May 2018 archive

The Rig by Roger Levy

It’s been quite a while since I’ve taken this long to read a book (four days, to be precise, which is a total humble brag given that I’ve read 72 books in the past 4 months and 11 days.) Granted, The Rig clocks in at over 600 pages and since I had it in paperback …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/12/the-rig-by-roger-levy/

A Hero Born by Jin Yong

“The Chinese Lord of the Rings.” Or, as translator Anna Holmwood puts it in her introduction, “one of the world’s best-loved stories and one of its grandest epics, a series that can count its fans in the hundreds of millions. And yet this is the first time it has been published in English, despite making …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/11/a-hero-born-by-jin-yong/

The Changeling by Victor LaValle

The fairy tales that we’re familiar with have spent centuries being smoothed down by retelling after retelling, retaining their magic despite the years and multiple minor tweaks because, as stories, they make sense to us. Some might argue that those minor tweaks Disney-fy the process, but I believe that they whittle away the things that …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/02/the-changeling-by-victor-lavalle/

Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett

Of the later Discworld books, I like the ones about Tiffany Aching best because their stories arise from the characters and the natural interactions that flow from their natures as Pratchett has described them. Naturally there is the overarching theme of Tiffany growing up — and in Wintersmith her precociousness is easier for me to accept …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/01/wintersmith-by-terry-pratchett/