Jun 15 2024

Stille Zeile Sechs by Monika Maron

How much fury fits into 142 pages?

Monika Maron tells her readers from the very first sentence that Herbert Beerenbaum dies, so a good bit of Stille Zeile Sechs (Silent Close Number Six — “Close” in the sense of a small cul-de-sac street, with six as the house number) is finding out who he his, how he dies, and why that matters. Maron also has her first-person narrator, Rosalind Polkowski, slowly reveal how she came to know Beerenbaum, and what he came to mean for her.

Stille Zeile Sechs by Monika Maron

The book is set in East Berlin in the mid-1980s, a time when it looked like the Wall would remain in place forever, keeping people locked in place and subject to the whims of the bureaucrats of the Socialist Unity Party under the watchful eyes of the Ministry for State Security. Silent Close is a fictional street in East Berlin where former Party bigwigs live out their retirement, the current leadership having decamped to a closed settlement about 15km outside the city limits. The real counterpart to the Silent Close is the Majakowskiring, located in the norther part of Pankow. These days it’s a relatively normal street in a leafy part of the city; I haven’t visited. Back then it would have been very closely watched, with every visitor noted, identified and reported. One of the streets that ends at the Majakowskiring is Stille Strasse, Silent Street.

Polkowski is an unusual figure in 1980s East Germany: She has given up her assigned job as a researcher in a history institute and is making a living with whatever comes her way. In her telling, one day she had simply had enough. She had been assigned a topic soon after completing her studies, and plugged away at it year after year until in her early forties she didn’t see any sense in it. That decision was in its way a fundamental challenge to East Germany’s system. Everyone was supposed to have a job, they were all supposed to be doing their bit to build socialism and advance the revolution. They were not supposed to make their own way, outside of the institutions, like a cat with no fixed home who gets a little bit from everyone in the neighborhood. It’s never spelled out in the book, but Polkowski had to have had a relatively privileged upbringing, in Party terms, to have gotten a job as a researcher in the first place.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/15/stille-zeile-sechs-by-monika-maron/

Jun 14 2024

Tantalizing Tales — June 2024 — Part One

Happy June, readers! We have so many great books to cover from the first half of the month, and a few selections from earlier this year that I want to highlight here, as well!

First up is Looking For Smoke by K. A. Cobell. This debut YA mystery by a member of the Blackfeet tribe tells the story of Mara Racette, whose move to the Blackfeet Reservation with her parents hasn’t gone anywhere near as well as hoped. The tight-knit locals are quick to remind her that she grew up far away, as if that’s some sort of personal failing.

So when local girl Loren includes Mara in a traditional Blackfeet Giveaway to honor Loren’s missing sister, Mara thinks she’ll finally start making some new friends. Instead, a girl from the Giveaway, Samantha White Tail, is found murdered. Because the four members of the Giveaway group were the last to see Samantha alive, each becomes a person of interest in the investigation. And all of them–Mara, Loren, Brody, and Eli–have a complicated history with Samantha.

Despite deep mistrust, the four must now band together to take matters into their own hands and clear their names… even though one of them might actually be the killer.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/14/tantalizing-tales-june-2024-part-one/

Jun 13 2024

The Noh Mask Murder by Akimitsu Takagi

translated from the original Japanese by Jesse Kirkwood.

Reading reprints of classic mysteries can be so hit and miss for me, and especially when they’re in translation. As cultures converge globally, reading these snapshots of past attitudes to murder and other unsavory dealings can often feel jarring, especially when taking into account the fact that sometimes there just aren’t words to adequately express a particular cultural touchstone (tho Mr Kirkwood certainly does an excellent job here, so far as I can tell!) The attitudes towards mental health and sex, especially, can seem really dispiriting, particularly in comparison with our relatively more compassionate age.

Which was why Akimitsu Takagi’s The Noh Mask Murder was such a breath of fresh air for me. There is sex and madness aplenty in the pages of this slender volume first published in the 1950s, but they’re treated matter-of-factly and not as indicators of evil. Surprisingly progressive and compassionate, this book showcases the post-World War II culture of Japan while also invoking the universality of the human experience.

But dearest to my novel-loving heart was the brilliant construction of this unusual book, a set of found documents delivered to a detective who happens to bear the same name as the author. The diary at the heart of the book is also an observation of the case, with several less than flattering descriptions of the detective himself. It’s smart, playful and inventive, even before you get to the end of the book and are shocked by how many layers of revelation are contained in these mere 200+ pages.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/13/the-noh-mask-murder-by-akimitsu-takagi/

Jun 12 2024

Bunnybirds Vol 1 by Natalie Linn

In the world of the Bunnybirds (essentially rabbits with wings,) the most important thing is to stay light-hearted so that one can fly freely with the rest of the flock. Princess Aster has been taught that heavy emotions lead to leaden wings, so she, like the rest of the Bunnybirds who live in splendid isolation in the royal tree, tries to live a life that’s essentially “no thoughts, head empty” beyond mealtimes and playtimes.

So when members of the flock begin disappearing, Aster tries not to worry, especially when she’s told that thinking and talking about it will only make everyone sad. But when her own father vanishes, Aster knows she can no longer pretend that everything is fine.

Uncertain of what to do next, she goes to the neighboring dragon court for advice. They laugh her out of their palace, but a young rebel Bunnybird comes to her aid, offering to guide her over the rim of the world in search of her missing people. Carlin is nothing like the rest of the Bunnybirds: her emotions are often all over the place and fully on display, in stark contrast to Aster’s much more dignified composure. The pair have no idea what to do with each other, but Aster needs a guide and Carlin needs the reward, so off they go to territories uncharted by the average Bunnybird.

Or so Aster had always believed. As the pair traverse strange new lands, they fall in with an aloof sand-dog named Feet, and soon learn that their friendship affords them greater power than they had ever wielded individually. Will their bond be enough to save them, however, when they finally discover the fate of the missing Bunnybirds and confront a foe far greater than any they had ever imagined?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/12/bunnybirds-vol-1-by-natalie-linn/

Jun 11 2024

All That Really Matters by David Weill (EXCERPT)

After writing the memoir Exhale: Hope, Healing, and A Life in Transplant, revealing the emotional rollercoaster that is the life of a transplant surgeon, David Weill returns to the operating theater with his debut novel, All That Really Matters!

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Joe Bosco is an arrogant, hard-charging transplant surgeon whose ambition knows no bounds. He pursues his job with a “take no prisoners” approach, as saving patients is not just his job or even his passion: it’s his religion. After his surgical residency, he passes on a job offer from Stanford, instead taking a wildly lucrative position at a private hospital in San Francisco where the bottom line is…the bottom line. Joe leaves behind academic medicine, much to the chagrin of his father— a German Jewish Holocaust survivor who is a world-renowned neuroscientist and Nobel Prize winner—and his girlfriend Kate, who sees Joe turning into a different man from the one she met at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Bosco makes it to the top as a star in the transplant world but soon realizes that the new world he inhabits is fraught with moral and ethical transgressions, some that his partners commit and, eventually, some that he commits. When the hospital administration sides against Joe in an operating room catastrophe, he is isolated and left with a career in shambles, a girlfriend who wants nothing to do with him, and a father who can’t hide his disappointment.

It is not until his life spins out of control that Joe must come to terms with his own failings and find his true purpose in life in the most unlikely of places.

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We’ve been lucky enough to snag the following excerpt for our readers!

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/11/all-that-really-matters-by-david-weill-excerpt/

Jun 10 2024

Stamped From The Beginning: A Graphic History Of Racist Ideas In America by Ibram X. Kendi & Joel Christian Gill

I do not have time to read all the books I want to, so when I was offered the graphic history adaptation of Ibram X Kendi’s award-winning Stamped From The Beginning, I absolutely jumped at the chance. Graphic novels and non-fiction are usually a much faster read for me than plain text, and I really loved the cover of this book (plus Joel Christian Gill’s linework is just excellent throughout.)

Covering the history of anti-Black racism since the founding of America as the nation it is today, via the lens of five important figures on both sides of the fight against racism, this was a super enlightening book for me to read. I only grew up intermittently in the United States, so my education in its history is even sketchier than the average informed student’s. As my own circle of friends and acquaintances has grown — as well as my access to excellent material like this book — I’ve learned a lot more, including the stuff they don’t put in textbooks and, in fact, are fighting to keep out of the curriculum in certain states even in the present day.

Having not read the source material, I can’t say with any certainty how true to the original book this is. Professor Gill acknowledges that Dr Kendi’s Stamped From The Beginning was only one reference point for this volume: an understandable choice given the need to look up what all the historical figures, locales and times depicted here looked like. I do know that this nearly 300-page graphic adaptation of the 500+ page original follows the five-part structure of the original, so a significant condensation must have been applied in order to get all the ideas to fit in here. And for the most part, this works out well, especially when it comes to talking about how to be an antiracist and how to fight racism, even the insidious kind we don’t realize is present in our everyday lives. Frankly, the only criticism I have of this book relates to how certain topics are very conspicuously dropped in ways that can too easily confuse a layperson like me, particularly in the earlier chapters. I know that the climate theory of race is bogus, but it doesn’t even make sense in the way it’s presented in the book. I also wondered why the first Black representative, Hiram Rhodes Revels, was never named but only mentioned in passing by position: a weird omission in a book about seeing Black people as human beings. I also, frankly, wanted to know more about the colonization of Liberia, tho I imagine that’s a whole other book on its own.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/10/stamped-from-the-beginning-a-graphic-history-of-racist-ideas-in-america-by-ibram-x-kendi-joel-christian-gill/

Jun 08 2024

Hugo Awards 2024: Best Short Story

How to Raise a Kraken by P. Djeli Clark

I was glad to see that enough Chinese fans nominated works for this year’s Hugos that a fair number of works and people from China made it to the list of finalists. There are two short stories, one novelette, and two novellas in the long-established fiction categories, plus one in best graphic story, two in best related work, one in best dramatic presentation (long form), two in best editor (short form), one in best editor (long form), and one in best fancast. I am grateful that all five tales in the fiction categories were translated into English so that I could read the works and cast a more fully informed vote. This is putting more of the world into Worldcon, and I hope it continues.

Like Doreen, I’ve found that writing about the short story nominees is a good way to get into the flow of writing about the finalists, even if I have already read some of the other nominated works. (And I read Starter Villain so fast and with such delight that I couldn’t not write about it.) So here are my brief thoughts on the short story finalists, in ascending order of preference.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/08/hugo-awards-2024-best-short-story/

Jun 07 2024

City of Bones by Martha Wells

When I sat down to read City of Bones it was just what the doctor ordered: an immersive fantasy adventure that wasn’t too terribly obvious, but that wasn’t exploding with structural or thematic ambition, not trying to expand the genre or blow the reader away with stylistic genius. That willingness to let the book be what it is gives Wells space to spring some surprises as the story develops.

City of Bones by Martha Wells

One additional interesting aspect of City of Bones as a book is that the current version is a 2022 revision — Wells does not say how heavily — of the novel that was first published in 1995. She writes that when the first version went out of print, the rights came back to her and she offered it to “a few other publishers, but no one was interested.” She doesn’t speculate as to why, but adds that City of Bones is “a secondary world post-magical-apocalypse-ecological-disaster with a nonhuman main character, a fantasy on the edge of science fiction, grim and dark but not grimdark, with steam technology but not steampunk, weird but not new weird.” All of that is true, and suggests that publishers might have wondered how to sell the book, at least before Murderbot meant a lot more people willing to read a Martha Wells book on the strength of her name alone.

The City of Bones is Charisat, the bustling eight-tiered main city of a trading league situated between the desert Waste and the Last Sea. The novel’s world is mostly blasted, used up by the Ancients whose magic and technology allowed them to soar to astonishing heights but who left precious little in their wake. In their last years, the Ancients knew that the spirits they had summoned were killing their world, but it was too late to reverse the process. Instead, some of their mages poured great energy into creating the krismen, near-humans who could survive in the Waste. They also left behind Remnants, structures within vast stone monoliths whose purpose has been lost in the intervening centuries. The humans who lived through the great disasters eventually built cities, and Charisat is one of the greatest of these. Its layers directly correspond to social status: struggle for mere existence among the docks of the Eighth Tier, the leisured life of the Patricians up on the Third and higher Tiers, the exalted heights of the Elector’s court of the First.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/07/city-of-bones-by-martha-wells/

Jun 06 2024

Hugo Awards 2024: Best Short Story Nominees

And we’re back! After the registration debacle in Chengdu last year — never mind all the subsequent scandals — it was a relief to be able to sign up quickly and easily for Glasgow and get my voting packet for the 2024 Hugo Awards. I begin my coverage, as always, with the Best Short Story Nominees, which I’ve found always work best in warming me up for all the categories.

After reading through them all, my favorite short story, to my surprise, turned out to be Baoshu’s Tasting The Future Delicacy Three Times. I want to say that it was translated into English by Xueting C Ni, but the rather acerbic author’s note leaves me to wonder at whom else may have translated it in the past. The note was also the reason I was rather cautious going into this, as the author dissenting quite loudly with his translator is rarely a good sign for what I’m about to read in translation. Regardless, the clever, three-fold tale of the lengths that some people will go to in order to taste the most exquisite flavors really impressed me with how well it brings a speculative fiction lens to some of the most universal desires of humanity. As a food-lover, I found the piece both extraordinary and disturbing: my favorite kind of fiction.

Running a close second was Rachael K Jones’ The Sound Of Children Screaming. I am a sucker for a deconstructed tale, and this was a brilliant example of that. Even better, the short story also dissects the USian gun culture that allows mass and in particular school shootings to continue without legislative check. It’s a powerful, deeply intelligent and achingly raw fantasia of survival and fighting back. Honestly, it was so good, it made me want to read the entire issue of the magazine it came in!

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/06/hugo-awards-2024-best-short-story-nominees/

Jun 05 2024

Becoming Who We Are edited by Sammy Lisel & Hazel Newlevant

subtitled Real Stories About Growing Up Trans.

Happy Pride Month, y’all! I was so thrilled to have this land on my desk to officially launch Pride over here at The Frumious Consortium. Collecting nine real biographies of trans people and their childhoods, this is an excellent, inspirational collection that serves double-duty in assuring trans kids (and even some adults!) that it’s okay to be who you are, while also sharing with cis folks the interior lives of a demographic they may have yet had little experience with.

Sammy Lisel has done an excellent job in interviewing nine impressive transgender North Americans from all walks of life and reworking each of their life stories into a chapter of this highly readable graphic novel. The diversity is exceptional, in age, racial and cultural background, profession, and just in the multitude of life experiences that it took for each kid to grow up to be the person who they are today. It’s also really great to see teachers and entrepreneurs, park rangers and musicians, scientists and firefighters all represented in these pages, underscoring how trans people are integral parts of society and will flourish in their chosen fields as long as they’re given the right to live peaceably as who they are. Their stories are told with humor, honesty and verve, emphasizing the need for trans people to be able to exist as unreservedly as cis people do, and to be able to come out on their own terms.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/05/becoming-who-we-are-edited-by-sammy-lisel-hazel-newlevant/