Writer, editor, translator, project manager, reformed bookseller. Currently based in Berlin, following stints in Moscow, Tbilisi, Munich, Washington, Warsaw, Budapest and Atlanta. Also blogs at A Fistful of Euros, though less frequently than here these days.
Most commented posts
- The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison — 9 comments
- White Eagle, Red Star by Norman Davies — 7 comments
- Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire — 6 comments
- Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch — 6 comments
- The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin — 6 comments
Author's posts
The Science Fiction Writers of America announced the winners of this year’s Nebula Awards. Novel Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer [Laura reviewed Annihilation as part of its trilogy, and didn’t like it as much as the SFWA did.] Novella Yesterday’s Kin, Nancy Kress Novelette “A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i,” Alaya Dawn Johnson (F&SF 7-8/14) Short …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/06/07/nebula-award-winners-2015/
Reading Europe In Autumn was more disorienting than usual for an alternate history. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the protagonist of this story set in a slightly-alt near-future Europe could easily have been a slightly-alt me, and not just in the sense that the author had created a sympathetic figure …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/06/04/europe-in-autumn-by-dave-hutchinson/
Eric plays on the Faust legend, and it read to me as a slighter work than the Discworld novels that immediately preceded it in publication. Wikipedia tells me that Eric was originally published in a larger format, fully illustrated by Josh Kirby, who did most of the covers of the UK editions of the Discworld …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/06/02/eric-by-terry-pratchett/
Guards! Guards! , the eighth Discworld novel, introduces Captain Sam Vimes of Ankh-Morpork’s Night Watch, to which the book’s back cover assigns the apt adjective “ramshackle.” Pratchett is perfectly clear about what he’s up to in the novel. He dedicates it as follows: They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/05/31/guards-guards-by-terry-pratchett/
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By Doug Merrill in Alternate History, Coming Attractions, Doug, Eastern Europe, Essay, Fantasy, Lists, Mystery, Politics, Russia, Science Fiction, Short Stories
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May 27, 2015
The good news is that at present I can buy books faster than I can read them. The bad news is that at present I can buy books faster than I can read (and review) them. Here are some new things that have appeared (somehow!) in the to-be-read pile, along with what some of my …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/05/27/to-be-read-1/
A thirty-year-old fantasy adventure novel has aged less badly than a seventy-year-old Hollywood novel. That’s the first thing that struck me thinking back on Steven Brust’s Jhereg, and comparing it to the other book that I just recently finished. Though to be fair, I suppose I should check back in another forty years. I’ll mark …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/05/16/jhereg-by-steven-brust/
I skipped a good sixty or seventy pages of this book in the hope that jumping ahead would prevent me from pronouncing the Eight Deadly Words, but in the end it didn’t. As the copyright page tells any reader, “The novel What Makes Sammy Run? was originally published by Random House, Inc., in 1941. Copyright …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/05/14/what-makes-sammy-run-by-budd-schulberg/
The second offspring of [Jewish] messianic hopes [in eighteenth century Poland] was Frankism—from the name of its founder, Jacob Frank (?–1791). Frank’s father had fled Poland to escape persecution as a follower of Sabbatai Zevi, and Jacob Frank himself traveled widely in Romania and Greece, where (in Salonika) he met those believers in Sabbatai who …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/05/09/history-is-weird/
Of course the house is haunted. But what does it want? Who is writing the letters that seem to deliver themselves? And what does that person (?) want? Malcolm Mays, a protagonist on the run from his past, might live to find out. Or wish he hadn’t. The End of the Sentence is deliciously creepy.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/05/04/the-end-of-the-sentence-by-maria-dahvana-headley-and-kat-howard/
What Work Is We stand in the rain in a long line waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work. You know what work is—if you’re old enough to read this you know what work is, although you may not do it. Forget you. This is about waiting, shifting from one foot to another. Feeling the …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/05/01/what-work-is-by-philip-levine/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire