This guy. Seriously, Brandon Sanderson is the kind of author all professional writers should aspire to be. You’d think that the quality of his output would suffer given the discipline he adheres to in producing it, but no: all his books are intelligent, creative, wildly entertaining and filled with his distinctive sense of humanity and …
Category: Fantasy
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/01/08/shadows-of-self-by-brandon-sanderson/
Nov 20 2015
Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch
It took me two days to finish the last 5%, mostly because damn you, Ingress double ap, but also because I was neither ready for nor okay with the idea of a cliffhanger, which was where I thought the book was going. Instead, it goes one better and, while I still really, really want to …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/11/20/foxglove-summer-by-ben-aaronovitch/
Nov 17 2015
Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch
This was prolly the first book in the series where the case itself felt a little too convoluted (I mean, Isengard, really?) tho I really loved how the overarching series continues to develop with the Faceless Man and argh argh argh the ending! I didn’t expect that to happen and I should have: props to …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/11/17/broken-homes-by-ben-aaronovitch/
Oct 27 2015
Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett
Teresa Nielsen Hayden has observed that while plot is a literary convention, story is a force of nature. In Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett explores some of the things that can happen when these forces of nature latch on to people in his most unnatural of settings. People think that stories are shaped by people. In …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/10/27/witches-abroad-by-terry-pratchett/
Oct 21 2015
New Amsterdam by Elizabeth Bear
There isn’t a zeppelin on the cover to let readers know this is an alternate history, but by way of making up for it, Elizabeth Bear sets the book’s first story on board hydrogen-filled German airship. The Hans Glücker is on its way from Calais to the jewel of British North America, the eponymous New …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/10/21/new-amsterdam-by-elizabeth-bear/
Oct 09 2015
Of Noble Family by Mary Robinette Kowal
Of Noble Family is the fifth book of Mary Robinette Kowal’s Glamourist History series. The series crosses Regency romances with alternate (but not terribly alternate) history and a dash of domestic magic. The series follows Sir David Vincent and his wife Jane, accomplished glamourists; that is, practitioners of the arts of magical illusion known in …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/10/09/of-noble-family-by-mary-robinette-kowal/
Oct 08 2015
The Well-Favored Man by Elizabeth Willey
A friend whose taste I respect recommended The Well-Favored Man to me, and, while I didn’t bounce off of it, I didn’t respond with quite the enthusiasm we both thought I might. She zipped right through it and has, I think, re-read it again in the meantime, while I dawdled the weeks away, and read …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/10/08/the-well-favored-man-by-elizabeth-willey/
Oct 07 2015
Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett
They seem such slight things, the Discworld books. Mostly slender paperbacks with the unmistakable art on their covers and the absurd premises piled on one another (it’s turtles all the way down), usually stacked up in the first few pages. Suddenly it’s a couple hundred pages later, there has been laughter, there has been at …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/10/07/reaper-man-by-terry-pratchett/
Sep 27 2015
Whispers Underground by Ben Aaronovitch
It’s extraordinary how this series doesn’t flag at all, with each book feeling entirely self-contained even as the overarching narrative races towards what promises to be a breathtaking denouement (no pressure, Ben Aaronovitch!) With most urban fantasy, Book 3 (if you’re lucky) is where the stresses of carrying a series would begin to show, in …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/09/27/whispers-underground-by-ben-aaronovitch/
Sep 26 2015
Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch
It isn’t often that the second book in a series I like is even better than the first, but Ben Aaronovitch has managed to build on the cleverness of Midnight Riot to add pathos and depth to his magical universe with Moon Over Soho. Whereas the first book felt a little shaky in its grasp …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/09/26/moon-over-soho-by-ben-aaronovitch/