February 2019 archive

Last Night (The Searchers #2) by Karen Ellis

This starts out as a stunningly impressive display of teenage emotion, bringing together three kids — Crisp, the biracial overachiever; Glynnie, the privileged white wild child, and JJ, the street kid doing whatever it takes to survive — on a night of reckless camaraderie that turns into a really bad time when adult criminals get …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/26/last-night-the-searchers-2-by-karen-ellis/

All the World’s a Stage by Boris Akunin

For a number of years, I was worried that Boris Akunin’s English-language publishers (the estimable Weidenfeld & Nicolson) had despaired of finding an audience for the Russian mystery writer’s work, and I would have to read the remaining stories in German and miss out on Andrew Bromfield’s witty translations, or really really really improve my …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/25/all-the-worlds-a-stage-by-boris-akunin/

Expedition zu den Polen by Steffen Moeller

Steffen Möller’s second genial book about Poland and Germany takes the train ride from Berlin to Warsaw as his frame to share more anecdotes from a life lived in both countries. Möller’s engagement with Poland began more or less on a lark, when he signed up for a language seminar in Krakow in the mid-1990s. …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/24/expedition-zu-den-polen-by-steffen-moeller/

A Map of the Dark (The Searchers #1) by Karen Ellis

Insofar as flawed protagonists go, this was a surprisingly satisfying novel. At “only” 290 pages, it isn’t a dense novel, which works in its favor, honestly, as it keeps the plot moving. I can’t help but compare and prefer it to Tana French’s mystifyingly overrated Dublin Murder Squad series. Sure Ms French has moments of …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/22/a-map-of-the-dark-the-searchers-1-by-karen-ellis/

An Interview with Gareth L Powell, author of Fleet Of Knives

Q. Every series has its own story about how it came to be conceived and written as it did. How did the Embers Of War series evolve? A. The initial idea came when I was reading an article about the Titanic disaster, and idly started wondering what would happen if a star liner crashed in a …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/21/an-interview-with-gareth-l-powell-author-of-fleet-of-knives/

Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi

There’s a lot of ick in the ten tales that comprise Pump Six and Other Stories. Most of the settings are dystopias of one sort of another — mostly near-ish future, mostly Asian-inflected, mostly involving some sort if environmental collapse — and most of the characters in the stories are either horrible people in and of themselves, …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/20/pump-six-and-other-stories-by-paolo-bacigalupi/

Fleet of Knives (Embers of War #2) by Gareth L. Powell

Oh, man, Book 3 cannot come fast enough! I readily admit that I don’t remember a whole lot from the first book, which was an intriguing novel of ideas that somehow lacked an ability to engage me emotionally. Fleet Of Knives certainly doesn’t suffer from that problem! We open with Captain Sal Konstanz on a …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/19/fleet-of-knives-embers-of-war-2-by-gareth-l-powell/

The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious #2) by Maureen Johnson

In book two of the Truly Devious series, Stevie’s return to Ellingham Academy comes at a price. Her benefactor, the abhorrent politician Edward King whom her parents idolize, wants her back at the school in order to keep an eye on his wayward son, noting that her relationship with his kid seems to calm the …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/14/the-vanishing-stair-truly-devious-2-by-maureen-johnson/

The Perfect Nanny by Leïla Slimani

I think I would have appreciated this more if I were French. There were hints of subtext that I could only guess at, nuances of race and class and prejudice that are foreign even to my broad background in the mores of American, Southeast Asian and British Commonwealth cultures. So I’m not sure if the …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/12/the-perfect-nanny-by-leila-slimani/

Wheel of the Infinite by Martha Wells

Martha Wells has recently received a lot of attention for her Murderbot novellas (Doreen’s reviews of the first three are here, here, and here), but she has been publishing fantasy and science fiction novels since the early 1990s, snagging a Nebula nomination for The Death of the Necromancer in 1998. Wheel of the Infinite, her …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/02/11/wheel-of-the-infinite-by-martha-wells/