March 2022 archive

The Loud House #15: The Missing Linc by The Loud House Creative Team

Another cute if slight installment of the Loud House comics series, based on the hit Nickelodeon cartoon. This fifteenth volume of the ongoing series is loosely based on the theme of Lost And Found, with Lincoln’s absence in the first and longest vignette sending his loving sisters on a frenzied search for him. Other of …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/03/30/the-loud-house-15-the-missing-linc-by-the-loud-house-creative-team/

When Things Get Dark edited by Ellen Datlow

I am genuinely impressed by the way this collection invokes the spirit of Shirley Jackson. So many of the stories read as if they might have come from her pen, so seamlessly do they fit into the dark atmosphere engendered by stories such as The Haunting Of Hill House, The Lottery and We Have Always …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/03/24/when-things-get-dark-edited-by-ellen-datlow/

Geronimo Stilton Reporter #10: Blackrat’s Treasure by Geronimo Stilton

I was actually pleasantly surprised by the clever plot twist of this volume, and definitely recommend this book for good all-ages fun. Our title character is a workaholic reporter turned editor with way too many stories to write (and, boy, do I sympathize!) His relatives and co-workers, Benjamin, Thea and Trap, coax him out of …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/03/22/geronimo-stilton-reporter-10-blackrats-treasure-by-geronimo-stilton/

A Trail Through Time by Jodi Taylor

A Trail Through Time by Jodi Taylor

A Trail Through Time is the fourth book about Madeleine Maxwell and St Mary’s Institute for Historical Research where the historians investigate major historical events in contemporary time — “It’s time travel, OK” — and follows closely on the events of A Second Chance. The title of this book refers to the ability of its major antagonists, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/03/21/a-trail-through-time-by-jodi-taylor/

How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith

How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith

In How the Word is Passed, Clint Smith recounts his visits to seven locations as part of what he calls in the book’s subtitle “A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America.” Monticello Plantation. The Whitney Plantation. Angola Prison. Blandford Cemetery. Galveston Island. New York City. Goréee Island (Ghana). Along with a prologue in …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/03/19/how-the-word-is-passed-by-clint-smith/

Wir sind Gefangene by Oskar Maria Graf

Wir sind Gefangene by Oskar Maria Graf

For about the first eighty percent of Wir sind Gefangene (We Are Prisoners), my assessment of the book was that I could see why it was a sensation in the 1920s but couldn’t see much to recommend it for readers of the 2020s. It begins with Graf is at school in the small Bavarian town …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/03/18/wir-sind-gefangene-by-oskar-maria-graf/

Pennyblade by J. L. Worrad

Oh my heart. I don’t know how a book as bawdy and savage as Pennyblade managed to make me cry at the beautiful heartbreak of the final chapters but oh, how it did and how I did. This is not a book that everyone will like (see: bawdy and savage) but if the idea of …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/03/17/pennyblade-by-j-l-worrad/

Wanderhome by Jay Dragon

It’s impossible to be involved in indie tabletop gaming circles these days and remain ignorant of Jay Dragon’s bestselling pastoral fantasy game Wanderhome, which was recently nominated for a Nebula Award. Unusually for a 100+ page tabletop roleplaying game, it has zero combat rules or stats, and almost actively discourages that kind of physical conflict. …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/03/14/wanderhome-by-jay-dragon/

Black City by Boris Akunin

Black City by Boris Akunin

A rare blunder by Erast Fandorin, Imperial Russia’s foremost detective, puts him on the trail of an assassin and revolutionary in the summer of 1914, a trail that leads to Baku, oil-spattered boomtown and possible crucible of a plot against the very order that Fandorin upholds. The city itself is a bubbling pool of money, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/03/13/black-city-by-boris-akunin/

The Man Who Walked Through Walls by Marcel Aymé

The Man Who Walked Through Walls by Marcel Aymé

I wish I could remember who recommended The Man Who Walked Through Walls to me, I owe them a great big thank you. It’s a book I would never have found on my own, and I was completely charmed. The Man Who Walked Through Walls was originally published in French in 1943, reprinting stories that …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/03/12/the-man-who-walked-through-walls-by-marcel-ayme/