Writer, editor, translator, project manager, reformed bookseller. Currently based in Berlin, following stints in Moscow, Tbilisi, Munich, Washington, Warsaw, Budapest and Atlanta. Also blogs at A Fistful of Euros, though less frequently than here these days.
Most commented posts
- The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison — 9 comments
- White Eagle, Red Star by Norman Davies — 7 comments
- Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire — 6 comments
- Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch — 6 comments
- The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin — 6 comments
Author's posts
Why was Raising Steam, the penultimate Discworld novel, so much better than I expected? I had reason to worry. It clocks in at 475 pages, and for the last 10 books, I have much preferred the shorter ones to the longer ones. Both of Raising Steam‘s immediate non-YA predecessors, Unseen Academicals and Snuff, had seemed …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/08/28/raising-steam-by-terry-pratchett/
Snuff, the thirty-ninth Discworld book, turns out to be the last one starring Sam Vimes, who has gone a long way in the world since his first appearance in Guards! Guards! There will be one more Moist van Lipwig book, one more Tiffany Aching book (although I am still drafting my thoughts on I Shall …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/08/23/snuff-by-terry-pratchett/
Isn’t it great when the last in a set of books is the best of the bunch? Not only is Fiddlehead, the fifth of Cherie Priest‘s Clockwork Century novels, easily the best of the series, it’s terrific fun from start to finish, a page-turner in the best sense of the word. It races from tension-filled …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/08/14/fiddlehead-by-cherie-priest/
One of the hard problems of writing far-future science fiction is just how strange humans of that era are likely to appear to present-day readers. Quite apart from the changes that technology and any move of setting from the terrestrial are likely to bring, the ways that societies change over time are likely to render …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/08/13/too-like-the-lightning-by-ada-palmer/
One of the niftier things that Cory Doctorow does in Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom is to show a basically sympathetic character making a series of bad decisions for reasons that I, as a reader, could understand why he was taking those actions but I wished he wouldn’t and hoped he would figure …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/08/12/down-out-in-the-magic-kingdom-by-cory-doctorow/
Sometimes an author is much more interested in a major character than I am. Writing about Raven Stratagem, the second book in the Machineries of Empire series, I already noted that Lee’s interest in writing about Shuos Jedao was starting to exceed my desire to read more about him. Revelations late in the book showed …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/08/12/revenant-gun-by-yoon-ha-lee/
In John Sclazi’s first series of science fiction novels, Old Man’s War and its several sequels and companion volumes, the Milky Way near earth (well, near in interstellar terms) teems with life and spacefaring civilizations. Humanity has to make its way in a galactic neighborhood that’s full of life, and nearly as full of war. …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/08/05/the-collapsing-empire-by-john-scalzi/
When the first character a book introduces is a boy named Isaac, and the two adults closest to him in the odd collective where he is growing up are Avram (Dr. Avram Dvali) and Mrs. Rebka, even this heathen knows the book is going to be about encounters with transcendence and possible sacrifices. Axis is …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/08/04/axis-by-robert-charles-wilson/
Pacific Fire follows its predecessor, California Bones, as an adventure caper set in a darkly magical California that is both contemporary and off kilter. Transport within Los Angeles, for example, is all on boats in canals, the city a gargantuan Venice, and the head of the Department of Water and Power is a feared water …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/08/01/pacific-fire-by-greg-van-eekhout/
Quite by accident, Steffen Möller has found himself one of the most famous contemporary Germans in Poland. He moved there in the mid-1990s for no particularly profound reasons — looking for work, looking for things to be slightly different, looking into a society that was changing rapidly, looking at a place that was at once nearby …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/07/18/viva-warszawa-by-steffen-moeller/
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Professor X
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