Jun 20 2022
This is one of those books that I can appreciate, even if I don’t like it. And there’s a lot to like here, so maybe it’s just a me thing. I just… I feel like Cat Valente has a lot to process in terms of abuse and marriage, and that her issues spill out way …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/06/20/the-past-is-red-by-catherynne-m-valente/
Nov 28 2021
Like Doreen, I initially thought that Riot Baby was an imperative phrase, not a descriptive one. Instead of getting his characters to riot, Onyebuchi has them bide their time and keep absorbing the hits that life, in this particular instance life as working-class Black Americans, gives them. Those hits start early, and keep coming. Riot …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/28/riot-baby-by-tochi-onyebuchi-2/
Nov 27 2021
Sarah Gailey gets to have all the fun of writing a Western while avoiding all the cultural baggage of writing one in the twenty-first century by moving the story into a dystopian future in which the United States has broken down enough that towns are isolated and most travel is by horse or by foot, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/27/upright-women-wanted-by-sarah-gailey-2/
Nov 19 2021
I don’t remember the last time a novella, oh heck, any book, has been so strong and thoughtful before totally collapsing for me in the last two pages. “Riot Baby” is not a directive, as I’d mistakenly believed: it’s a nickname. Kev is born during the L.A. riots that blaze in the aftermath of the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/19/riot-baby-by-tochi-onyebuchi/
Nov 15 2021
Sarah Gailey has long been on my Want-To-Read list, so when I saw their latest novella nominated for a Hugo, I was super excited to finally have the opportunity. Plus, a story about female librarians braving the Wild West to bring books from settlement to settlement? Sign me up! Upright Women Wanted certainly delivers on …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/15/upright-women-wanted-by-sarah-gailey/
Nov 03 2021
I actually hadn’t read the original text of Parable Of The Sower before this, but I have read and loved Parable Of The Talents. I’ve also read and, in retrospect, disliked Kindred — I had good things to say about it at the time, but the way Sarah treated her ancestress feels more selfish and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/03/octavia-e-butlers-parable-of-the-sower-a-graphic-adaptation-by-damian-duffy-and-john-jennings/
May 07 2021
This book reads like a corporate war manga as told from the perspective of the plucky ace/aro civilian sidekick who’s the bridge between the corporate super soldiers/heroes and the public kept in the dark about what the evil megacorps are doing, both to the super soldiers (called SpecOps here and given only numbers as identifiers) …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/05/07/firebreak-by-nicole-kornher-stace/
Feb 27 2021
It’s kind of hilarious how the back cover of this volume calls it a reimagining of Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea even as Marian Womack’s afterword candidly discusses how she doesn’t want to compare The Swimmers to what was for her a seminal text. And I can see for both arguments: the comparison is a …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/02/27/the-swimmers-by-marian-womack/
Dec 23 2020
Like the protagonist of Neuromancer, William Gibson is an artiste of the slightly funny deal. In The Peripheral the first slightly funny deal is between some people in England who hire some other folks in a small-town part of Appalachia in the US. The English contingent wants the people across the pond to fly a …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/12/23/the-peripheral-by-william-gibson-2/
Nov 20 2020
Q. Every book has its own story about how it came to be conceived and written as it did. How did The Book of Malachi evolve? A. I was living at a remove from society, feeling outrage at human cruelty and a dark, desperate humor at the time of writing TboM. Our suburb was close …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/11/20/an-interview-with-t-c-farren-author-of-the-book-of-malachi/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire