Sep 01 2023
I like seeing writers stretching and trying new things. To date, and in addition to her short fiction which I have not read, Mary Robinette Kowal has published a completed series of five Regency romances with magical elements, an ongoing series of space exploration against the background of an Earth slipping into uninhabitability, a (so …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/09/01/the-spare-man-by-mary-robinette-kowal/
Jun 19 2023
By mid-1916, British forces fighting in Europe have mastered the logistics of spiritualism well enough to gain occasional tactical advantages in the never-ending trench warfare of the Western Front. Men die; they report in to the Spirit Corps; the knowledge that they bought with their lives — a sniper’s location here, a hidden advance there, a …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/06/19/ghost-talkers-by-mary-robinette-kowal/
May 20 2023
Forest of Memory, a novella from 2016, finds Mary Robinette Kowal writing in a very different mode from her two well-known series, the Glamourist Histories and the Lady Astronaut books. Two hundred or so years into the future, material abundance and pervasive interconnection have left some very wealthy people hungering for the real, for the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/05/20/forest-of-memory-by-mary-robinette-kowal/
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/
Jun 28 2020
Pacing, and the parts of the story not told, shape The Fated Sky the second book in Mary Robinette Kowal’s Lady Astronauts series. The Calculating Stars ended with Elma York, the series’ first-person narrator, on her way to the moon. By the beginning of The Fated Sky, there is a colony on the moon with …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/06/28/the-fated-sky-by-mary-robinette-kowal/
Jul 20 2019
The Calculating Stars starts with a bang. Elma York, Kowal’s protagonist and first-person narrator says that she and her husband had flown up to the mountain cabin that he inherited for stargazing, “By which I mean: sex. Oh, don’t pretend that you’re shocked. Nathaniel and I were a healthy young married couple, so most of …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/20/the-calculating-stars-by-mary-robinette-kowal/
Oct 09 2015
Of Noble Family is the fifth book of Mary Robinette Kowal’s Glamourist History series. The series crosses Regency romances with alternate (but not terribly alternate) history and a dash of domestic magic. The series follows Sir David Vincent and his wife Jane, accomplished glamourists; that is, practitioners of the arts of magical illusion known in …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/10/09/of-noble-family-by-mary-robinette-kowal/
Mar 09 2015
Valour and Vanity by Mary Robinette Kowal is the fourth of her Glamourist Histories series, following Shades of Milk & Honey, Glamour in Glass, and Without a Summer. The series crosses Regency romances with alternate (but not terribly alternate) history and a dash of domestic magic that may yet admit of industrial applications. The teaser …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/03/09/valour-vanity-by-mary-robinette-kowal/
Nov 07 2014
Without a Summer by Mary Robinette Kowal is the third of her Glamourist Histories series, following Shades of Milk & Honey, and Glamour in Glass. The series crosses Regency romances with alternate (but not terribly alternate) history and a dash of domestic magic that may yet admit of industrial applications.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/11/07/without-a-summer-by-mary-robinette-kowal/
Oct 06 2014
Glamour in Glass is the second novel in Mary Robinette Kowal’s Glamourist Histories series. This review contains spoilers for Shades of Milk and Honey, the first in the series.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/10/06/glamour-in-glass-by-mary-robinette-kowal/
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The Shire