Jun 29 2021
This brilliant novel is as if you took the best parts of Blade Runner and Gorky Park and Vertigo and mashed them all together with the most tender empathy and an eye to not only singularity but also the meaning of godhood. My only complaint with this book is that I’d freaking love it if …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/06/29/when-the-sparrow-falls-by-neil-sharpson/
Jun 24 2021
This book feels like a metaphor in search of a meaning. There’s a lot of gorgeous, elaborate, haunting imagery, but it’s ultimately not put in service to anything besides a ho-hum quest story. I almost wrote down “coming-of-age” there for quest but the protagonist is ostensibly twenty-two years old, even though she acts much younger. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/06/24/star-eater-by-kerstin-hall/
Jun 18 2021
Oh, man, this is one of those books I just want to muppet flail over. I greatly enjoyed Casey McQuiston’s debut romance, Red, White & Royal Blue but even in the closing paragraphs of my review for that novel, I was already wistfully looking ahead to this one. Which is thematically fitting, because this lightly …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/06/18/one-last-stop-by-casey-mcquiston/
Jun 14 2021
Welcome to one of the last planets on the outskirts of the galaxy: the low-oxygen, mostly desert, way out of the way Factus. This dusty little outpost didn’t take a side in the war between the Accord and the Free Limits, not that either power had much use for the waterless wasteland anyway. With the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/06/14/ten-low-by-stark-holborn/
Jun 06 2021
Since the last time I looked in on Murderbot, it has become more secure in its freedom and found something like a home among the people of the Preservation Alliance. Preservation, as it is known throughout Network Effect, is something of a post-scarcity utopia, an interstellar polity posed as a counterpoint to Murderbot’s area of …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/06/06/network-effect-by-martha-wells/
Jun 02 2021
What if Christopher Nolan’s Tenet was less in love with itself and the magic of cinematography, and just decided to tell a more interesting story? That’s basically what you have here with Christian Cantrell’s Scorpion, as a CIA analyst discovers that a serial assassin she’s been pursuing might have far stranger motivations than she’d ever …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/06/02/scorpion-by-christian-cantrell/
May 31 2021
The Relentless Moon, the third book in Mary Robinette Kowal’s Lady Astronauts series, changes locales and first-person narrator from the first two books, The Calculating Stars and The Fated Sky. Nicole Wargin is also one of the original astronauts, and in early 1963 as The Relentless Moon opens, she is both an old Moon hand …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/05/31/the-relentless-moon-by-mary-robinette-kowal/
May 19 2021
This novella combines three of my favorite things: murder mysteries, sci-fi (and I don’t care if calling it that is “vulgar”, Matt) and boy bands! Add a police detective with a fascinating history, literary snarkiness and huge doses of humor, and you’ve got a book that hits all of my reading sweet spots. Las Vegas …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/05/19/the-album-of-dr-moreau-by-daryl-gregory/
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/
Apr 19 2021
In the absurdist tradition of Sergio Aragones comes the work of his compatriot Fermín Solís, who goes forward in time instead of back a la Aragones’ Groo to bring us the adventures of Astro Mouse, a mouse who’s an astronaut, and his companion Light Bulb. The comic starts off quite cleverly, as our heroes are …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/04/19/astro-mouse-and-light-bulb-1-vs-astro-chicken-by-fermin-solis/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire