This book was so great that I spent long stretches of it messaging a friend who’d also just finished it my reaction gifs (I haven’t yet figured out how to include same in these reviews, so lucky you.) I had so many feelings about how emotionally vulnerable and grand and brave this book is, how …
Tag: Science Fiction
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/04/morning-star-red-rising-3-by-pierce-brown/
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/11/09/binti-binti-1-by-nnedi-okorafor/
Oct 07 2017
The Delirium Brief by Charles Stross
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/
Sep 27 2017
Pirate Utopia by Bruce Sterling
The collapse of the European empires at the end of World War I produced considerable political strangeness. Béla Kun. The Czech Legion in Siberia. The Bavarian Soviet Republic. Baron Ungern. Flights of fancy, seizures of power, and some powerfully fancy seizures. In Pirate Utopia, Bruce Sterling sails off to another corner of collapsing empires rubbing …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/09/27/pirate-utopia-by-bruce-sterling/
Jul 04 2017
Raven Stratagem by Yoon Ha Lee
Raven Stratagem picks up right where Ninefox Gambit left off, with the star-spanning hexarchate facing threats from within and without: internal heretics who threaten to disrupt the tight control of time that enables faster-than-light travel and other sufficiently advanced technologies, external aliens bent on conquest. A swarm sent by Kel Command, the highest authority of …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/07/04/raven-stratagem-by-yoon-ha-lee/
Jun 29 2017
Hugo Voting 2017
I’ve finished marking up my Hugo ballot for 2017, and I’m satisfied with where my votes have gone. That doesn’t mean I have finished reading everything that’s on the ballot — far from it — but I have done enough in each work that I am going to read to have a sense of how …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/06/29/hugo-voting-2017/
Jun 21 2017
This Census-Taker by China Miéville
This Census-Taker, by China Miéville, did not add up for me. If it were not a Hugo finalist, if I had not read and liked close to half a dozen of his other works, I would have pronounced the Eight Deadly Words and set the book aside. Miéville is aiming for the mythic, but mythic …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/06/21/this-census-taker-by-china-mieville/
Jun 17 2017
Golden Son (Red Rising #2) by Pierce Brown
In an alternate universe, I’m a professional fiction author and Pierce Brown and I have beautiful literary babies together. I mean, what greater compliment can I give this series? It’s smart and beautiful and moving. It examines the compromises of society, and the ethics of war and love, and does it all with a stunning …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/06/17/golden-son-red-rising-2-by-pierce-brown/
Jun 08 2017
Captain Marvel (Marvel NOW!) #1 by Kelly Sue DeConnick & David López
Maybe this book just suffers in comparison with the very excellent Ms Marvel that I’d also recently finished reading, but as a space opera, I felt it only really took off (if you’ll pardon the horrible pun) in the last two issues. Everything before that was mildly interesting but not compelling, though Rocket Raccoon’s reaction …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/06/08/captain-marvel-marvel-now-1-by-kelly-sue-deconnick-david-lopez/
May 25 2017
Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
“As if Cordwainer Smith had written a Warhammer novel.” That blurb sold me on Ninefox Gambit. Even so, I almost bounced off of it in the first chapter. In terms of the blurb, too much Warhammer; in terms of my taste in reading, it felt too much like simple-minded war-glorifying fiction. Boom, boom! Pew! Pew! …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/25/ninefox-gambit-by-yoon-ha-lee/