May 24 2017
The important information on this book’s cover is the subtitle, Conversations with Robert Silverberg. Traveler of Worlds is entirely a set of interviews with Silverberg, who recently passed 80 years of age. He’s one of the grand old men of science fiction; he has attended every Hugo award ceremony; he was incredibly prolific back in …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/24/traveler-of-worlds-by-alvaro-zinos-amaro/
May 22 2017
The two main characters of A Closed and Common Orbit are learning what it is to be human. That’s not quire correct in one case; maybe it would be more correct to say that each is learning what it is like to be a person, with a fairly wide definition of what “person” means. They …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/22/a-closed-and-common-orbit-by-becky-chambers/
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/20/the-tomato-thief-by-ursula-vernon/
May 08 2017
One of the things I particularly liked about All the Birds in the Sky is how Charlie Jane Anders chose to break up the story. It’s a two-sided, save-the-world story, and all of the basics are there: interesting leads, good counterparts, quick pacing, fun dialog, and so forth. She’s strong enough on the essentials even …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/08/all-the-birds-in-the-sky-by-charlie-jane-anders/
May 01 2017
The height of my to-be-read pile could be measured in years, if the books could somehow fit into a unified pile. And that doesn’t count a particular moving box in the basement, in which some really good books, or at least some really interesting-looking books are awaiting their turn to come upstairs. (Some of them …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/01/tales-of-the-squee/
Apr 24 2017
Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters is a hell of a book. The premise is that amendments to the US Constitution in the 1860s preserved the Union and averted the Civil War, but at the cost of continuing to accept slavery in states that chose to keep their peculiar institution. In the 21st century, a …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/04/24/underground-airlines-by-ben-h-winters/
Apr 23 2017
Okay, so I came to this book from the very excellent Amazon show, and it almost seems unfair to review it now when I’ll always have the comparison in my mind. As source material for the very excellent show, it’s very rich in subject, and I was impressed by Philip K Dick’s ability to get …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/04/23/the-man-in-the-high-castle-by-philip-k-dick/
Apr 22 2017
The Caves of Steel is really the first of Asimov’s robot novels, as I, Robot was short stories stitched together by a tiny framework narrative. In the introduction, Asimov relates that the conceit of the novel came out of a conversation with an editor: a science fiction mystery that didn’t use technology to cheat and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/04/22/the-caves-of-steel-by-isaac-asimov/
Apr 16 2017
So I’m not in this book so CLEARLY it is a huge disappointment. Jk, that isn’t why it was disappointing (tho I could have forgiven my omission had the book made up for it otherwise.) It’s hard to go into why the book failed to reach the levels of awesomeness that the first two books …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/04/16/rules-of-the-game-endgame-3-by-james-frey-nils-johnson-shelton/
Apr 10 2017
At the end, I put down the book and said aloud, “That was a goddamn waste of time.” I get that this is just the first two books in a four (or five, if you’re a completist) book series, but damn, how can you reasonably argue that a reader has to slog through 400+ pages …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/04/10/shadow-claw-the-book-of-the-new-sun-1-2-by-gene-wolfe/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire