Jul 08 2020
I’m rating this book quite highly even as I found myself oddly detached from it, so I’m chalking this down to a me-problem and not to any fault of the book itself. Okay, maybe there’s a pacing issue once we discover who the seeker is: I get that the authors didn’t want to retread stuff, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/07/08/this-is-how-you-lose-the-time-war-by-amal-el-mohtar-max-gladstone/
Jun 23 2020
Oh, that was a hot mess. One reason that the rest of the books in the Wayward Children series have worked for me, despite my misgivings regarding certain of Seanan McGuire’s narrative choices (e.g. the blanket disdain for parents in Every Heart A Doorway, the idolization of The Baker in Beneath The Sugar Sky, the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/06/23/in-an-absent-dream-wayward-children-4-by-seanan-mcguire/
Jun 22 2020
Would I have liked this more were we not at a point in time where the news is so saturated in Black pain that reading entertainment that centers that just feels like too much? It’s not that I want to turn my back on the Black experience, but I am definitely at the point where …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/06/22/the-deep-by-rivers-solomon-daveed-diggs-william-hutson-jonathan-snipes/
Jun 19 2020
Whyyyy did I not know this was set in an alternate universe early 20th century Egypt, where djinn and the supernatural manifest side by side with the rest of society?! I suppose it’s my own fault for not previously familiarizing myself with P Djeli Clark’s work, tho I’m fixing to remedy that with a read …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/06/19/the-haunting-of-tram-car-015-by-p-djeli-clark/
Jun 18 2020
Gosh, it feels kinda weird reviewing this as its own entity, but I’m still only partway through reading Exhalation, the collection it comes from, and won’t be able to finish the whole book for a while. Anxiety Is The Dizziness Of Freedom is the last story in the volume, after the also-Hugo-nominated Omphalos, with both …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/06/18/anxiety-is-the-dizziness-of-freedom-by-ted-chiang/
Jun 16 2020
I think binge-reading the Monstress comic book series has seriously lowered my tolerance for earnest right now. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with Becky Chambers’ To Be Taught, If Fortunate. The earnestness fits the message, which is a meditation on scientific ethics in regard to space travel and exploration. The novella is as uplifting, diverse …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/06/16/to-be-taught-if-fortunate-by-becky-chambers/
Oct 05 2019
It’s a happy coincidence that whenever I get a break from covering new fiction, there’s an installment of the Three Dark Crowns series waiting for me from the public library. It’s like it’s meant to be or something! Anyway, this novella looks back at formative chapters of the early lives of our three queens of …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/05/the-young-queens-three-dark-crowns-0-2-by-kendare-blake/
Aug 25 2019
Wait, that’s it?! No fair! So this is the prequel novella to the Three Dark Crowns series, explaining why all oracle queens are now drowned at birth. Exquisitely written, as always, it also does a mean thing to us readers: it sets up a terrific protagonist then has everything go terribly wrong not only for …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/08/25/the-oracle-queen-three-dark-crowns-0-1-by-kendare-blake/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire