Oct 31 2020
Just in time for the full moon falling on Halloween (the celestial alignment that drives the book’s plot), I re-read A Night in the Lonesome October. Everything I wrote about it last time holds true: it’s a romp, a hoot, a love letter to classics of Halloween and suspense, a master storyteller having fun with …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/31/another-night-in-the-lonesome-october-by-roger-zelazny/
Oct 30 2020
My 9 year-old pressed this book on me immediately after he finished reading it last night, because he really wanted to discuss it with me. I read it over dinner, and was honestly relieved to find that the narrative voice was quite different from in its parent series, The Diary Of A Wimpy Kid. Granted, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/30/rowley-jeffersons-awesome-friendly-adventure-diary-of-an-awesome-friendly-kid-2-by-jeff-kinney/
Oct 28 2020
One of my greatest joys as a book critic is finding little known indie/self-published debut novels and championing them for the world to read (see: James Roberts‘ Pardon Me, or anything by Unsung Stories but particularly Rym Kechacha’s Dark River.) As such, I’m always open to queries and will rarely turn anything down, schedule permitting. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/28/the-tech-by-mark-ravine/
Oct 27 2020
I have definitely been consuming this series out of order, reading each as the whims of my 9 year-old sees fit, but I asked for this volume specifically because Jms had been talking about the Dungeons & Dragons analog played in these pages. As I’m a big old roleplaying nerd, I had to see how …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/27/rodrick-rules-diary-of-a-wimpy-kid-2-by-jeff-kinney/
Oct 26 2020
When I was younger, I loved a good climb. Mostly of trees and free-standing structures, tho if I’d had a shot at a climbing wall, I’d have totally been up for that, too. So when my college roommates invited me to join the hiking club, you’d think I’d be all in. Unfortunately, club hiking required …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/26/above-all-else-by-dana-alison-levy/
Oct 23 2020
This is like The Secret Garden but with mermaids and pirates instead, and with characters that I, at least, liked from start to finish (as a pragmatic child, I found it hard to care for any of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s insipid and annoying creations.) Billed as a sequel to The Little Mermaid, Of Salt And …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/23/of-salt-and-shore-by-annet-schaap/
Oct 20 2020
Imagine Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus crossed with Doris Lessing’s The Good Terrorist, filtered through a China Mieville sensibility of industrial magic set firmly in the history and myths of Iceland. That’s what you’re getting in Shadows Of The Short Days, Alexander Dan Vilhjálmsson’s wildly inventive, deeply thoughtful debut novel, which he translated himself from its …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/20/shadows-of-the-short-days-by-alexander-dan-vilhjalmsson/
Oct 19 2020
One of the things I was most impressed by in this first novel of Rebecca Roanhorse’s new epic fantasy series is how effortless it all feels. She’s created a brand new universe using the indigenous cultures of the Americas as its basis, and there isn’t a single moment of self-conscious telling instead of showing. It’s …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/19/black-sun-between-earth-and-sky-1-by-rebecca-roanhorse/
Oct 16 2020
It’s been so long since I’ve read a standalone YA novel that I barely know what to do with myself at the end of A Golden Fury, in no small part due to Samantha Cohoe’s gifts as an author. Despite the ending being quite firmly The End, I’m so invested in these characters and their …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/16/a-golden-fury-by-samantha-cohoe/
Oct 15 2020
Q. Every book has its own story about how it came to be conceived and written as it did. How did Dracula’s Child evolve? I think it’s been evolving ever since I first read Stoker’s extraordinary novel at around eleven or twelve (oddly, and I suspect not entirely coincidentally, the same age as Quincey in …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/15/an-interview-with-j-s-barnes-author-of-draculas-child/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire