later wrote two more novels set in the same world, The House of the Stag and The Bird of the River. The Anvil of the World was Baker's first fantasy novel, originally published in 2003. (Let's hope something similar can be said for all of us.) And that reaction has nothing to do with any of her books: she's gone, but they will endure. None of that changes an emotional reaction, of course. But I don't, and I know the world is pointless and random, that cruelty is only a human term, a way of looking at things that just are. It was so senseless, so clearly wrong, that I wish I believed in some anthropomorphic personification so that I could blame that being for doing something so horrible. My biggest surprise: that I'm still angry that Kage Baker died, even a decade later.

Years Prematurely Declared to Be Over (3).

Travel Broadens The Mind Until You Can't Get Your Head Out the Door (94).

The First Thing We Do Let's Kill All the Lawyers (6).

Tedious Minutiae of a Boring Life (349).

It's Only The End of the World Again (1).

Horrible Images That Will Never Leave Your Brain (12).

Hornswoggler's Estleman Loren Project (12).

Glenn Ganges in: The River at Night by Kevin Huizenga.

Manfried Saves the Day by Caitlin Major & Kelly Ba.

Quote of the Week: Casting for Steelies.

How I Tried to Be a Good Person by Ulli Lust.

Quote of the Week: Relative Probabilities.Knickers in a Twist: A Dictionary of British Slang.Quote of the Week: It Was Already This Bad in 1997.Berlin, Book Three: City of Light by Jason Lutes.The Night and the Music: The Matthew Scudder Stori.

The Anvil of the World by Kage Baker