Mar 05 2020
Great concept, abysmal execution. I love, love, love the idea of teenage lesbian witches coming of age but there were two huge problems I had with this book that seriously interfered with my enjoyment of the story. A brief on said story, before I go about lamenting where it could have done so much better: …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/03/05/these-witches-dont-burn-these-witches-dont-burn-1-by-isabel-sterling/
Mar 03 2020
As a teenager who never really “fit in” but who got along just fine with my peers because I was happy with myself and didn’t really care about what other people thought, my number one favorite kind of novel was about protagonists who didn’t fit in and didn’t really care either. You know how rare …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/03/03/every-reason-we-shouldnt-every-reason-we-shouldnt-1-by-sara-fujimura/
Jan 28 2020
Man, I dig a morally ambiguous lead character as much as the next person (V. E. Schwab’s Villains series, the badass coven of Hannah Capin’s upcoming Foul Is Fair) but this was waaaaay not that. Aina Solis is an orphan whose parents were killed for practicing their pacifist religion in Kosin, the titular Diamond City. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/01/28/diamond-city-diamond-city-1-by-francesca-flores/
Nov 11 2019
Wow, this was probably my most disappointing read this year so far. After reading L. L. McKinney’s really terrific short story in the Wonderland anthology, I felt compelled to look her up, and found the listing for this novel in my library’s e-collection. I nearly swooned at the awesome cover, and the description (Buffy meets …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/11/11/a-blade-so-black-the-nightmare-verse-1-by-l-l-mckinney/
Oct 15 2019
This was such a surprisingly grounded, even-handed look at revolution and its toll, emotional and material, on the survivors. While very much a cross between the Harry Potter and Red Rising books — except with dragons instead of magic or advanced technology — it felt at its heart closer akin to Jo Walton’s The Just …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/15/fireborne-the-aurelian-cycle-1-by-rosaria-munda/
Oct 05 2019
It’s a happy coincidence that whenever I get a break from covering new fiction, there’s an installment of the Three Dark Crowns series waiting for me from the public library. It’s like it’s meant to be or something! Anyway, this novella looks back at formative chapters of the early lives of our three queens of …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/05/the-young-queens-three-dark-crowns-0-2-by-kendare-blake/
Sep 27 2019
Before this devolves into a rant on stupid Adobe products, let me first admit that I couldn’t read the entire book, as the first page of each chapter was entirely invisible to me. That said, I did very much enjoy what I did read, and Slay was exactly as good as expected where expected. Very …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/09/27/slay-by-brittney-morris/
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/08/30/little-white-lies-debutantes-book-1-by-jennifer-lynn-barnes/
Aug 25 2019
Wait, that’s it?! No fair! So this is the prequel novella to the Three Dark Crowns series, explaining why all oracle queens are now drowned at birth. Exquisitely written, as always, it also does a mean thing to us readers: it sets up a terrific protagonist then has everything go terribly wrong not only for …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/08/25/the-oracle-queen-three-dark-crowns-0-1-by-kendare-blake/
Aug 09 2019
Hurray, work finally calmed down enough again for me to read a library book! After the events of the first book in the series (that you should really read before picking up this one,) our heroine Octavia is on the run from the rest of the humans of N’Terra. She finds refuge with the Faloii, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/08/09/an-anatomy-of-beasts-faloiv-2-by-olivia-a-cole/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire