Apr 29 2020
The back cover of The Colours of All the Cattle calls this book, the twentieth in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, “the one with the election.” Indeed, a special election for a seat on the Gabarone city council dominates the stories told in The Colours of All the Cattle. The council is closely …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/04/29/the-colours-of-all-the-cattle-by-alexander-mccall-smith/
Nov 02 2019
I’m pretty sure I would have liked this more if it had been more speculative fiction and less MFA. Thing is, it’s an entirely worthy book. If it wasn’t for Freshwater, I would have no idea what a non-binary trans person is, and I’m richer for having found out. But I didn’t find out from …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/11/02/freshwater-by-akwaeke-emezi/
Aug 03 2019
It’s nearly impossible to talk about Binti: The Night Masquerade without discussing elements of Binti and Binti: Home, so I am not even going to try. And to be honest, the best thing that happens in Binti: The Night Masquerade, from a storytelling perspective, is a plot surprise a bit more than halfway through the …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/08/03/binti-the-night-masquerade-by-nnedi-okorafor/
Jul 27 2019
Binti told the classic science fiction story of a talented young person from the hinterlands — and an outsider from an outsider people in those hinterlands — who gains admission to wider worlds by dint of talent and hard work. Unlike many of those stories, though, Binti’s is interrupted by violence and tragedy even before she …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/27/binti-home-by-nnedi-okorafor/
Jul 24 2019
“The night in New Orleans always got something going on, ma maman used to say—like this city don’t know how to sleep.” (p. 7) It doesn’t, and neither does P. Djèlí Clark’s splendid, exciting, enchanting novella The Black God’s Drums. Clark’s first-person narrator, a slightly feral young woman named Creeper, makes her own way in …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/24/the-black-gods-drums-by-p-djeli-clark/
Jul 19 2019
Welcome to Lagos begins well outside of the Nigerian metropolis, at a hot and dirty army outpost somewhere in the Niger delta: oil country, but also rebel country. Serving under a corrupt colonel and terrorizing local people is not what Chike Ameobi signed up for the army to do. After twelve months as an officer …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/19/welcome-to-lagos-by-chibundu-onuzo/
May 31 2019
“That’s the mystery series where no one dies, right?” said Kid One. Yes it is, I said. “Well how can there be danger?” Ah, that’s the genius of this series, isn’t it? And oh, sweet youth, to think that death is the only kind of peril that’s strong enough to drive a story. Heartbreak, humiliation, …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/05/31/the-house-of-unexpected-sisters-by-alexander-mccall-smith/
Permanent link to this article: http://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/03/30/my-sister-the-serial-killer-by-oyinkan-braithwaite/
Mar 08 2019
This is a daunting book to read, and not because of its length or its subject matter or, even, commitment to violence and vulgarity, but because it isn’t written like a book. The tale of Red Wolf (or Tracker, as he prefers to be called) is an oral history told, for the most part, by …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/03/08/black-leopard-red-wolf-the-dark-star-trilogy-1-by-marlon-james/
Mar 02 2019
There are lots of really great things about this book. The world-building is A++, with an excellent, well-described magic system and a very rich fantasy setting that is gloriously and unapologetically Afrocentric. The plot skips along briskly, and the depictions of rage and righteous anger are both compelling and wholly convincing. I liked that there …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/03/02/children-of-blood-and-bone-legacy-of-orisha-1-by-tomi-adeyemi/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Ed Ott
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
L.M. Davenport
Laura Eilers
Maou Tsaou
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire