Category: Doreen

Rebel of the Sands (Rebel of the Sands #1) by Alwyn Hamilton

This book has such amazing world-building that I absolutely went and put a hold on the next book in the series as soon as I was done with this one. I mean, Western gunslingers meets Arabian Nights? Sign me up! The land of Miraji is a stand-in for the Middle East in this terrific alternate …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/25/rebel-of-the-sands-rebel-of-the-sands-1-by-alwyn-hamilton/

How Not to Be a Professional Footballer by Paul Merson

Absolutely cracking depiction of the lifestyle of a professional English footballer in and around the 1990s. Paul Merson is an Arsenal legend whose off-the-field antics were just as noteworthy as his sporting accomplishments, tho perhaps in a far different context. Merse is a larger than life figure who was as well known for his ebullient …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/22/how-not-to-be-a-professional-footballer-by-paul-merson/

An Interview With Alice Blanchard, author of A Breath After Drowning

Author photo of Alice Blanchard.

Q: Every book has its own story about how it came to be conceived and written as it did. How did A Breath After Drowning evolve? A: I was haunted by the image of a mother abandoning her daughter in the waiting room of a psychiatric hospital—silver crosses draped around the young girl’s neck and …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/19/an-interview-with-alice-blanchard-author-of-a-breath-after-drowning/

The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter (The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club Book 1) by Theodora Goss

Delightful novel, and well worth the rush read. This is the first in the chronicles of the Athena Club, a group of women brought together by the fact that they are all monsters. Or, to be more precise, the daughters/offspring/creation of mad scientists (as well as the doughty Mrs Poole and the plucky Alice. Let’s …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/12/the-strange-case-of-the-alchemists-daughter-the-extraordinary-adventures-of-the-athena-club-book-1-by-theodora-goss/

A Breath After Drowning by Alice Blanchard

Kate Wolf is a psychiatrist specializing in at-risk adolescents. She has a great boyfriend whom she loves almost as much as she loves her job, but her family history has made it so she has massive intimacy issues. Her father is a family physician and someone she’s always striven to emulate, but their relationship is …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/10/a-breath-after-drowning-by-alice-blanchard/

Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos #1) by Dan Simmons

I am getting So. Fucking. Tired of picking up a sci-fi “classic” and having to read through pages and pages of barely endurable garbage to come to the conclusion of “what the fuck was that?!” And I don’t say this about all the classics, obviously: decades on, Ender’s Game, Parable Of The Sower and A …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/09/hyperion-hyperion-cantos-1-by-dan-simmons/

Raven Stratagem (The Machineries of Empire #2) by Yoon Ha Lee

If you’re new to the Machineries Of Empire series, start with my review here. So when I first began reading this I thought, “Wait, what, my memory must really be going because this is totally different from what I remembered of the ending of Ninefox Gambit.” Then I got through over half of the book …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/07/raven-stratagem-the-machineries-of-empire-2-by-yoon-ha-lee/

School for Psychics (School for Psychics #1) by K.C. Archer

Imagine, if you will, the absurdly unlikely but highly entertaining hijinks of the TV show Quantico starring a Jessica Jones type, where all the cast have mental superpowers. That is the fun romp that is K. C. Archer’s School For Psychics, in this case the Whitfield Institute to which our heroine, the wisecracking, damaged Teddy …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/04/school-for-psychics-school-for-psychics-1-by-k-c-archer/

Iron Gold (Red Rising Saga #4) by Pierce Brown

One of the great joys to me of reading Pierce Brown is the gif-heavy conversations I have throughout with Alec about my feeeeeeelings. Because Mr Brown gives me so many feelings, tho this book, I admit, was a little less superlative than the original Red Rising trilogy. It’s hard, of course, to scale the same …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/04/iron-gold-red-rising-saga-4-by-pierce-brown/

Brick Lane by Monica Ali

This powerful book about a woman discovering her own agency through the lens of the Bangladeshi immigrant experience surprised me at how timeless it felt even though it’s set at the turn of the 21st century. It’s very much in the tradition of classics by Thomas Hardy and Willa Cather, documenting with a fine eye …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/03/31/brick-lane-by-monica-ali/