Nov 20 2017
At the Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork, magic leaks into all sorts of things, including the scraps from the wizards’ sumptuous dinners. Some of the rats who were helping themselves to leftovers got an unexpected dose of intelligence as part of the magic in the cooking. And a cat, Maurice, got it too when he ate …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/11/20/the-amazing-maurice-and-his-educated-rodents-by-terry-pratchett/
Nov 16 2017
Wilhelm Tell, a five-act drama in verse, was Friedrich Schiller’s last major work. It tells the story of the start of the Swiss Confederation as the people of four inner cantons — Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden and Luzern — joined forces, swearing an oath to drive out a Habsburg ruler who is intent on limiting traditional …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/11/16/wilhelm-tell-by-friedrich-schiller/
Nov 15 2017
In just over 200 pages, Neil deGrasse Tyson takes his readers, who are presumably in a bit of a rush, on a grand tour of the cosmos, with a refreshing emphasis on what scientists don’t know. He’s bumptious, conversational, unafraid of including personal opinions about people in the field and commendably clear even when describing …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/11/15/astrophysics-for-people-in-a-hurry-by-neil-degrasse-tyson/
Oct 22 2017
When Tsar the Polish poet southward sent For stirring trouble and renewed dissent He took his pen — described the lands he crossed The steppes so vast, the palaces long lost Exiles who before Adam M. had gone And Muslims who so well had served their Khan Crimean shores, the mounts above them ranged The …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/10/22/sonnets-from-the-crimea-by-adam-mickiewicz/
Oct 20 2017
Doors sometimes open from the mundane world into more fantastical, miraculous realms, and sometimes children find their way through these doors to sojourn a while among the fae, with the King of the Dead, with scientists creating life from dead tissue and electricity, with forms and dreams stranger still. Many of those who return from …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/10/20/every-heart-a-doorway-by-seanan-mcguire/
Oct 19 2017
The setup at the end of The Boy Who Lost Fairyland — intimations that all is not well in the balance between our world and Fairyland; and Something Must Be Done — could have set up the last book in the sequence as a heavy quest, not least because Catherynne M. Valente’s characters are growing …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/10/19/the-girl-who-raced-fairyland-all-the-way-home-by-catherynne-m-valente/
Oct 16 2017
The first argument of The Gates of Europe is its existence: a history of Ukrainians as a people, a nation separate from others; a history of the Ukrainian lands that is not a subset of another history, whether that other history is Russian or (less probably) Polish. In his very first sentence, Plokhy cites the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/10/16/the-gates-of-europe-by-serhii-plokhy/
Oct 09 2017
Orlando Figes’ title presents the essence of his argument: The Russian Revolution should be looked at over a much longer period than historians, and the interested public, usually give it. Revolutions succeeded in February and October of 1917 because they had been brewing for a long time; the Soviet Union claimed to be a revolutionary …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/10/09/revolutionary-russia-1891-1991-by-orlando-figes/
Oct 09 2017
I put down The Obelisk Gate for about three and a half months when I was four-fifths of the way through. One of the main characters, a girl not yet in her teens, did something horrible, and I just couldn’t anymore. I haven’t had that strong a reaction since Elric killed Moonglum near the end …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/10/09/the-obelisk-gate-by-n-k-jemisin/
Oct 07 2017
The Delirium Brief, the eighth book in Charles Stross’ Laundry series, returns Bob Howard, the series’ main protagonist, to center stage. As you know, Bob had been out of the spotlight for most of the last two books — The Nightmare Stacks and The Annihilation Score — for various plot and structural reasons. The Laundry series began …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/10/07/the-delirium-brief-by-charles-stross/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire