Jul 01 2020
When it comes to children’s books, for me, my most important criteria for judging a volume’s worth lies in whether or not I would give it to my kids to read. The answer in this case is a resounding yes, even as I found it less entertaining for myself due to the same lack of …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/07/01/dragon-pearl-by-yoon-ha-lee/
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/
Jun 25 2020
Oh, it’s over? I don’t want it to be. So this is the final volume of the time-traveling adventures of four badass paper girls who originally meet as 12 year-olds the morning after Halloween, while delivering newspapers in their small town of Stony Stream, Ohio. After getting shunted through time in four separate directions at …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/06/25/paper-girls-vol-6-by-brian-k-vaughan-cliff-chiang-matthew-wilson-jared-k-fletcher/
Jun 21 2020
Because I don’t have a subscription to the OED, I will take Merriam-Webster at their word that the first appearance of “listicle” was in 2007, several eternities ago in internet terms — back when you still had to have a .edu address to get a Facebook account (back when youngish people still thought Facebook was …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/06/21/hugo-awards-2020-short-story-nominees-2/
Jun 18 2020
Gosh, it feels kinda weird reviewing this as its own entity, but I’m still only partway through reading Exhalation, the collection it comes from, and won’t be able to finish the whole book for a while. Anxiety Is The Dizziness Of Freedom is the last story in the volume, after the also-Hugo-nominated Omphalos, with both …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/06/18/anxiety-is-the-dizziness-of-freedom-by-ted-chiang/
Jun 16 2020
I think binge-reading the Monstress comic book series has seriously lowered my tolerance for earnest right now. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with Becky Chambers’ To Be Taught, If Fortunate. The earnestness fits the message, which is a meditation on scientific ethics in regard to space travel and exploration. The novella is as uplifting, diverse …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/06/16/to-be-taught-if-fortunate-by-becky-chambers/
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/06/11/hugo-awards-2020-novelette-nominees/
Jun 10 2020
Yes, I am totally here for open border advocacy allegories, sci-fi tales that center non-white perspectives and experiences, and sly critiques of racism, overt or otherwise! Dr Freedom Chukwuebuka is five months pregnant when she abruptly leaves Lagos to return to New York City. She leaves behind a clinic where she treated both humans and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/06/10/laguardia-by-nnedi-okorafor-tana-ford/
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/06/08/hugo-awards-2020-short-story-nominees/
May 18 2020
Sometimes, when I’m in the middle of a long jag of perfectly fine to mediocre books, I start to wonder whether my reading skills are atrophying because I’m only managing 100 pages a day. But then I get a book like Becky Chambers’ The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet and crush all 500 …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/05/18/the-long-way-to-a-small-angry-planet-wayfarers-1-by-becky-chambers/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire