Jan 26 2022
I’ve found the Magical History Tour series to be incredibly intelligent and moving to date, but I did not expect to cry quite as much as I did while reading this seventh installment, and particularly over the life and times of a figure who’s become so familiar, I almost take for granted that I already …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/01/26/magical-history-tour-7-gandhi-soldier-of-peace-by-fabrice-erre-sylvain-savoia/
Dec 18 2021
The 2021 World Science Fiction Convention, DisCon III in Washington, DC, is in full swing as I write. In fact, presentations of this year’s Hugo Awards are set to begin in 15 minutes an hour and fifteen minutes, and I plan to write about those in the morning when I wake up and find out …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/12/18/putting-the-world-into-worldcon/
Dec 15 2021
It’s always so frustrating reading books like this and feeling the shock of recognition turn into a weariness, then a resentment at the fact that people don’t think this shit could happen to them, too. The Iranians certainly didn’t think they’d lose their freedom in the late 70s when a coalition of communists and Islamic …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/12/15/iranian-love-stories-by-jane-deuxard-deloupy/
Oct 14 2021
I read a lot of books where I praise the empathy displayed, but after reading Brad Kessler’s brilliant North, I realized that there’s another, rarer quality I appreciate even more in writing: the quality of compassion. It’s one thing to understand where another person’s pain is coming from, to find common ground no matter how …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/10/14/north-by-brad-kessler/
Aug 30 2021
Let me stipulate from the beginning that A Promised Land is not a revelatory book like Dreams from my Father, a book Barack Obama wrote when he had no idea he would be President of the United States one day, when he was finishing figuring out who he was and why anyone who didn’t know …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/08/30/a-promised-land-by-barack-obama/
Aug 22 2021
“How do you rebel against a family of Communists?” asks Bill Browder in the title of the second chapter of Red Notice. Browder’s grandfather, Earl Browder, had started as a labor organizer in Kansas and rose to be the American Communist Party’s presidential candidate in 1936 and 1940. Prior to those campaigns, he spent some …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/08/22/red-notice-by-bill-browder/
Jun 29 2021
This brilliant novel is as if you took the best parts of Blade Runner and Gorky Park and Vertigo and mashed them all together with the most tender empathy and an eye to not only singularity but also the meaning of godhood. My only complaint with this book is that I’d freaking love it if …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/06/29/when-the-sparrow-falls-by-neil-sharpson/
Mar 17 2021
I’m so glad I managed to sneak in this novella between work assignments! It’s a swift read, tho the first few pages require the reader to make several quick adjustments as Nghi Vo drops us directly into her Asian-inspired milieu. It’s well worth it tho, as Ms Vo packs a whole lot more into this …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/03/17/the-empress-of-salt-and-fortune-the-singing-hills-cycle-1-by-nghi-vo/
Feb 22 2021
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, Poisoner of Underpants, Autocrat of Some of the Russias, in Gessen’s reckoning probably the son of a secret policeman, was born in Leningrad in 1952. Like any proper villain — but also like anyone born in that place in that year — he has a tragic backstory. Hitler’s army completed its encirclement of Leningrad …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/02/22/the-man-without-a-face-the-unlikely-rise-of-vladimir-putin-by-masha-gessen/
Dec 22 2020
Y’all, I thought this was the last book in the series. Like, I’m glad there’ll be more, but I was under the impression that this was the grand finale, so spent the last thirty or so pages being pretty confused till Seth Dickinson’s afterword acknowledging both that there’s one final book coming but also that …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/12/22/the-tyrant-baru-cormorant-the-masquerade-3-by-seth-dickinson/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire