Aug 16 2024

Reborn by Abraham Rodriguez

On the one hand, I’m happy for the interest in poetry that the viral success of Rupi Kaur has brought mainstream. On the other, well, you get the feeling that everyone feels that they can write poetry now.

And yes, to a certain extent, everyone can write poetry. But too often writers confuse epigraphs with epigrams, and churn out the former while utterly convinced that they’re producing the latter. Abraham Rodriguez is a talented performer and a writer with plenty of potential who has also, alas, fallen victim to this mindset. There are some really good poems in this second collection of his, but there are also several baffling choices in the shorter works that speak, I believe, to his relative youth (he’s 24!) and perhaps to a need for a more rigorous cutting process, if not outright rethinking of the shape of the finished book.

Honestly, as I was reading this collection, I kept feeling less like it was a completed entity and more like the blueprint for what could be a really impressive memoir or novel in verse. The progression of the poems goes from Mr Rodriguez’s childhood; his struggles with the church and the abuse he suffered; the pleasures and heartbreak of sex and romance, and his experiences in Hollywood, as well as the body image issues he suffered as someone who must, of necessity, trade on his looks to succeed. He writes on all these subjects with honesty and raw emotion, so there’s no doubting the creative core that lies at the heart of this endeavor. But while this collection works just fine altogether, too few of the poems are capable of standing alone. “Welcome to the closet” and “Counting my calories” are fortunately some of the stronger pieces. “Whose fault is that?” and “We take turns”, on the other hand, aren’t anywhere near as clever as they’re trying to be.

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Aug 15 2024

A Phone Call Away by Rich Douek & Russell Mark Olson

Interestingly, the cover only credits the artist as Russell Olson, perhaps due to space and legibility issues. Full credit to this creative team for one of the best crime comics I’ve ever read, tho! And, given the sheer amount of crime fiction I read, that is saying a lot!

A Phone Call Away is the story of the Walker family, who survived the unimaginable to turn their grief into a fight for kids worldwide. Fourteen years ago, Emma and Andrew Walker were your typical young couple with a six year-old kid, Mandy. When Mandy was kidnapped and her mutilated body found a week later, the Walkers were catapulted into the national spotlight. Seizing the opportunity, the Walkers used the attention to build not only their careers but a charitable foundation named after their late daughter. After several years, they also had another child, Meghan, whose upbringing has been documented on their wildly popular reality TV show, Second Chances.

So when they go to wake Meghan on the morning of her sixth birthday and find her gone, it’s the worst kind of deja vu. Someone has clearly broken in and taken her, but who? As the cracks in their picture-perfect facade begin to widen, a group of people still affected by — if not downright obsessed with — what happened to Mandy fourteen years ago converge in order to uncover the truth… and hopefully save a little girl’s life in the process.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/15/a-phone-call-away-by-rich-douek-russell-mark-olson/

Aug 14 2024

That’s Not Fair by Shinsuke Yoshitake

Wit is infused into every detail of this children’s book that has just as much insight for parents as it does for their precocious kids.

The young girl who grumpily exclaims the title of the book on its cover has had enough. Adults are always getting away with bossing their kids around unfairly, so she’s going to march up to her Daddy and not only make a formal complaint, but also demand answers. Why do adults get to stay up so late after telling their not even sleepy kids to go to bed? Why do they get to order kids into baths? And how come they don’t have to eat food they dislike but kids need to eat all their green peas?

Daddy, who was happily minding his own business reading a book when she barges in, decides to answer her questions, beginning with the first. At night, he claims, Santa Claus’ investigators come to check on whether kids are being good by going to bed on time, a task his daughter has been acing. His daughter, being no dummy, is highly skeptical of this story, and continues to press for answers. Daddy starts making up all sorts of wild stories to answer her other questions, as father and daughter strive, in this roundabout way, to better understand one another. The apple, ofc, does not fall far from the tree when Daddy turns the tables and points out that sometimes kids can be unfair, too.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/14/thats-not-fair-by-shinsuke-yoshitake/

Aug 13 2024

Zephyr’s War by James R Gregory (EXCERPT)

Hello, readers! We have a fresh excerpt from a Wall Street thriller publishing today. Inspired by the author’s experience in corporate branding and international public speaking, particularly in Ukraine, this debut novel is a gripping tale of ambition, temptation and the precarious nature of wealth’s pursuit.

Growing up in the shadow of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Zep Zephyr dedicated his young life to growing sunflowers on his family’s farm. When the Chernobyl reactor exploded, Zep and his brother Ziggy set out on a journey to start anew. Driven by the overwhelming desire to embrace capitalism, Zep and his brother make their way to New York City. Zep immerses himself in the world of finance and soon discovers the alluring promise of great fortunes: an initial public offering on Wall Street. Yet his triumphs draw the attention of a sinister syndicate — the Russian mafia — who desire a slice of his success.

Meanwhile, the Securities Exchange Commission and the FBI have launched a relentless investigation into the surging criminal underworld seeking to infiltrate Wall Street’s impregnable fortress. Time becomes the enemy as the clock ticks ominously, propelling Zep into a high-stakes battle for his reputation, his future, and his very life.

Read on for a peek into Zep’s life, both old and new!

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Aug 12 2024

Hanami: You, Me, & 200 Sq Ft In Japan by Julia Cejas

Younger me would be absolutely shocked to hear that I no longer have the time to read full blurbs or the back cover matter of books anymore, but such are the perils of having so much to read, and so little time to do it in! Present day me was thus quite surprised to get several pages into this book and realize that the protagonists are both foreigners who come to Japan to live for an extended period of time, and aren’t a Japanese woman and her foreign boyfriend, as many of these biographies tend to be. Perhaps that is just my confirmation bias tho, as an Asian woman and reader who is often exposed to same.

But that worked out okay because this book was even better than I expected! I was thinking that this would be the portrayal of a Japanese woman’s struggle to integrate her foreign boyfriend into her local community and culture, so was admittedly a little wary of what this actually is: the tale of two Spanish citizens with no ties to Japan besides their ambitions, moving to Tokyo to see if they can make a go of life there. Marc has just lost his job as a civil engineer and Julia is still struggling to get her career as an illustrator to take off. In their early 30s and with no dependents, what better time to pool their savings and severance pay to try to live for a while in Japan? If they happen to get jobs while they’re at it, then even better, as Marc figures he can finally pursue his lifelong dream of composing music whereas Julia can basically work from anywhere with Internet.

The couple prepare for their trip by taking language lessons in advance of enrolling in a Japanese language school while staying in Tokyo. But nothing really prepares them for actually living in a country where they know so little of the language and customs. Fortunately, Julia and Marc are ready to learn, as Ms Cejas herself beautifully and hilariously details in this autobiographical graphic novel.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/12/hanami-you-me-200-sq-ft-in-japan-by-julia-cejas/

Aug 11 2024

Hugo Awards 2024: Best Novelette

The 2024 Hugo Award ceremony is about to start, and I am watching the livestream, so this post is nothing if not timely. Maybe even by the time I have finished it, I will know how my choices compared with those of the other voters. Here are briefish notes on each finalist, in ascending order of my preference.

Ivy, Angelica, Bay by C. L. Polk

“Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition,” Gu Shi /〈2181序曲〉再版导言, 顾适 translated by Emily Jin. In the next few decades, humanity learns how to master cryosleep, a method of hibernation that effectively allows some people to skip forward decades in time. The technology was originally used for people with terminal diseases; they were placed into hibernation in the hope that advancing medical knowledge would allow their illness to be cured at some point in the future. That changed quickly, and “cryosleep became a common mode of transportation—across time, rather than space.” (p. 4) The story explores some of the ramifications of mass migration through suspended animation, not least as a means for shoving problems onto other people. The “Introduction” is structured as just that, an introduction to another literary work the 2181 Overture, featuring excerpts and analysis but without going to the trouble of telling the story directly. The stories are alluded to, gestured toward; as a reader, I would like to experience them in full, rather than just get the academic notes. I felt too distanced from the matter to care very much.

“I AM AI” by Ai Jiang. The first-person narrator is a gig worker, who is hard pressed by clients in a rough combination of turbocapitalism and influencer-like fickleness. She is artificially enhanced in various ways, but that also means that she has to charge her battery or she dies. The story is a mix of her efforts to stay ahead of business, to lend power from her battery to various people she is helping, her desire for more augmentation, and the consequences of some of those choices. There are also perspectives on New Era, a generalized monopoly that is her competitor and an overwhelming power in the city where she lives. It was fast-paced, but also easy to see where the story was going.

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Aug 09 2024

Tantalizing Tales — August 2024 — Part One

Happy August, readers! I have never had a year in which I’ve looked so forward to my kids going back to school. I love spending time with them but they’ve felt a little needier — and definitely a lot louder! — than in previous years, so it’ll be nice to get some nice, quiet reading time to myself again soon.

In the meantime, here’s a round up of the terrific books that have just published in the last two weeks that I haven’t yet been able to get to, but still want to highlight for being super interesting. First up is The Wedding People by Alison Espach, which has been highly recommended to me by people whose opinions I trust. It’s also the Read With Jenna Book Club pick for the month of August!

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, with no baggage and no company. She’s immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event.

Phoebe has dreamt of coming here for years. She once hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe ― which makes it that much more surprising when the women can’t stop confiding in each other. By turns uproariously funny and devastatingly tender, this is a look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/09/tantalizing-tales-august-2024-part-one/

Aug 08 2024

Eight Days Of Luke by Diana Wynne Jones

The second book in the A Year Of Diana Wynne Jones challenge that I could join in on was this, Eight Days Of Luke. I’m honestly still torn over how I feel about the various covers: some seem a little spoiler-tastic, but if I’m being perfectly honest, I didn’t even look properly at the cover art of the copy I had till I’d started guessing who these strange people are who keep harassing our poor hero David and his new, titular best friend.

David is home for the holidays from a boarding school that he actually quite enjoys, especially in comparison with the miserable set of family he has to come home to. His parents died in an accident long ago, and so he stays with his snobbish Great-Aunt Dot, sickly Great-Uncle Bernard, self-centered Cousin Ronald and Ronald’s peevish wife Astrid. They all seem to consider him a nuisance, which wouldn’t even be so bad except that they keep expecting him to be performatively grateful that they’ve taken on the burden of raising him.

It’s after one particularly distressing family row that David finds himself exiled to the bottom of the garden. He’s angry, bored and determined to come up with the biggest and most impressive curse he can think of to punish his family with. Since he doesn’t actually know any curses or mystical languages, he just decides to make a lot of appropriate-sounding noises till he finds something that sounds right. He doesn’t actually expect anything to happen… until the garden wall falls over and a boy emerges, pursued by snakes.

After helping dispatch the snakes, the boy — who introduces himself as Luke — helps David fix the garden wall, then proceeds to be the best friend a lonely boy could ask for. Luke is fun and easily charms David’s family, even if he does have a strange affinity for fire. Between him and David, they even get Astrid to start focusing less on the negative and start being a good parent, or at least a cool aunt, to her neglected young cousin.

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Aug 07 2024

Humblewood: Shock In Stormcrag by Jordan Richer & Verity Lane

I was so thrilled to finally be able to stop by my local friendly game store for Free RPG Day 2024 and snag a whole bunch of loot. While showing off my haul to my friends, one of my Space Gnomes on our Discord server asked, mischievously, if this meant that I would run the Humblewood one-shot I’d picked up for them. I laughed and told her to give me a week to read it over and decide. It took me less than a day and I was all in.

But because I have the game master’s usual completist urges (more or less: I’ve still managed to last this long without owning any of Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition core rulebooks,) I wanted to read more of the source material so that I’d feel adequately prepared to answer any questions my players might bring up. Hit Point Press was selling “imperfect” copies of the main Humblewood sourcebook for only $10 plus shipping, so ofc I had to take advantage of that excellent deal.

The core book itself is a delightful, absorbing read that I’m planning on reviewing when I read through the campaign included at the end, either in preparation for running it or, more likely, after giving up hope that someone will run it for me. I was a little chagrined to discover that the geographical area covered in the one-shot is actually described in a whole different book, oops. Fortunately for my anxiety levels, my players who also own the core set haven’t mastered the geography of the setting either. That was a relief, as well as an impetus for all of us to buy more of HPP’s books. Never let it be said that participating in Free RPG Day doesn’t generate sales, publishers, as I know I’m not the only one of my friends to give HPP my money after picking up this adventure.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/07/humblewood-shock-in-stormcrag-by-jordan-richer-verity-lane/

Aug 06 2024

Homecoming Queen by Chad Boudreaux (EXCERPT)

Hello there, readers! This week we have another excerpt treat for you. Chad Boudreaux is back with another fast-paced political thriller, Homecoming Queen, publishing today. While his debut, Scavenger Hunt, was set in Washington DC’s halls of power, his sophomore novel examines small-town politics on the South Texas coast where he was born and raised.

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Time is of the essence as the hurricane of the century, predicted to obliterate everything in its path, barrels toward Anika Raven’s hometown of Miranda, Texas. But the deadly storm is not her biggest problem. Not so long ago, she was her high school’s beloved homecoming queen. Now she finds herself on the run from the law and running out of time after troubles within her disintegrating family force her to pursue vigilante justice. With the storm approaching and tensions in town increasing, factions brace for battle as Anika and her sister are caught in the middle, trying to survive.

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Read on for an excerpt from this thrilling novel!

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/06/homecoming-queen-by-chad-boudreaux-excerpt/