April 2019 archive

Head On by John Scalzi

Head On follows Lock In as a near-future, science fictional mystery in a world in which a pandemic (“Haden’s disease”) has killed many millions of people and left millions more alive and conscious, but with no control of their voluntary nervous system, locked into themselves. A crash research program has delivered enough advances in the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/04/07/head-on-by-john-scalzi/

Everything Under by Daisy Johnson

Oh gosh, how to properly review this book without spoilers? It doesn’t help that the library copy I borrowed told me exactly what myth the entire narrative was hung from before I’d even turned on my Kindle. Let me just go over the synopsis before delving into my (likely unpopular) opinions. Gretel is a 32 …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/04/07/everything-under-by-daisy-johnson/

Sunshine by Robin McKinley

Good grief, what an annoying novel. It starts out okay: Rae “Sunshine” Seddon is a fairly ordinary baker in a magical post-apocalyptic world who makes the mistake of driving out to the family cabin by the lake by herself one night. She’s subsequently abducted by vampires and manages to escape, which is only the beginning …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/04/06/sunshine-by-robin-mckinley/

Border by Kapka Kassabova

I’ve been to this border before, though I’ve never been to the particular corner of Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece that Kapka Kassabova visits. “But the initial emotional impulse behind my journey was simple: I wanted to see the forbidden places of my childhood, the once-militarised border villages and towns, rivers and forests that had been …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/04/05/border-by-kapka-kassabova/

The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein

In The Color of Law Richard Rothstein lays out the case that segregated patterns of residence in every part of the United States are not the result of impersonal market forces, not just the result of patterns of individual choices among large numbers of people, but are instead the result, often the intended result, of …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/04/04/the-color-of-law-by-richard-rothstein/

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

I nearly set this one down about a third of the way through. The violence just seemed gratuitous, played for yuks (and for yucks), divorced from anything meaningful going on in the story. I stuck with it because I was curious about some of the characters and, to be honest, because the book isn’t that …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/04/01/the-library-at-mount-char-by-scott-hawkins/