Category: Laura

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

This is a classic Joe Hill horror story. A reclusive, somewhat bitter former rock star, Judas Coyne (known as Jude), lives away from people and collects macabre things, even a snuff film. He purchases a dead man’s suit, and finds that he is now the focus of a malevolent ghost. There’s a reason for the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/18/heart-shaped-box-by-joe-hill/

Mud Vein by Tarryn Fisher

I gave this book 5 stars on Goodreads because I got so caught up in it. On the surface it’s a puzzle/mystery kind of story. A female author named Senna Richards wakes up on her 33rd birthday to find herself trapped in a strange house with an emergency room doctor who once treated her and …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/17/mud-vein-by-tarryn-fisher/

Beautiful You: A Novel by Chuck Palahniuk

I like most things by Chuck Palahniuk, mostly because he always pushes the envelope, even when or perhaps especially when it leaves people outside their comfort zone. This particular book explores sexuality and women in a way that’s distressing to an extent. I couldn’t really decide if he was drawing women as superficial pleasure seekers …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/16/beautiful-you-a-novel-by-chuck-palahniuk/

The Raven Cycle #3: Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater

This is the third book of a series that is beginning to become extremely interesting. It was good to begin with, but as the story continues it becomes even more layered, with complex plotting and characterization that a reader can really sink their teeth into. The tale involves 4 boys at a Virginia prep school …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/15/the-raven-cycle-3-blue-lily-lily-blue-by-maggie-stiefvater/

Symbiont (Parasitology Book 2) by Mira Grant

Mira Grant (aka Seanan McGuire) seems a little bit like Midas to me. So far everything she’s written – whether it’s urban fantasy, superhero, apocalypse, or something else – has hit the mark and become gold. Symbiont, the second book in her Parasitology series, keeps up the excellent writing and the interesting plot. In some …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/11/symbiont-parasitology-book-2-by-mira-grant/

The Third Bear by Jeff VanderMeer

The Third Bear is a somewhat unsettling collection of short stories by Jeff VanderMeer. I’ve been trying to find a way to classify this book, and it’s defying me. The stories within range from bizarre to creepy to unnerving, and they took my mind to pictures and ideas that I wouldn’t normally have found on …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/11/the-third-bear-by-jeff-vandermeer/

The Long Night of White Chickens by Francisco Goldman

I have a real fondness for Latin American novels. From Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s magical realism to Juan Gabriel Vasquez’s rejection of that magical realism and always, always, a deep fondness of Pablo Neruda’s poetry, I’ve read what I can find and enjoyed it all. I very much wanted to enjoy Francisco Goldman’s The Long Night …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/10/the-long-night-of-white-chickens-by-francisco-goldman/

The Cormorant (Miriam Black) by Chuck Wendig

The Cormorant is the third book in Chuck Wendig’s Miriam Black series. (The first two are Blackbirds and Mockingbird.) These books are intriguing and well-written, as well as entertaining as hell given that Miriam is prone to speaking her mind and she has an extensive vocabulary, as well as the power to tell when people …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/06/the-cormorant-miriam-black-by-chuck-wendig/

The Peripheral by William Gibson

I adore William Gibson with a slightly unhealthy fierceness, akin to obsession. His Neuromancer was my first introduction to cyberpunk of any sort, and I knew I had found my tribe, or at least part of it. To read Neuromancer in 1984, before everyone had a desktop computer and AOL, was a complete nerdgasm for …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/05/the-peripheral-by-william-gibson/

The Book of Strange New Things: A Novel by Michel Faber

I admit that I was prepared to not like this book. It concerns a Christian pastor being sent to the first inhabitable planet found by humankind so that he can minister to the alien species already living there, but I quickly discovered that that was an extremely simplistic view of the story. What I had …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/01/04/the-book-of-strange-new-things-a-novel-by-michel-faber/