Readable, if highly problematic. And usually when the word “problematic” is bandied about, reviewers are considering subject matter or character/authorial point of view. My use of the word comes more from the way Dana Chamblee Carpenter has treated actual history in the service of her tale: abusively, to be blunt about it. Going off on …
Category: Horror
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/04/17/bohemian-gospel-bohemian-gospel-1-by-dana-chamblee-carpenter/
Dec 24 2016
Fables: Werewolves Of The Heartland (Fables #17) by Bill Willingham et al
Not a great jumping on point for new readers, no matter what the press may say. I enjoyed it as a bit of filler story for Bigby on the road, and it answers a few questions raised by his time fighting in WWII, but I didn’t feel it was an essential part of the Fables …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/12/24/fables-werewolves-of-the-heartland-fables-17-by-bill-willingham-et-al/
Dec 05 2016
Fables: The Deluxe Edition, Book Two by Bill Willingham et. al.
The only problem with reading comics in their original single-issue format is that, if you’re like me and disorganized and somewhat absent-minded (and thus, the kind of person who finds Goodreads a godsend for its ability to help me keep track of what I’ve read and what I haven’t,) a lot of times, you don’t …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/12/05/fables-the-deluxe-edition-book-two-by-bill-willingham-et-al/
Nov 01 2016
The View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman
One of the descriptions of Neil Gaiman that has stuck in my head is “reasonably facile writer.” He used the phrase in a New Yorker profile back in 2010, and there’s a British self-deprecating quality to the description, but there’s more than a little truth to it, too. Gaiman writes quickly, and with reasonable facility, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/11/01/the-view-from-the-cheap-seats-by-neil-gaiman/
Oct 05 2016
The Vanquished by Robert Gerwarth
At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, the guns fell silent, ending more than four years of terrible war in Europe. First as Armistice Day and later as Remembrance Day, European (and Commonwealth) countries even now commemorate the end of the First World War nearly a century after …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/10/05/the-vanquished-by-robert-gerwarth/
Oct 01 2016
The Girl With All The Gifts by M. R. Carey
This is another one of those books where I saw that a movie was coming out, and the trailer looked good enough that I felt I ought to read the book before I was inadvertently spoiled as to what happens. And then I was puzzled to discover that M. R. Carey is the pseudonym of …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/10/01/the-girl-with-all-the-gifts-by-m-r-carey/
Jul 25 2016
The Nightmare Stacks by Charles Stross
Charles Stross’ Laundry series began as pastiches of spy novels, with Lovecraftian beings of endless horror substituting for cat-stroking megalomaniacs as the bad guys. Running a close second in the bad guy scheme of things are the higher reaches of the spy organization, partly because the third well of inspiration for the series is The …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/07/25/the-nightmare-stacks-by-charles-stross/
May 05 2016
The Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgwood
As their dates of publication recede into the past, books of history increasingly become artifacts of what they chronicle. They illuminate two periods: the one about which they are written, and the one in which they are written. With academic or more specialist works, this process is faster and more conscious; monographs are written in …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/05/the-thirty-years-war-by-c-v-wedgwood/
Apr 13 2016
The Ballad Of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
I haven’t actually read much Lovecraft, so wasn’t aware of how problematic some of his works, such as The Horror At Red Hook, are in terms of dealing with minorities and immigrants. When this novella was recommended to my Ingress Book Club, I felt that, as a matter of due diligence, I ought to read …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/04/13/the-ballad-of-black-tom-by-victor-lavalle/
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/03/07/the-king-in-yellow-by-robert-w-chambers/
Al Singh
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The Shire