Jun 14 2018

The Royal Art Of Poison by Eleanor Herman

I’m one of those overwhelmingly practical (some would say dull,) people who, when asked which historical time and place I’d most want to live in, answers “Right here and now is just fine.” Don’t get me wrong, like any other closet romantic, I have a fancy for the decadent trappings of bygone Europe, with the caveat that the rich who could afford such finery were few and far between, the middle class were barely considered people, and the poor suffered even more mightily than those even a little bit higher on the social scale. Eleanor Herman puts it best when she contrasts the highlights of the past with the drawbacks:

I am seduced by beautiful gowns, glittering jewels, and gorgeous palaces. I revel in fantasies of candlelit banquets, river regattas, and royal pageantry.

It should be quite clear, however, that my answer to a theoretical life as a baroque princess is a firm no. At this point, I would be afraid to time travel even for a few hours–attend a Versailles ball, let’s say–because I might bring something horrifying back with me. Worms, perhaps. And if I stayed there longer, well, it would be hard to enjoy the splendors of court life if I were in agonizing pain. Or dead.

See, the royal courts of Europe were hotbeds of intrigue, with assassination attempts by poison at one point being thought to be so prevalent that monarchs and others in positions of power went to extraordinary, and to our modern eyes comical, lengths to avoid such a death. Still others openly researched new poisons and became notorious for an alleged mastery of this “royal art.” Documents from the era detailing poisoning, suspected poisoning, and the many gruesome forms of death which carried away the rich and famous abound.

It is these documents that form the basis for this immensely entertaining book. Ms Herman is a historian with an eye for irony, detailing not only the often unfounded fears of the nobility but also the many ways in which these same people were voluntarily poisoning themselves, whether through the advice of physicians, the pursuit of beauty or the general lack of hygiene and sanitation. She then spends the bulk of the text examining twenty-two famous historical cases where a person’s demise was suspected to have been helped along, comparing notes from the time with current medical and scientific knowledge to make an educated conclusion as to the real causes of death. Each case is given a juicy amount of gossipy background: I learned a lot of memorable information about European courtiers that I won’t be forgetting any time soon. I also learned a lot more that was flattering to Napoleon than my Anglophile upbringing had deigned to impart, so it’s not all decadent sexy time gossip.

I was impressed even further by Ms Herman’s acerbic recounting of how poisoning, which faded in popularity when the democratic curbs to the power of the European monarchy offered a less murderous alternative for effecting change, made a comeback with the Soviet state, and how its practices continue to date. She lists a quite horrifying number of poisonings that can be laid at the doorstep of one modern European ruler, who has his own medieval precautions:

Knowing that karma is a bitch, Putin is the only world leader known to employ a personal food tester as the kings of old did. Rather than relying on his security team to ensure his food is free of poison, as other leaders do, he has a physician on staff who works closely with his personal chef. Both ingest a little bit of everything well before it is served to him. We can picture them crossing their fingers that they won’t vomit, pass out, and glow an eerie green in the dark.

Ms Herman concludes with a handy guide to all the poisons she’s previously listed, as well as their effects and a list of darkly humorous superlatives. As with the rest of the book, she writes in a style that’s both engaging and educational. I appreciated that she doesn’t hesitate to reflect on what the prior political predilection for poison means in our modern times. The Royal Art Of Poison is a terrific look at a subject that is at once morbid and racy, and embodies the best of popular history writing.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/14/the-royal-art-of-poison-by-eleanor-herman/

Jun 13 2018

A Demon in Silver (War of the Archons #1) by R.S. Ford

Maybe I don’t read enough (hahaHAHAHA) but I honestly can’t think of a grimdark meets high fantasy series that is as accessible as R. S. Ford’s War of The Archons. Granted, we only have the first book, A Demon In Silver, but I was well impressed with how Mr Ford took the best elements of both genres to create a very readable series debut. Written as essentially a chase narrative, we’re introduced to the various players as they become embroiled in the pursuit of Livia Harrow, a farm girl who begins to display magical powers thought to have disappeared over a century ago. Best of all, the book then circles round to its beginning to upend everything we thought we knew about the narrative. It’s a thrilling, twisty trip through a brutal fantasy land that isn’t, thankfully, just a reimagined Europe, and I’m definitely on board to see where Mr Ford goes with this series next.

One thing I could use a little less of were the (thankfully only occasional) incidents of tortured prose. Style is as style does, and while I can overlook the creative use of adverbs (and the overuse of the word “trews”,) this next was just too much for me:

“Her fingers moved across the blanket that covered her until her fingertips were consumed by [her dog’s] soft fur.”

No, her dog does not have carnivorous fur, and no, her fingertips did not undergo some sort of physical or spiritual transformation. As much as I love my people at Titan Press (hello and thank you for the books!) this kind of nonsense begs for stricter editing. But if that kind of thing doesn’t bother you, then I can absolutely recommend ADiS as a terrifically written high grimdark fantasy, especially since it is far and away the most fun I’ve had with the genre since early Ciaphas Cain (which technically is genre-adjacent, I know, don’t @ me.)

Stay tuned for a special treat, readers: we’ll be posting an interview with the author himself on the 20th as part of his blog tour. Check out some of the other stops using the infographic in the meantime!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/13/a-demon-in-silver-war-of-the-archons-1-by-r-s-ford/

Jun 12 2018

Making Money by Terry Pratchett

Like Going Postal, Making Money starts with a deus ex Vetinari. Moist van Lipwig has brought the Royal Post back to life, but the operation is running so smoothly that being in charge no longer satisfies his urge to take ridiculous risks. Lord Vetinari, the Patrician who rules the great city of Ankh-Morpork with a lightly tyrannical hand, sees what is happening and make van Lipwig an offer he can’t long refuse: ensuring the stability of the Royal Mint and, incidentally, expanding credit enough so that long-delayed public works projects can be financed.

As the story opens, the situation at the city’s banking system is anything but minty fresh, and that is having effects on the population, even in a quasi-medieval setting filled with wizards and Guilds and suchlike. Van Lipwig’s success at the Post plays a role, too. The stamps are convenient enough and available enough that people have been using them as a means of exchange, particularly for small transactions. Vetinari explains, “But they keep their money in old socks. They trust their socks more than they trust banks. Coinage is in artificially short supply, which is why your postage stamps are now a de facto currency. Our serious banking system is a mess. A joke, in fact.”

Van Lipwig, who has been both a con man and a showman, often both at once, counters, “It’ll be a bigger joke if you put me in charge.” (p. 38)

Except that it turns out a showman and a scoundrel are exactly what banking in Ankh-Morpork needs. The Lavish family, who have run the Mint since time out of mind have been using it to fund their eponymous spending. The Mint makes a loss on much of its physical production of coins. Its methods are antique, even by local standards. Its customer base is dwindling. It plays practically no role in credit formation.

Early on, Vetinari asks the crucial question, “What does gold know of true worth?” That comes at the end of a short back-and-forth with van Lipwig about tradition and innovation.

“You took our joke of a Post Office, Mr Lipwig, and made it a solemn undertaking. But the banks of Ankh-Morpork, sir, are very serious indeed. They are serious donkeys Mr Lipwig. There have been too many failures. They’re stuck in the mud, they live in the past, they are hypnotized by class and wealth, they think gold is important.”
“Er … isn’t it?”
“No. And thief and swindler that you are, pardon me, once were, you know it, deep down. For you, it was just a way of keeping score,” said Vetinari. “What does gold know of true worth?” (p. 37)

He then touches on the true backing of money, “a large, bustling city, full of ingenious people spinning wealth out of the common clay of the world. They construct, build, carve, bake, cast, mould, forge and devise strange and inventive crimes.” (pp. 37–38) Gold has very little to do with it, no matter what the traditionalists think.

Structurally, the book is a paean to fiat money. As has been said of turtles, it’s promises all the way down. Van Lipwig’s gifts for inspiring confidence come in handy when he is one of the first to discover that there is much less gold in the Mint than has been generally assumed, and not everyone is convinced of the new approach to money, backed by the industriousness of the city. It’s a thing damn’d close to a bank run.

Van Lipwig is not a complete charlatan. Here he is in conversation with Mr Bent, the Mint’s chief clerk and de facto operational head. Bent is also a gold bug of the first order.

Van Lipwig: “Look, I’ve been reading. The banks issue coins to four times the amount of the gold they hold. That’s a nonsense we could do without. It’s a dream world. This city is rich enough to be its own gold bar!”
“They’re trusting you for no good reason,” said Bent. … “There must be something which has a worth that goes beyond fashion and politics, a worth that endures.” (pp. 192–93)

For Bent, that something is gold. Making Money is, among other things, an extended demonstration that Bent’s position is untenable.

There are many other things in the book’s 470 pages, including plenty of humor and adventure. There’s quite a bit about the respectability or lack thereof of various businesses, and the snobbery behind much of banking as it is actually practiced. There is also a long plotline concerning golems and deterrence in international wars. The Watch turns up, in the nick of time, as does a zombie lawyer, who has a rather more expansive view of time. Igor has been there all along.

At the end of the teller’s hours, though, Making Money is all about just what the title says. People make money, full stop.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/12/making-money-by-terry-pratchett/

Jun 11 2018

Circe by Madeline Miller

(I’m quite proud of myself for cramming this book into my schedule before I had to return it to the library, so props to meee!)

Circe is a fantastic meditation on the stages of womanhood and on what it means to be human, bringing a minor character from Greek mythology to the forefront with her own compelling tale. Most people know that Circe is a sorceress who transformed Odysseus’ men to swine but was then charmed by him into not only changing them back but also into helping him continue his voyage. The rest of her story, however, is far less known, even to a mythology nerd like me. Madeline Miller gathers all the information extant on this character and builds a story that not only finds the beating heart of this remarkable figure but also shows with sensitivity and skill how universal are her desires and fears.

In all honesty, for long stretches of the book, I found Circe herself to be annoying. But it was sort of in the way I’d look back on my younger self and, if I was being perfectly honest with myself, cringe at how raw and silly I was in comparison to who I am today (tho to my credit, it didn’t take me hundreds of years to sort myself out, Circe.) I wasn’t a huge fan of her parenting style either. I get that being a single mother in exile makes for lonely, even crazy-making work (and God knows I have a lot of sympathy for other moms because children can be little demons,) but I felt that she took her son far too seriously. It isn’t the end of the world if he has a freak out: let him cry himself out in a safe area while you read a book or whatever the ancient Greek equivalent was. Even so, there were enough reminders of the timelessness of the female experience that made me feel for her throughout. By the time Telegonus had grown up and was eager to sail beyond Aiaia, I was 100% Team Circe. And oh that ending!

I was also impressed with the way other female characters were presented, especially Pasiphae and Penelope. Despite Circe being the heroine of the piece, it was clear that the other women, tho ostensibly her rivals, were pretty badass in their own right. I loved how Pasiphae skewered Circe’s self-pitying view of herself, and the relationship between Circe and Penelope was note perfect, complex and fraught until it wasn’t. I also loved how Circe finally confronted Helios, an emancipation that took her waaaaay too long but which I was glad for nevertheless.

Ms Miller writes with prose that is beautiful but rarely intrusive, and when it does jump out at you from the narrative, it’s hard not to stop and admire what she’s doing as her words seem to ring a bell within your heart (or my heart, I should say.) She tackles topics and achieves narrative triumphs that have few parallels in fiction, husbanding the familiar myths to tell fresh new stories that carry so much meaning in our modern world. I’m glad I had time to read this before plunging back into work reading.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/11/circe-by-madeline-miller/

Jun 11 2018

Truly Devious (Truly Devious #1) by Maureen Johnson

Okay, look, I read and review a ton of mystery series of varying quality over at Criminal Element and there is only one rule: each book should solve a major crime. The one exception to this rule that I’ve encountered before Truly Devious was also what I felt was the weakest of Louise Penny’s critically acclaimed Inspector Gamache novels, but even that pretended that it had solved the murder at the heart of its events. I won’t name which book because that would be a spoiler, but I knew the ending was wrong and was greatly gratified to find in the next book that I’d been right. But I also got to binge-read the series and know that if that hadn’t been the case, I would have been pissed (tempered somewhat by the fact that Ms Penny had built up enough goodwill with her previous books that I was willing to overlook my annoyance this one time.)

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Maureen Johnson doesn’t exactly solve any crimes by the end of TD. You get a solid lead on the identities of the people behind the historical kidnappings and murders, but the present day murder doesn’t feel properly solved: it’s mostly conjecture and then drama and then the book ends and you have to wait for the next books to find actual answers. I found that entirely irritating, especially since this was my first exposure to Ms Johnson and I don’t have any reason to believe that I’ll gain any crime-solving satisfaction from reading several hundred more pages in the distant future when the sequels publish. So if you, like me, hate it when mystery novels don’t actually solve their mysteries, consider yourself warned.

But don’t consider yourself warned off, as this is actually a really fun read in the “teenagers solving mysteries at school” subgenre. Ellingham Academy is like a real-life Hogwarts: free tuition and board (with a stipend included) on a Vermont campus where students are encouraged to learn at their own pace. The application process for the two-year school is agonizingly vague. Stevie Bell is thrilled to be accepted, especially as it means escaping from her dully conservative parents, who seem more bewildered than anything else by a daughter whose main aim in life is to solve crimes instead of the usual teenage girl pursuits. Stevie, you see, is enthralled by the decades-old mysteries of Ellingham Academy and aims to solve them all. But then one of her classmates is murdered, and suddenly crime becomes a lot less abstract for her.

My quibbles with presentation choices aside, I really like how Ms Johnson writes people and relationships. Stevie is a great protagonist, well-rounded and realistic. I particularly enjoyed her relationship with the head of security, who both encourages her intelligence while demanding she not risk her life in pursuit of the truth. They have a push and pull that rings much more truly than in other novels where the amateur sleuth exasperates the protective professional.

And, of course, there are excellent depictions of Stevie’s relationships with her parents and with her friends and classmates. The mystery itself isn’t quite as good, as far as we can tell, because we have no idea what the solution might be. I’m still annoyed that they didn’t at least solve for her classmate’s death, but I’m willing to wait for the next book because Ms Johnson has a gift for writing emotions and relationships. I just hope that the resolution is worth the wait!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/11/truly-devious-truly-devious-1-by-maureen-johnson/

Jun 10 2018

Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman

Everything I said here about the greatness of the first half of Life and Fate holds true for the second. What strikes me most is how consistently he captures the contradictions of humanity, in situations both mundane and extreme. Some people are pitiless one moment and turn around and show great compassion the next; they feel exalted by events and then laid low by a chance phrase or an averted glance. This is not to say that his characters are random or that they behave with no apparent motivation; quite the contrary, Grossman shows their interior lives clearly enough that a reader can follow them to the highs and the lows, the betrayals that seem like the highest duty and the acts of mercy that they perform without a second thought, returning life when a much crueller fate might seem deserved.

Grossman’s canvas is as vast as the Soviet Union in the Second World War but most of his scenes are as intimate as a couple walking in the park, or a group of soldiers huddling in a cellar. Few chapters are more than four or five pages long, but together they add up to an epic of life and death during the war that’s as great as any on the subject. Part of Grossman’s brilliance is that he is content not to have all of the parts of his narrative connect, or connect only in the loosest fashion. He shows Soviet prisoners of war without needing to have them affected by their side’s advance, let alone having them rescued by other major characters, as a lesser writer might have done. He presents scenes within the headquarters of German General Paulus, humanizing the adversaries without lightening in the least what his army was fighting for. His sequence in a concentration camp and on the way to a gas chamber is connected only tenuously to the main characters — one of the people, Sofya Osipovna Levinton, is a friend of two women in the family at the center of the novel — but it is utterly heartbreaking without being pathetic or overwritten. Human to the very last, and the guards, the technicians, the attendants, the survivors taken out of the death line, all also recognizably human. The horror is compounded later in the novel when a character asks whether anyone has news of Sofya Osipovna, “she seems to have vanished into thin air.”

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/10/life-and-fate-by-vasily-grossman/

Jun 09 2018

The 13 Clocks by James Thurber

I am sure that I picked up The 13 Clocks because of the positive things that Neil Gaiman said about it among his reviews in The View from the Cheap Seats. I don’t have that text to hand just now, but I do have the introduction that he wrote to Thurber’s tale, even though he closes it by saying that the story does not need one. Gaiman says it’s probably the best book in the world, “And if it’s not the best book, then it’s still very much like nothing anyone has ever seen before, and, to the best of my knowledge, no one’s ever really seen anything like it since.” (p. ix)

“Once upon a time, in a gloomy castle on a lonely hill, where there were thirteen clocks that wouldn’t go, there lived a cold, aggressive Duke, and his niece, the Princess Saralinda.” (p. 1) The Duke is wonderfully bad. “One eye wore a velvet patch; the other glittered through a monocle which made half his body seem closer to you than the other half. He had lost one eye when he was twelve, for he was fond of peering into nests and lairs in search of birds and animals to mail. One afternoon, a mother shrike had mauled him first. His nights were spent in evil dreams, and his days were given to wicked schemes.” (pp. 1–2)

The story is in a fairy-tale register, leavened by absurdity and words both invented and inventive. It is also, as Gaiman notes, very short. “When I was a young writer, I liked to imagine that I was paying someone for every word I wrote, rather than being paid for it; it was a fine way to discipline myself to use only those words I needed.” (pp. x–xi)

The Duke, naturally, does not want to let anyone marry the Princess. Nevertheless, he has to allow princes to try to win her hand. In turn, he is allowed to set them tasks, and being what he is, he sets them impossible tasks, which is hard. “What makes it even harder is her uncle’s scorn and sword,” sneered a tale-teller. “He will slit you from your guggle to your zatch.” (p. 8)

There aren’t any surprises in this story, except on every page. There is a Golux, who “wore an indescribable hat, his eye were wide and astonished, as if everything were happening for the first time, and he had a dark, describable beard.” (p. 13) More people speak in rhyme than one would at first think, and much is said on the related subjects of tears and jewels. In the end, which is never far away, logic and the 13 clocks both play a role, neither of which works as expected. There is even, perhaps, just maybe, a gleaming glimpse of Ever After.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/09/the-13-clocks-by-james-thurber/

Jun 06 2018

Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowski

Sword of Destiny collects six stories that take place early in the personal history Geralt of Rivia, a Witcher; that is, a human who has gained supernatural fighting abilities through a combination of training and magic. He is the central figure of four previous books by Sapkowski: The Last Wish, Blood of Elves, The Time of Contempt, and Baptism of Fire. (The order of publication in their original Polish may be a bit different.) The remaining three Witcher books — The Tower of the Swallow, The Lady of the Lake, and Season of Storms — are now available in English.

I was first introduced to Sapkowski in 2012 by a Russian friend who was surprised, ok, astonished, that such a massively popular author was not widely known in the English-speaking world. The appearance of the later Witcher books nearly two decades after they were originally written means that they are doubly distant: translated from another language and culture, and transported through time. The gap between 1990s fantasy and 2010s fantasy may not be as great as, say, the gap between 1950s science fiction and 1970s science fiction, but it is still noticeable.

Sword of Destiny most closely resembles The Last Wish, as both are loosely connected stories of Geralt’s various adventures. Sword of Destiny lacks the framing narrative of The Last Wish and simply presents the tales; as a book, it is none the worse for doing without the frame. The stories are classic fantasy adventures, including a dragon hunt, a duel, and a tale of misdirection featuring a doppelgänger. Sapkowski subverts each of them, changing the roles and motivations to confound the expectations of readers expecting the typical.

The stories in the second half of the book concern the early life of Ciri, the Child of Destiny who figures so prominently in the main sequence of Witcher novels: where she came from, how she first met Geralt, how that set larger events in motion. There is also an unusually forthright statement of a pro-choice position, which I presume would have been noticeable and controversial in 1990s Poland, when the Polish Pope was still alive and clerical Catholicism very much a force in public life in Sapkowski’s country.

“My mother? No, Calanthe. I presume she had a choice … Or perhaps she didn’t? No, but she did; a suitable spell or elixir would have been sufficient … A choice. A choice which should be respected, for it is the hold and irrefutable right of every woman.” (p. 345, ellipses in original)

All of them are solid fantasy adventures, with the various twists keeping them from feeling too time-worn. For readers of the whole series, the appearance of Ciri adds depth and fills in important pieces of Sapkowski’s longer narrative. For newcomers to the Witcher, Sword of Destiny would be a perfectly acceptable starting point. I enjoyed these stories and look forward to three more books concerning Geralt.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/06/sword-of-destiny-by-andrzej-sapkowski/

Jun 06 2018

Space Opera by Catherynne M Valente

Woof, and I thought LIFEL1K3 was gonzo.

The good: I really loved the fact that the two main (human) heroes are both British Muslims tho of vastly different stripes. Catherynne M Valente does a killer job of imagining a future world and, particularly, a future England capable of producing a band as genre- and gender-bending as Decibel Jones and the (unfortunately named) Absolute Zeros. I really enjoyed the ending, even if I felt it a tad under-baked and deserving of further exploration. And I definitely enjoyed this book about a billion times more than the awful Deathless, most likely because the relationships were a billion times healthier. I could speculate that this might have something to do with the ending of her relationship with her Ukrainian ex-husband, but I’m an incorrigible gossip, so what do I know. I’m just glad I wasn’t grossed out by this book’s portrayal of romance and sex and compatibility the way I was with Deathless’.

The bad: this book is A Lot. And if you enjoy Ms Valente, then you will enjoy this surfeit of her style: long, witty ramblings that come to a sharp point, so long as you don’t let your mind drift off along one of the many, many tangents. It is very much a disco ball of a book: glittery and illuminating but do you really want to stare at it for too long? It is a bit too brittle and bright for me, alas, but it’s the kind of things lots of other people (including Doug: hi, Doug!) really go for.

I actually recommended this to a friend of mine who loves Eurovision as much as Ms Valente does. It’s a fun take on an intergalactic competition that could end in humanity’s extermination, and I greatly enjoyed the characters, but it was just So Much crammed into a small space with uneven pacing and emphasis. Like everything at the party that didn’t involve Dess should have maybe been more relevant? I loved that there were heaps of imaginatively created alien species, but some were definitely created better than others: nothing about the Lummuti, for example, stood up to scrutiny, tho I really wanted it to.

Space Opera was fun, I didn’t hate it, but the chances of me going back for more are vanishingly slim. Thank goodness this is a standalone: the book gets extra points for that alone.

Doug was more of a fan. Read his reviews here and here.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/06/space-opera-by-catherynne-m-valente-2/

Jun 04 2018

My Grave Ritual (Warlock Holmes #3) by G.S. Denning

If A Study In Brimstone was the introduction to Warlock Holmes, and The Hell-Hound Of The Baskervilles essentially his origin story, then My Grave Ritual brings the machinations of The Woman to the forefront. Not for G.S. Denning the consignment of Irene Adler to a single story. She is, instead, a constant, if elusive, presence throughout this book (tho she was, of course, introduced much earlier in ASiB.) Coincidentally, her significance becomes more pronounced at the same time that our hero Dr John Watson’s romantic inclinations do. I am already relishing a Mary Morstan-Irene Adler showdown in the upcoming Sign Of Nine. Assuming, of course, that Mary exists in this brilliant alternate telling of the Sherlock Holmes oeuvre, one that combines John Watson’s excellent deductive skills with Warlock Holmes’ supernatural powers while adding a heaping dose of humor in the process. I loled when the demon Covfefe showed up, not my first shout of laughter with this book and certainly not my last.

With the third book in the Warlock Holmes series, it becomes clear that Mr Denning isn’t merely writing a spoof: he is building a cohesive narrative with his adaptations, adding elements that run through each story to form an overarching plot that is far more interesting to me than the somewhat cold calculations and case-of-the-week nature of the originals. This is actually a departure, as I tend to prefer standalone works to epic series: kudos to Mr Denning for flipping that on its head for me! I’m also really impressed with how he sorted through the many short stories to pick out the ones best suited to his purpose, and am looking forward to seeing where he goes next, since it is very clear that he has a lot of exciting, intelligent plot in store for us, if these first three books have been anything to go by.

See my review of the previous novel in the series, The Hell-Hound Of The Baskervilles.

Interview with the author himself to follow soon!

6/27/18 Here’s the interview!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/04/my-grave-ritual-warlock-holmes-3-by-g-s-denning/