Tag: Fantasy

Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire

Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire

Across the Green Grass Fields is the first of Seanan McGuire‘s Wayward Children series that I have read that’s entirely waywardness, and I liked it that way. There’s no mention of Eleanor West’s Home, nor do any of the characters from the previous five novellas in the series appear. I didn’t miss them at all, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/06/21/across-the-green-grass-fields-by-seanan-mcguire/

Hugo Awards 2022: Best Novelette Nominee

I’m a big fan of ordering my group reviews for the Hugos alphabetically, but what to do when my favorite is the very first of them? I haven’t had a chance to read much Suzanne Palmer, but I adored Bots Of The Lost Ark, which managed to pack a whole bunch of interesting and delightful …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/06/14/hugo-awards-2022-best-novelette-nominee/

Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Kazbegi mountain in the High Caucasus

Elder Race offers an extended meditation on Clarke’s Third Law, some thoughts on cultural contamination that are not new but are important to Adrian Tchaikovsky’s characters, all wrapped up in a fast-paced adventure of swords and sufficiently advanced technology. The novella is set on Sophos 4, a planet colonized by humans during the first interstellar …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/06/12/elder-race-by-adrian-tchaikovsky/

Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard

Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard

Forbidden love between two princesses. Forbidden not because they are both women, but because they are princesses, and relations between their two states are tense and unequal. Thanh is a princess of Bình Hải, in the south, nominally superior to its northern neighbor but falling back in relative power because of the neighbor’s greater access …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/06/11/fireheart-tiger-by-aliette-de-bodard/

Hugo Awards 2022: Best Novelette

Bots of the Lost Ark by Suzanne Palmer, magazine cover

Myth, starfaring bots, near-future Nigeria, fell fae, artistic immortals and the magic of the mind all feature in the 2022 Hugo finalists in the category of Best Novelette. “Bots of the Lost Ark” by Suzanne Palmer sets its story on a large interstellar ship that just barely survived an encounter with hostile aliens and is …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/06/09/hugo-awards-2022-best-novelette/

Monstress Vol. 6: The Vow by Marjorie M. Liu & Sana Takeda

Wow, has this series grown on me! As with last year, I selected this title first of the Hugo nominees for Graphic Novel in hopes of getting it out of the way, but was pleasantly surprised to find that it actually does keep getting better from volume to volume. As always, an overwhelming amount happens …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/05/31/monstress-vol-6-the-vow-by-marjorie-m-liu-sana-takeda/

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo

It isn’t true that the full title for When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain was originally meant to be When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain With Her Two Tiger Sisters and Considered Eating Cleric Chih but it could have been. Except that at that point it would have been politic to mention the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/05/28/when-the-tiger-came-down-the-mountain-by-nghi-vo/

Hugo Finalists 2022

Hugo finalists at Lemuria Books in Jackson, Mississippi

What an exciting bunch of finalists! I’ve read precisely none of the finalists in the first four fiction categories (I had put The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison on my nominating ballot and am sorry to see it was not among the top six), also none of the finalists for Best Related Work, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/04/17/hugo-finalists-2022/

The Shadow Glass by Josh Winning

This homage to the kids’ dark fantasy movies and series of the 1980s is perfect for what it is, and perhaps even better than it has any business being. Jack Corman wants nothing to do with The Shadow Glass, the cult puppet movie created by his father Bob in the 80s. TSG bombed at the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/04/01/the-shadow-glass-by-josh-winning/

Pennyblade by J. L. Worrad

Oh my heart. I don’t know how a book as bawdy and savage as Pennyblade managed to make me cry at the beautiful heartbreak of the final chapters but oh, how it did and how I did. This is not a book that everyone will like (see: bawdy and savage) but if the idea of …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/03/17/pennyblade-by-j-l-worrad/