Sep 11 2022
The name Solomon brings the word “wisdom” almost immediately to mind. Belatedly, it makes me think of the Temple. Now that I have read Medieval Ethiopian Kingship, Craft, and Diplomacy with Latin Europe by Verena Krebs, I will also remember the Solomonic dynasty of Ethiopia. That dynasty took power in the late 1200s and ruled, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/09/11/medieval-ethiopian-kingship-craft-and-diplomacy-with-latin-europe-by-verena-krebs/
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/09/08/hugo-2022-chat/
Sep 04 2022
I’m only three books into the Rivers of London series, and already they feel like comfort reading. I can feel confident that with each new Peter Grant book I pick up, I will encounter characters I enjoy spending time with — the narrator first and foremost — that they will have adventures and scrapes, that Aaronovitch will …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/09/04/whispers-under-ground-by-ben-aaronovitch/
Aug 31 2022
This last day of August makes five full years that we at The Frumious Consortium have had at least 10 posts every month. For a site with two principal writers, that’s no small feat. We’ve only gotten there because of Doreen’s fabulous and prolific nature, and Frumious isn’t the only place she graces with her …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/08/31/something-of-a-milestone/
Aug 27 2022
A Desolation Called Peace was always going to be a tough sell for me, and there’s little chance I would have started reading it if it hadn’t been a Hugo finalist. I could see the virtues of its predecessor, A Memory Called Empire, but from the way that book ended I had the sense — …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/08/27/a-desolation-called-peace-by-arkady-martine/
Aug 19 2022
A few chapters into Light From Uncommon Stars, after it was clear that the violin teacher had made a pact with a demon and was under tight deadline to collect one more soul or else the usual penalties would apply and also that the local landmark donut shop was run by space aliens pretending to …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/08/19/light-from-uncommon-stars-by-ryka-aoki-2/
Aug 02 2022
Becky Chambers writes science fiction stories whose characters don’t necessarily save the world. If they’re fortunate, they save their own part of the world, and maybe make the overall shape of things a little bit better. I both like and respect that approach. I like it because if every story is about saving the whole …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/08/02/the-galaxy-and-the-ground-within-by-becky-chambers/
Jul 31 2022
Earth has a problem. But as Project Hail Mary begins, the protagonist and first-person narrator has no idea what the problem is. He knows a lot less than that, in fact. He doesn’t know where he is, doesn’t know how he got there, doesn’t even know his own name. Why is the room round? Why …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/07/31/project-hail-mary-by-andy-weir/
Jul 24 2022
Henryk Sienkiewicz, an early Nobel laureate, wrote historical novels set mostly in the days of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that, like Shakespeare’s history plays, have a resonance well beyond their initial audiences and historical settings. Sienkiewicz lived and wrote at a time when Poland’s imperial neighbors had erased it from the map of Europe, and yet …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/07/24/on-the-field-of-glory-by-henryk-sienkiewicz/
Jul 23 2022
The long-running No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series relies on a careful balance between new stories — usually cases that the agency is called on to solve — and deeper development of its continuing characters. Too much of the former, and it runs the danger of reading like an episode of old-style television: dramatic events that leave …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/07/23/how-to-raise-an-elephant-by-alexander-mccall-smith/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire