Category: Fantasy

The Magician’s Tower by Shawn Thomas Odyssey

The mystery was a bit more predictable here, and the book overall took on a much more Harry Potter-slant than the first, but still a tremendously charming and engaging supernatural mystery, ostensibly for children, but definitely enjoyable for those well past that stage in life. In this installment of the series, Oona Crate enters a …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/13/the-magicians-tower-by-shawn-thomas-odyssey/

The Wizard Of Dark Street by Shawn Thomas Odyssey

This book was so darn charming that I immediately went and got the next in the series. Oona Crate lives in Victorian-era New York City, or on a street adjacent to it anyway. Magic is inherent in her blood, but she would rather spurn her natural talents and the unreliability of magic for the cold, …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/13/the-wizard-of-dark-street-by-shawn-thomas-odyssey/

The Just City by Jo Walton

What if people took Plato’s Republic seriously enough to attempt putting it into practice? What if two of those people were the Greek deities Apollo and Athena, who have the power to make Plato’s implausible starting conditions real? Those are the premises underlying The Just City by Jo Walton. The Olympians, as Walton describes them, …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/04/27/the-just-city-by-jo-walton/

Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett

Fourteen books into Discworld, Lords and Ladies is the first time Terry Pratchett deemed it necessary to put in a note connecting the event in the book at hand to a previous volume. It hasn’t hurt that I have been reading them in order of publication, but it hasn’t been particularly necessary either. And in …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/04/17/lords-and-ladies-by-terry-pratchett/

The Paper Magician by Charlie N Holmberg

A rather slight novel given the rather amazing magic system on display. I love the fact that magicians can manipulate man-made objects but bond to only one category, and thought the pseudo-Victorian era intriguing, but thought there was a lot of fast and loose played with the society’s rules. Ceony’s journey through the heart was …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/03/23/the-paper-magician-by-charlie-n-holmberg/

Nobody’s Home by Tim Powers

Nobody’s Home is subtitled An Anubis Gates Story, which helped to draw me towards reading this story because I had heard good things about The Anubis Gates, although I have not read it. In an alternate nineteenth-century London, ghosts haunt the living, and some magics work, if not routinely then with a certain amount of …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/03/08/nobodys-home-by-tim-powers/

Mistborn: Secret History by Brandon Sanderson

Immediately upon finishing Bands Of Mourning, I went to Amazon and purchased this novella. Now, everyone will warn you that you can’t read this book without having read the entirety of the first Mistborn trilogy, and I am no different. But I will further recommend that you read this soon after reading those books, because …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/02/23/mistborn-secret-history-by-brandon-sanderson/

Bands Of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson

Just Goddamnit, Brandon Sanderson, why are you so good?!?! HOW are you so good?! I spent far too much time yelling at the book like it was an Arsenal match, it was that engaging. At one point, I pounded my fists on the table with rage. Really terrific installment. The Mistborn series just gets better …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/02/22/bands-of-mourning-by-brandon-sanderson/

Brayan’s Gold by Peter V. Brett

Brayan’s Gold is a novella that forms part of the back story for the main character in a set of novels by Peter V. Brett, which I have not read. It began as a reference tossed into the first of those, “reminding people that Arlen had a ton of adventures back when he was young …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/02/09/brayans-gold-by-peter-v-brett/

Small Gods by Terry Pratchett

After looking at the power of stories in Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett turns to some of the greatest stories ever told: religions, and, somewhat more incidentally, philosophy. Small Gods, the thirteenth Discworld novel, takes place in and around Omnia, an austere land on the edge of a great desert. The church of the Great God …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/02/08/small-gods-by-terry-pratchett/