Tag: Horror

Hugo Awards 2021: Best Novelette Nominees

There was an incredibly strong field in this category this year! I’m going to go ahead and review these from my least favorite to the one I hope will win, starting with Aliette de Bodard’s The Inaccessibility Of Heaven. In all honesty, her overuse of the em dash is a pet peeve of mine: it’s …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/10/28/hugo-awards-2021-best-novelette-nominees/

Monstress Vol. 5: Warchild by Marjorie M. Liu & Sana Takeda

To be perfectly honest, when I saw this series was nominated for the Best Graphic Story Hugo again, I sighed, girded my loins and decided to plunge in so as to get this over with quickly. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that all the things I disliked about the first four volumes were …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/10/22/monstress-vol-5-warchild-by-marjorie-m-liu-sana-takeda/

Hugo Awards 2021: Best Short Story Nominees

There was a wealth of authors I very much enjoy reading in this slate, and new-to-me authors I was pleased to make acquaintance of! On reflection, I don’t feel that this year’s list was as good as last year’s, tho was still solidly entertaining. As with last year, I’ll go over each (mostly) alphabetically. A …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/10/21/hugo-awards-2021-best-short-story-nominees/

From The Neck Up by Aliya Whiteley

Bluntly, I don’t know anyone working in speculative fiction today who consistently writes such disturbingly weird shit. But not like in a gratuitous way. Aliya Whiteley doesn’t want to shock you, necessarily, but she is unafraid to plumb into the deeper, uglier parts of the human psyche to examine the monstrous and strange, to ponder …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/17/from-the-neck-up-by-aliya-whiteley/

The Dead And The Dark by Courtney Gould

I was genuinely creeped out by parts of this horror/mystery tale, which is saying a lot because most horror novels don’t scare me at all! Courtney Gould certainly knows how to build tension, even if I wasn’t 100% convinced by the Big Bad-related world-building. The rest of it, tho, is pretty great, especially in its examination …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/08/03/the-dead-and-the-dark-by-courtney-gould/

Star Eater by Kerstin Hall

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. …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/06/24/star-eater-by-kerstin-hall/

Ivan the Terrible by Robert Payne and Nikita Romanoff

Ivan the Terrible by Robert Payne and Nikita Romanoff

Ivan IV, not yet known as the Terrible, ascended to the throne as Grand Prince of Muscovy at the tender age of three. His father, Vasily III, “was a mild-mannered prince, well-liked by the people. Unlike his more famous father, Ivan III, known to history as Ivan the Great, who conquered large territories and fought …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/06/23/ivan-the-terrible-by-robert-payne-and-nikita-romanoff/

The Lights Of Prague by Nicole Jarvis

How to make the now well-worn trope of vampires and monster hunters feel fresh and new again? Set the proceedings in historic Prague, with a firm eye on local history and mythology free of the influence of the too-standard figures of modern, Western-European-leaning pop culture, while also infusing a 21st-century sensibility to the proceedings. We …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/05/24/the-lights-of-prague-by-nicole-jarvis/

Black Water Sister by Zen Cho

It’s weird feeling like I’m perfectly suited to review this book as a diaspora Malaysian but also feeling inadequate to review this book for that very same reason. The experience of reading Black Water Sister was like stepping back into old, comfy clothes and wandering around my hometown, but a small part of me was …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/05/11/black-water-sister-by-zen-cho/

Deathless Divide (Dread Nation #2) by Justina Ireland

Thank God for Katherine! I was pretty fond of her in the first novel of the series too, and am so, so glad she gets entire viewpoint chapters in this novel, alternating with Jane’s. Deathless Divide begins with the girls fleeing Summerland and trying to figure out, with their small band of survivors, where to …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/03/25/deathless-divide-dread-nation-2-by-justina-ireland/