Tag: Fabulous Ones

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

The Fifth Season is a very bleak book. It is riveting, engrossing, engaging, compelling, thought-provoking, and more, but it is also very, very bleak. When I was finished, I picked up a slim Soviet-German comedy (not an oxymoron!) by way of lightening the mood. The Fifth Season begins with a mother still tending the body …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/10/the-fifth-season-by-n-k-jemisin/

Wallenstein II by Friedrich Schiller

“Schiller’s Wallenstein is so great that there is nothing else like it.” — Goethe How’s that for a blurb? Goethe didn’t just offer praise, he directed the premiere of all three parts of Schiller’s Wallenstein trilogy. The third, Wallenstein’s Death (published as Wallenstein II, as the two previous plays comprise the first volume), comes from …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/02/25/wallenstein-ii-by-friedrich-schiller/

Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter

Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter is three hundred pages of wonderful, unadulterated squee. It’s a companion to the musical that I’ve been listening to nearly non-stop since last September, a documentation of the development of a show that’s clearly going into the canon of American theater and has already burst the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/06/20/hamilton-the-revolution-by-lin-manuel-miranda-and-jeremy-mccarter/

The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton

Jo Walton, writing at the height of her powers, has solved the second-book problem, or at least this one instance of the problem. The Philosopher Kings is in fact the middle book of a trilogy, but it is so much its own thing that although it has the advantages of a sequel—less time setting up …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/06/03/the-philosopher-kings-by-jo-walton/

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

Like the human aliens of the planet Gethen, The Left Hand of Darkness is first one thing and then another, encompassing all of them yet remaining bounded by its humanity. The inhabited worlds of Le Guin’s interrelated Hainish novels are tied together by membership in the Ekumen, eighty-odd planets in something like a trading federation, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/04/15/the-left-hand-of-darkness-by-ursula-k-le-guin/

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

Wasn’t this great fun? The front flap of The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison, summarizes the set-up: “A half-goblin, the youngest son of the emperor, has lived his entire life in exile, far form the imperial court and the deadly intrigue that surrounds it. But when his father and three half-brothers, who are heirs to …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/03/04/the-goblin-emperor-by-katherine-addison/

The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss

There are a lot of angry reviews in various places, saying this book is boring, saying that the author should be working on the main trilogy and not messing around with odd novellas, saying it isn’t worth the time, nothing happens, etc. They could not be more completely wrong. This is not a book about …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/11/12/the-slow-regard-of-silent-things-by-patrick-rothfuss/