Sep 03 2024

Crypt Of The Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud

This novella is the first of a trilogy and I have Thoughts about that. As a reader, I love that there’s more of this story to be had, even as it’s satisfyingly complete as is. As a reviewer, I love that we’re bringing the novella back: I’m tired of slogging through 300+ page books that seem written to hit an imaginary value-for-money size instead of focusing on an actually interesting story devoid of bloat. But as someone who definitely used to worry about value for money when it came to buying books, part of me frets at not getting enough quantity with my quality. Would it have been better to get all three parts of the Lunar Gothic trilogy in one volume that combines economy with immediacy?

These are all issues that remind me of why I’ve never been interested in going into publishing. I don’t care about other people’s money. I have little enough of my own as it is to want to worry about others’. So, devoid of any concerns regarding format and marketing, I can safely say that this is an excellent story and that I’m glad that there’ll be more of it to be had in the very near future.

The story itself takes place in an alternate past, where the moon is not an arid rock but a satellite with a breathable atmosphere, complete with forests that speckle its surface. Some of these forests are still blanketed in the gossamer webs of the giant spider that once lived in the moon. The moon webs, are they’re called, have all sort of interesting properties, some of which have led to their use in the treatment of mental illness.

It’s because of this that Veronica Brinkley has been brought to the moon by her concerned husband. It’s 1923, and the Barrowfield Home For Treatment Of The Melancholy has gained a sterling reputation for restoring health and happiness to its (wealthy) patients. Dr Barrington Cull is at the cutting edge of neurosurgery, carving away all bad thoughts and memories from sufferers’ brains and replacing the excised matter with moon webs, which have the remarkable property of being able to both replace neural connections and foster the growth of more, in presumably healthier directions.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/03/crypt-of-the-moon-spider-by-nathan-ballingrud/

Aug 30 2024

The Sherlock Society by James Ponti

Does anyone write about smart, funny, quirky middle school kids as well as James Ponti does? I genuinely do not think so, especially when it comes to placing them in exciting, crime-solving adventures.

Mr Ponti’s latest series centers on siblings Alex and Zoe Sherlock, who are inspired by their last name to start a detective agency. It actually begins with Alex deciding to start a school club with his best friend Yadi, revolving around puzzles and mysteries. They’re joined by new girl Lina, and are enjoying an Escape Room party planned for them on the next-to-last day of school by the librarian when Zoe barges in. Alex tricks her into playing with them but she soon discovers that she actually likes puzzles. Almost as importantly, she thinks that she now has the perfect plan to monetize their skills over the summer.

Zoe desperately wants to make enough money to go to summer camp with her friends, so proposes starting a detective agency to the rest of the Sherlock Society. They’re enthused, and recruit the Sherlocks’ Grandpa to be their Director of Transportation and Logistics. Unfortunately for the budding agency’s plans, Alex and Zoe’s lawyer mom quickly shuts down the private investigation for hire part of their business as being unlicensed and far too dangerous. She relents, however, when it comes to investigating historical mysteries that may or may not come with hefty cash rewards.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/30/the-sherlock-society-by-james-ponti/

Aug 29 2024

Laozi’s Dao De Jing translated by Ken Liu

subtitled A New Interpretation for a Transformative Time.

I probably would never have picked up this book if it weren’t for the fact that Ken Liu is the translator. I have so many books and so little time, and reading about religion in my free time is not high on my list of priorities. However, I really enjoyed what he did with Liu Cixin’s The Three Body Problem, and while I haven’t had time to read his original speculative fiction yet, I very much want to. When I heard that he was tackling a classic of Chinese literature and philosophy, I absolutely had to take a look at the result.

I freely admit that I did not know much about the original Dao De Jing before starting this, so my reading of this book comes entirely from the perspective of a novice who is only mostly familiar with East Asian culture, having grown up in Southeast Asia myself (yes, there is a difference. Yes, I am better positioned to discuss the subject than the average Westerner. Yes, there is still so much I have to learn.) I also realized as I was reading this that I have no interest in critiquing the content of what’s basically a foundational text for a major world religion. While such commentary may occasionally creep into this review, I really only want to talk about the experience of reading Mr Liu’s interpretation, as well as the insight he gives to his own process of translation, in addition to the choices he makes to interject other anecdotes of Daoism into the text. For adequate compensation, I’d definitely take the considerable time I’d need to think out the parallels between my work as a reviewer navigating that challenge with the translator’s as a conduit for messages left by the great. Alas that this website is primarily a labor of love of the written word, and not something that (yet, I hope) pays a living wage.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/29/laozis-dao-de-jing-translated-by-ken-liu/

Aug 28 2024

Smalltown Tales by Iain McCaig

I am genuinely vexed that this is the first time that I, a pop culture maximalist, have ever heard of Iain McCaig. Ofc, as I was just discussing with another Learned League Llama yesterday, my mind dwells more on story than on details, but it still seems bizarre to me that this name has never stuck in my brain as being well worth noticing, the way so many other artists’ and storytellers’ have. Have I just never encountered him before, or at least not in a context where his name was ever given?

Regardless, I love how the back bio of this book describes Mr McCaig as someone who encourages people to draw and tell stories, because that is 100% what I felt like doing after finishing this book. Between this, Zoje Stage’s Dear Hanna and Tim Hutchings’ A Collection Of Improving Exercises, I am starting to want to get back into sketching again. My art has definitely fallen by the wayside this summer — and who has time! Not me! — but the gorgeous pencil and charcoal works in this book remind me of how much I enjoy drawing, even tho my art is nowhere near the level of this author’s.

Pencil and charcoal aren’t the only mediums he uses tho. Inks, pastels and watercolors are all applied to excellent effect here, along with other techniques that I couldn’t necessarily pinpoint. But whether drawing mermaids, aliens, dinosaurs or ghosts, all the work is phenomenal, with an uncanny eye for light, especially, that sets his work apart. Even his grotesque drawings are possessed of an uncanny beauty, the kind of majesty that compels the gaze and refuses to let you look away.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/28/smalltown-tales-by-iain-mccaig/

Aug 27 2024

Red Tundra by Mike Pohjola

a story for Werewolf: The Apocalypse. With illustrations by Krzysztof Bieniawski, Gabriel de Goes Figueiredo and Maichol Quinto.

Not only did I manage to snag a copy of this adventure on Free RPG Day 2024, I also had the good luck to have someone run it for me so I could get a better feel for the game! I’ve always loved the World Of Darkness titles, whether giggling over people’s Vampire: The Masquerade stories, getting to actually play in a Changeling: The Dreaming LARP, or watching the brilliant treatment of Mage: The Ascension by Mikaela Sims. It’s just so hard nowadays to find people who want to play anything but D&D. Yes, I know I was super spoiled in being able to play multiple systems twice weekly throughout my mid-twenties to -thirties. And scheduling games nowadays is hard enough without building a learning curve into the process. I just get a little wistful sometimes, wishing I could RP something that isn’t high fantasy, as much fun as that is with my usual gaming circles (and yes, I know I’m lucky in that I have more than zero of those!)

Which is all to say that when the one guy stepped up and offered to run this adventure for me and another forlorn soul at Game Kastle College Park on Free RPG Day, we were overjoyed. Neither of us players were familiar with the game itself but our Storyteller was well prepared, even bringing reusable character sheets then showing us how to use clear tape and whiteboard markers to make our own! While those sheets were copied directly from the Red Tundra booklet, he also had handy player aids on the basic mechanics of W:tA for us, that were super useful when we were making decisions over the course of the game. I’m not sure where he got them from, tho they did look pretty official. I couldn’t find anything like them on the publisher’s website, alas. Perhaps they came in a download packet specific to STs for the event? Regardless, I rather wish Red Tundra was available as a download from Renegade Game Studios too — for free or otherwise — as other publishers do with their Free RPG Day offerings.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/27/red-tundra-by-mike-pohjola/

Aug 26 2024

An Honest Woman: A Memoir Of Love And Sex Work by Charlotte Shane

Being a complicated woman who tries to deal with myself honestly, it wasn’t a surprise to me that a lot of what Charlotte Shane has to say in her memoir about sex work is stuff I’ve already thought about. Honestly, it’s stuff that most, if not all, thoughtful non-sex-worker-exclusionary feminists have grappled with too. At the heart of the issue, ofc, is the role of marriage in a patriarchal society, and how the concepts of sex and fidelity are deeply bound to it within those structures.

Ms Shane examines these concepts through the lens of her own time as a sex worker, and what led her to choose it as a profession. Unsurprisingly, there is a terrible father in her background. More intriguingly is the relatively good luck she’s had with men otherwise, from the boys she befriended and messed around with in high school, to the clientele she cultivated (or blocked when they behaved badly) as her career grew and changed from cam girl to exotic masseuse to escort.

Tho she’s undoubtedly undergone some unpleasant encounters with awful men, what’s most striking about her account is how the stories from her professional life mirror the love lives of modern women who don’t have purely transactional relationships with men. While she doesn’t congratulate herself on how she’s at least made money off of experiences that have left most women with, at best, bittersweet memories — she does an excellent job of evading anything even remotely close to smugness throughout, thank goodness — it’s impossible to read her book and not feel like women who aren’t sex workers too easily give away their time and care and emotions to men who just aren’t worth it.

At the heart of this injustice is the assumption that emotional labor is something that women should provide for the men in their lives regardless of what they receive in return. In her memoir, Ms Shane is clear-eyed about what she gets out of the company of the men she chooses to spend time with, before and after embarking on her career path. It’s honestly refreshing. Relationships should always have give and take, and even when both parties aren’t sure of what they really want, they should always strive to treat each other fairly, as the author and most of her men in this book do.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/26/an-honest-woman-a-memoir-of-love-and-sex-work-by-charlotte-shane/

Aug 23 2024

Tantalizing Tales — August 2024 — Part Two

We have a bumper issue for the second part of our monthly roundup this August, beginning with a book that I did get to read this month but didn’t feel quite merited an entire post of its own.

Yahgz Vol 2: The Gwash War by Art Baltazar of Tiny Titans and Itty Bitty Hellboy fame was another vivid, humorous installment of the children’s graphic novel series. A lot of stuff happens in it as our intrepid heroes traverse the planet, hoping to save the capital city from their mortal enemies. Even as some of them attempt to hold the vengeful Gwash at bay, the others seek out twin objects that could hold the secret to stopping the Gwash for good.

Despite the abundant plot, I felt that this installment felt far more like a bridge from the interesting first volume to whatever is planned for Book 3. Mr Baltazar’s art is kinetic, fun and cartoony, but so much is crammed into this book that none of it feels important as anything more than a means to an end. I’ll definitely be interested in seeing where he goes in the next volume: hopefully, it will have enough meaningful content for me to be able to devote an entire review to!

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/23/tantalizing-tales-august-2024-part-two/

Aug 22 2024

Heads Will Roll by Josh Winning

I cannot be the only person who has the Yeah Yeah Yeahs song run through their head every time they come across the words of this title. Tho as I write this review, I’m listening to the horror-movie-soundtrack oeuvre of Isabel LaRosa, while shivering slightly in the unseasonable (and thankfully temporary) chill of local weather. While I’m glad it’ll warm up again soon, the weather and music combine to make the perfect atmosphere for this excellent spooky season read.

After being cancelled for an injudicious tweet — one that’s received a backlash so bad, it’s cost our primary narrator her job, her fiance and her savings — the sitcom actress most famed for her role as the perennially peppy Willow checks into Camp Castaway. The remote retreat for adults advertises itself as a place for people to unplug from all their electronics while getting back to nature and undergoing a little group therapy in the process. Attendees are encouraged to assume aliases upon arrival. Our narrator, having been too panicked and overwhelmed to read through all the promotional material her agent pressed on her before getting there, unthinkingly chooses Willow as her alter ego.

This is kind of a Freudian slip, because in many ways the actress does aspire to be more like Willow. But she’s also hiding secrets that she’s starting to believe might not be worth keeping buried any more. Ironically, she’s in a place filled with secrets, and not just because the other campers all carry guilty burdens of their own. Camp Castaway has its own sordid history, that Willow starts to piece together after a series of unsettling events begins to befall them. Another camper vanishes after telling the rest of the group the local legend of the murderous Knock-Knock Nancy, and Willow finds a creepy doll’s head in her cabin, with a threatening note tucked inside. There couldn’t actually be a vengeful spirit haunting the woods around Camp Castaway, could there? But when the bodies start piling up, and the heads literally start rolling, Willow and her new friends will have to do everything in their power to defeat a ghostly killer and survive.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/22/heads-will-roll-by-josh-winning/

Aug 21 2024

Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones

One of the weird things about reading an author’s entire body of work from the start of their oeuvre, especially if you’ve already cherry picked parts of it as a lifelong avid reader, is that you can see the themes develop throughout the creator’s lifetime and echo back and forth through the books. Dogsbody, for example, feels very much like the precursor for The Game, tho feels far more successful as a novel. Perhaps I’ll change my mind when I revisit the latter book, but for now Dogsbody impresses me as being superior, tho definitely still not without its flaws.

The story revolves around the luminary inhabiting the star Sirius, who’s known throughout the novel by the name of his star. Hot-headed Sirius is convicted of murder and, perhaps more gravely, of losing the weapon he used to kill his fellow luminary — both charges which he denies. The Zoi, as it’s known, has fallen to Earth, a planet belonging to the minor luminary Sol. As Sirius’ punishment, he’s sentenced to be reborn as a mortal on Earth. If he can retrieve the Zoi during his mortal incarnation’s lifetime, then he’ll be reinstituted as a luminary. But if he dies, he dies.

After the trial, Sirius awakens in the body of a newborn puppy. The vexed owner of his purebred mother decides to toss the majority of the mongrel litter into the river. Sirius is rescued downstream by Kathleen, an Irish girl who’s been sent to live with her distant English relatives. Mr Duffield, her uncle, is kind but oblivious, while his wife Duffie resents Kathleen with a burning passion. The Duffield’s youngest son Robin tries to be an ally, but the older son Basil is casually disdainful of her in the way of all self-absorbed teenagers.

Kathleen is determined to keep Leo for her own, begging Duffie to let her have him in exchange for doing most of the housework. As Sirius grows and bonds with Kathleen, he gradually becomes more aware of why he’s on Earth and what he must do, even as forces work against both his and Kathleen’s happiness. Will he be able to retrieve the Zoi and save Kathleen from a life of drudgery and abuse?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/21/dogsbody-by-diana-wynne-jones/

Aug 20 2024

Tower, Vol 1 by Camrus Johnson & Kelsey Barnhart

with art by ChrisCross and Loyiso Mkize, and colors by Andrew Dalhouse.

Imagine waking up in the middle of a video game, and not a fun one with multiple save points and animal friends either. Okay, so there are animal companions to be found in the titular Tower where the game takes place, but our contestants don’t find that out for a while (and these companions really aren’t the cute and cuddly kind.) In the meantime, the players all have to figure out how to survive and win whatever this competition is, even as many of them hope that this really is just a video game, and that when they kill another contestant it’s not actually for real.

That’s what happens to Casandra, Kimi and Mac, the three main viewpoint characters of this comic book series. Casandra is so disoriented at waking up under such strange circumstances that she isn’t even able to grab a weapon before running from her starting zone to find answers. She attempts to make allies by defusing fights, eventually recruiting a small team to travel together through the computer-generated maze of the tower that they’re trapped in. But as they each slowly begin to remember how they got here, distrust and the desire to win unravel whatever fragile bonds they’ve built, even as killers in the guise of computer errors stalk the hallways, destroying contestants for their own mysterious purposes.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/08/20/tower-vol-1-by-camrus-johnson-kelsey-barnhart/