Nov 10 2021
What if (the original, tho in fairness, I haven’t yet watched the remake of) The Craft wasn’t about witches but was about wicked fairies instead? That’s the basic premise of Nightmare In Savannah, which opens with Alexa Bowman moving from Chicago to live with her grandfather in Savannah, Georgia. She’s not super looking forward to …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/10/nightmare-in-savannah-by-lela-gwenn-rowan-maccoll-micah-myers/
Sep 07 2021
It’s weird how Silvia Moreno-Garcia is so hit or miss for me. Perhaps it’s because I didn’t start with the books which made her famous, and which I still really want to read. Instead, I’ve hopped around her timeline somewhat, based on what was available to me, and can safely say that her newer works …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/07/certain-dark-things-by-silvia-moreno-garcia/
Jul 25 2021
I loved “The City Born Great,” the 2016 short story (and 2017 Hugo finalist) that was the seed of this novel. “The conceit of the story is that great human cities have a life of their own. Maybe that life awakens quickly, maybe it takes centuries or millennia, but at some point the genius loci …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/07/25/the-city-we-became-by-n-k-jemisin/
May 28 2021
I’d never read any books from either of these bestselling authors before I picked up Spells Trouble, but I really love the idea of a mother-daughter duo writing urban fantasies featuring teenage twin sisters who are witches descended from those persecuted at the infamous Salem witch trials. Hunter and Mercy Goode are on the cusp …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/05/28/spells-trouble-sisters-of-salem-1-by-p-c-cast-kristin-cast/
May 24 2021
How to make the now well-worn trope of vampires and monster hunters feel fresh and new again? Set the proceedings in historic Prague, with a firm eye on local history and mythology free of the influence of the too-standard figures of modern, Western-European-leaning pop culture, while also infusing a 21st-century sensibility to the proceedings. We …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/05/24/the-lights-of-prague-by-nicole-jarvis/
May 17 2021
P Djèlí Clark wrote two novellas set in this universe before A Master Of Djinn, and I think that if you preferred A Dead Djinn In Cairo to The Haunting Of Tram Car 015 then you’ll definitely enjoy this one too. Like the prior novellas, his first full-length book is about mystical goings-on in an …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/05/17/a-master-of-djinn-dead-djinn-universe-1-by-p-djeli-clark/
May 11 2021
It’s weird feeling like I’m perfectly suited to review this book as a diaspora Malaysian but also feeling inadequate to review this book for that very same reason. The experience of reading Black Water Sister was like stepping back into old, comfy clothes and wandering around my hometown, but a small part of me was …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/05/11/black-water-sister-by-zen-cho/
Apr 24 2021
Wasn’t this fun! Susan Arkshaw has grown up in a rural corner of southwestern England, with an absent father and a very absent-minded artist mother. Two minutes before The Left-Handed Booksellers of London opens — on May 1, 1983 — Susan turns 18. She’s also just had one of her recurring dreams, full of giant …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/04/24/the-left-handed-booksellers-of-london-by-garth-nix/
Mar 25 2021
Hrimland, an alternate Iceland, sighs under its exploitation by Kalmar, a Nordic union that in history lasted from 1397 to 1523 but extends into the unspecified present of Shadows of the Short Days. Garún feels that exploitation more keenly than most; half human and half huldufólk, she’s an outcast among the oppressed. Worse, she left …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/03/25/shadows-of-the-short-days-by-alexander-dan-vilhjalmsson-2/
Mar 02 2021
Such an excellent premise, such an underwhelming execution! Hetty Rhodes was a conductor on the Underground Railroad, helping other enslaved people escape slavery as she once had, using the magical abilities she was gifted with. Once the Civil War ended, she settled in Philadelphia with her husband and co-conductor Benjy Rhodes, but never gave up …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/03/02/the-conductors-murder-and-magic-1-by-nicole-glover/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire