Oct 29 2019
(with colors by the amazing Mary Cagle) As an open borders absolutist, I’ve been wanting a book like this to come along for years. Living in the USA, it’s almost mind-boggling that people aren’t more inclined towards immigration, given that the contiguous 48 states are one of the world’s best modern examples of the free …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/29/open-borders-the-science-and-ethics-of-immigration-by-bryan-caplan-zach-weinersmith/
Oct 28 2019
Gosh, I still can’t get over how clunky that title is. That said, I was disappointed with this novel. Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy is one of the all-time best examinations of the horrors of war, and her skill at writing about armed conflict and the toll it takes on the men who fight in it …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/28/the-silence-of-the-girls-by-pat-barker/
Oct 26 2019
Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series takes place mostly in an England that’s a republic a Wales that’s a socialist republic; of Scotland there is practically no mention, though I cannot say whether that is a comment or happenstance. The Crimean War was still being fought in 1985, and there are various other bits of history …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/26/the-woman-who-died-a-lot-by-jasper-fforde/
Oct 23 2019
Edge of Empires is a one-volume history of Georgia from the earliest discernible traces through June 2018, a remarkable feat of synthesis and scholarship. In fact, the main text runs just four hundred pages, so in some sense Rayfield positively gallops through four millennia of events in the Transcaucasus and eastern Anatolia. He’s very up …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/23/edge-of-empires-by-donald-rayfield/
Oct 22 2019
I’m conceding defeat and I’m not even sure whom to. See, despite being an ardent mystery fan since a wee girl, I’ve been lukewarm at most to the Sherlock Holmes canon, and have had very little interest in reading the Sherlockiana that has spawned since. Not even Neil Gaiman’s brilliant A Study In Emerald could …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/22/sherlock-holmes-and-the-christmas-demon-by-james-lovegrove/
Oct 20 2019
I mean, it’s not the worst Man Booker winner I can think of. If for nothing else, I do appreciate Milkman for being the first Northern Irish fiction I’ve read that I can remember: I’ve read plenty of stuff from Ireland but never from “over-the-border” so this was very illuminating. As someone born on the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/20/milkman-by-anna-burns/
Oct 19 2019
I gave myself a few days to properly mull over this book, and you guys. My biggest impression still is “that’s not okay.” First, stylistically (thematically?), I really, really hated that N. K. Jemisin veered away from the hard sci-fi of the first novel to get all fake(?) magicky. Honestly, when Alabaster (still hate that …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/19/the-obelisk-gate-the-broken-earth-2-by-n-k-jemisin/
Oct 16 2019
Ugh, I’m so sad to be coming to the end of this review series! It’s been such a delight to cook my way through this terrific volume, and I’m sad that our journey together ends here. Of course, I’d love to hear if any of you whip up some of the amazing treats in this …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/16/firefly-the-big-damn-cookbook-by-chelsea-monroe-cassel-review-part-iv/
Oct 15 2019
One of the unusual things that Naomi Novik does in Spinning Silver — so unusual, in fact, that I can’t think of another fantasy book that does it — is to state that some of her main characters are Jews. The first chapter lays out the hints: the characters are moneylenders in a small town whose …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/15/spinning-silver-by-naomi-novik/
Oct 15 2019
This was such a surprisingly grounded, even-handed look at revolution and its toll, emotional and material, on the survivors. While very much a cross between the Harry Potter and Red Rising books — except with dragons instead of magic or advanced technology — it felt at its heart closer akin to Jo Walton’s The Just …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/15/fireborne-the-aurelian-cycle-1-by-rosaria-munda/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire