Nov 17 2020
So there are some really good bits in Chloe Gong’s retelling of Romeo And Juliet, set in 1920s Shanghai and featuring the scions of two rival gang families needing to team up to defeat a supernatural threat to the city. First and foremost is the lived-in character of Juliette Cai, heir to the Scarlet Gang, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/11/17/these-violent-delights-these-violent-delights-1-by-chloe-gong/
Nov 04 2020
I was so chuffed to learn about this Arabian-inspired fantasy YA novel by an American niqabi, which had been getting so many rave reviews! I had to keep putting off reading it for one reason or another, but was so pleased to finally have time to settle in with it over the weekend. I was …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/11/04/we-hunt-the-flame-sands-of-arawiya-1-by-hafsah-faizal/
Nov 01 2020
The stories in Swords Against Death are among the first published adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, making them more than 70 years old at this writing. The bulk of them were published as stand-alone stories in pulp magazines in the 1940s and 1950s; nearly all of them predate The Lord of the Rings, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/11/01/swords-against-death-by-fritz-leiber/
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 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 09 2020
Oh, wow, a book that updates Chinese mythology for young Western readers! You know, I’ll admit that I don’t know much about Chinese deities beyond Kwan Yin, aspects of Buddha and what I remember from absorbing various tales of the Monkey God via TV and comics (as well as the usual prominent holiday-related mythologies) so …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/09/the-dragon-warrior-the-dragon-warrior-1-by-katie-zhao/
Sep 24 2020
It’s sometimes funny what sticks with a reader. I first encountered Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Fritz Leiber’s famed sword and sorcery duo and the protagonists of Swords and Deviltry, on the order of 40 years ago, and I remember very clearly that I started with the second volume: Swords Against Death. If I were …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/09/24/swords-and-deviltry-by-fritz-leiber/
Sep 19 2020
The magic is still there, in The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. More than half a century after its publication, it’s still lodged partly in a timeless yet post-WWII America and partly in places whose times and locations are much more suspect, nearly pure mythical settings of village and unhappy kingdom and enchanted castle, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/09/19/the-last-unicorn-by-peter-s-beagle/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire