Apr 12 2026

The Wonder Engine by T. Kingfisher

The Wonder Engine continues and concludes the story begun in Clockwork Boys. To recap: Three misfits have been offered reprieves from their respective criminal sentences (two death, one life in prison) if they can find a way to stop the Clocktaurs, semi-mechanical, semi-magical contraptions that are slowly but surely conquering the lands surrounding the misfits’ home city on a campaign clearly aimed at the city itself. The army’s regular forces have slowed the Clocktaurs some but by no means halted their drive. Previous missions to Anuket City, the source of the marauders, have failed or simply disappeared. It’s desperate measures all around.

The Wonder Engine by T. Kingfisher

As I wrote previously, Slate is a convicted forger with a death sentence hanging over her head; she also has the mild magical knack of smelling rosemary when danger is near. Brenner is her ex, an accomplished assassin and jack-of-all-crimes with a death sentence of his own. Caliban is a paladin who killed nearly a dozen people while he was possessed by a demon. The possession modified his guilt, in the eyes of the local law, and so he was not hanged but tossed into the dungeon forever. To keep them on task, all three were given magic tattoos that can cause them pain if they begin to stray from their mission, and kill them if they abandon it entirely. In Clockwork Boys, the three gained the assistance of a young scholar, the Learned Edmund, whose abstruse knowledge may be helpful in unraveling the mysteries of the Clocktaurs. More pragmatically, his order also had sent a senior scholar to Anuket City, and his correspondence contained hints about the Clocktaurs, but he, too, seems to have disappeared. If they can find him, maybe he knows how they work and how to stop them. Finally, the group gained a gnole named Grimehug.

Gnoles, in this world, are intelligent bipedal beings with badger-like features. They can speak human languages (humans cannot get far in gnole languages because communications often involve things like the position of a gnole’s whiskers or the angle of their ears) and have partly integrated themselves into human societies, often taking on menial jobs such as street cleaning or removing dead bodies. Like underclasses everywhere, they are often overlooked and underestimated. Gnole society is complex and caste-based; they are not immune to overlooking and underestimating either.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/12/the-wonder-engine-by-t-kingfisher/

Apr 11 2026

Emergent Tokyo by Jorge Almazan + Studiolab

Isn’t this neat? Tokyo is one of the world’s greatest cities, and is regularly praised for its success on a human scale even as the population of the metropolitan area has soared past 30 million. In Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City, Jorge Almazan and his team of more than two dozen researchers and editors try to answer crucial questions about the city. What are some of the key features that make Tokyo so vibrant and appealing? How did they come about? Are there underlying patterns? Can these successes be sustained, or maybe even replicated and extended? As they write, “But to use Tokyo as a source of inspiration, one must move beyond the awed gaze of the tourist and begin to ask questions about the why and how of the city. That, in a nutshell, is the purpose of this book.” (p. 4)

Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City by Jorge Almazan + Studiolab

The authors also warn throughout the book about just-so stories of the unique Japanese-ness of Tokyo and its development. Cities and cultures the world over have their unique aspects, but people in Tokyo were also responding to economic, legal and environmental challenges that have counterparts elsewhere. The choices that they made began patterns that contributed to Tokyo’s unique character, and path-dependency means that the options in other places will be different. The authors hope that showing underlying mechanisms can both contribute to greater understanding of Tokyo itself and help people, especially decision-makers, grasp the dynamics in their own cities so as to make more human-centric choices. Tokyo’s successes are neither impenetrable nor perfectly reproducible, but understanding how they emerged can make corresponding successes elsewhere more likely.

The bad news is that the answer to almost any question posed about Tokyo begins with, “It’s complicated.” The good news is that with diligent work and thorough research, comprehensible patterns emerge. “Instead of reducing the city’s diversity to a singular Tokyo model, we conceive Tokyo as having multiple neighborhood models or archetypes, each with its own distinct urban fabric—areas which are similar in terms of land use, street patterns, and building types, even if they’re on opposite ends of the city. (p. 7) The team describes their approach:

Tokyo’s metropolitan government now offers a wealth of quantitative information about every building, road, and plot of land in the city, data which can be analyzed algorithmically to lay bare the differences between Tokyo’s diverse neighborhoods. By poring through government databases, we have pinpointed several key characteristics of Tokyo neighborhoods that strongly predict their other contours, enabling us to compare and contrast at the scale of the city in concrete, quantifiable terms. For example, neighborhoods with a similar building scale and mix of land use often resemble each other in subtler metrics as well, such as their permeability to the public, accessibility for pedestrians, and the intimacy and vibrancy of their communities. Through this analysis, one can begin to grasp a common pattern language across Tokyo neighborhoods and gain a sense of how their essential characteristics give them a distinctive tenor and daily rhythm. (p. 7)

The research team took advantage of a long-standing city practice of dividing the city into small administrative units known as chōme. The full city has 23 wards, but within these wards each chōme is only about 0.2 km2 in area. By analyzing the city chōme by chōme, the researchers found six major archetypes: Village Tokyo, Local Tokyo, Pocket Tokyo, Mercantile Tokyo, Yamanote Mercantile Tokyo, Shitamachi Mercantile Tokyo, Mass Residential Tokyo and Office Tower Tokyo. The archetypes differ in their density, balance of residential and commercial building, scale of developments, street sizes, and other characteristics. The authors found that neighborhoods of a given type often had more in common with each other than with their immediate geographic neighbors.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/11/emergent-tokyo-by-jorge-almazan-studiolab/

Apr 09 2026

Ami Moon And The Galactic Peacekeepers by Frances Lee

For whatever reason, I had this book’s publication date misfiled, but oh what a perfect time to read it, as the Artemis II mission reminds millions of people worldwide why so many of us initially fell in love with the idea of outer space.

And space is, obviously, the setting for Ami Moon And The Galactic Peacekeepers. The graphic novel opens with a greeting to readers from a(n adorable) Peacekeeper named Emo, who will serve as our guide through the experience. Emo relates that the only human among the Galactic Peacekeepers before us was Ami, a girl who couldn’t remember how to get back to Earth. Funnily enough, none of the other Peacekeepers knew of a planet by that name either, so she spent her days helping on missions of peace even as she missed home and her mother terribly.

As we follow along, we learn that being a Peacekeeper means that there are a lot of things to keep both us and her occupied. Ami has been assigned to a team with the much larger, bear-shaped and gentle Sumo, and the smaller, shark-shaped and prickly (in nature if not in body) Rosa. In their downtime, the trio enjoy noodles and exploring the Peacekeepers’ headquarters planet, even as they try to avoid getting into fights with snobbier colleagues. But when their AI, whom Ami wistfully names MOM, has a mission for them, it’s all systems go.

Seeing as how they’re all novices, the missions start out pretty simply, but grow in complexity as their skills develop. Soon, they’re encountering actual dangers with psychological repercussions. Will they be able to complete their missions and return home safely, even as Ami searches for any word of Earth?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/09/ami-moon-and-the-galactic-peacekeepers-by-frances-lee/

Apr 08 2026

Now You Know Your ABCs (Or Do You?) by Caspar Salmon & Matt Hunt

I honestly cannot remember the last time I laughed so delightedly at a children’s picture book!

Now You Know Your ABCs (Or Do You?) begins how books like these usually do, with an A is for Apple and B is for Ball. The story grows increasingly immersive, however, as we plunge deeper into the alphabet. Soon, readers are pulled into a tale at once adventurous and magical, as a wolf pursues us through the charmingly illustrated pages, traversing the entire alphabet for good measure.

There is definitely a hint of danger here but younger readers will, presumably, be enjoying this with a safe adult who’ll ensure that this wild tale feels more exciting romp than actually scary. Honestly, this book hearkens very much to the kind of fairy tale yarn that more creative storytellers than myself often spin for their children’s bedtime stories. Kids do tend to be weirdly bloodthirsty, and many of them will enjoy this epic journey, if they’re not rooting outright for the wolf to win. I know that my little monsters would have been jumping up and down with excitement had this book come out when they were still read-along picture book enthusiasts.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/08/now-you-know-your-abcs-or-do-you-by-caspar-salmon-matt-hunt/

Apr 07 2026

Two Truths And A Lie by Mark Stevens (EXCERPT)

Hello, dear readers! Today I have an intriguing excerpt from the second book in the Flynn Martin series, Two Truths And A Lie.

After being instrumental in helping to catch the notorious PDQ killer who terrorized Denver, investigative reporter Flynn Martin is thrilled that her career is flying high. Juggling her professional responsibilities with motherhood is a continuing challenge, but one she finds worthwhile if it means putting the guilty behind bars.

Serial killer Harry Kugel isn’t ready to let their relationship go, however, even as he’s facing a long prison sentence for the crimes he’s committed. Four months after his sentencing, an upstanding family of four mysteriously disappears. As Flynn investigates, she begins receiving cryptic messages from someone who has no qualms about targeting not only her sources but those nearest and dearest to her as well. Is Harry somehow involved in this case too? Or has yet another copycat killer come out of the woodwork to prey on the innocent of Colorado?

Read on for a scene-setting excerpt, as Harry faces a judge and leaves Flynn with a clear message:

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/07/two-truths-and-a-lie-by-mark-stevens-excerpt/

Apr 04 2026

The Tailor of Panama by John Le Carré

The Tailor of Panama is Harry Pendel, half of the Savile Row partnership of Pendel & Braithwaite, relocated to Panama City some years back. A large portrait of the late Arthur Braithwaite — shipped over from England at his widow’s insistence and damn the expense — presides over the premises just off the prestigious Via España. The prestige of English hand-tailoring has translated into a tidy business for Pendel. He has fitted more than one president, quite a number of ministers, practically all of Panama’s business elite, and wealthy men of discerning taste from around the region. He has not held himself above creating uniforms for men new to their high ranks, and he is far too worldly to inquire about how they attained those ranks, or indeed how legitimate their governments might be. Credit available to the right customers, but cash very much preferred.

The Tailor of Panama by John Le Carré

The book was published in 1996 and is set a vague but not too large number of years following the first Bush administration’s forceful ouster of Panama’s notorious ruler Manuel Noriega in 1989. Corruption is assumed of anyone with money. The deadly violence of the drug trade is also assumed, but stays in the background in this novel. By all appearances, Pendel has created a jolly island of English probity and taste in the tropics. The men who come to his shop enjoy the whisky more than the good fitting, and there are regulars who stop by to be seen and to catch up on the latest gossip, in between business, golfing, maintenance of at least one mistress, and the other accoutrements of being rich and Panamanian. Pendel hears a lot in unguarded moments, whether that is during fittings or when his clients are relaxing in the club-like atmosphere of Pendel & Braithwaite.

Pendel himself is a devoted family man; one of the novel’s first scenes shows him taking his two children to their school. His wife, Louisa, is a daughter of one of the Canal’s leading engineers and grew up when the Canal Zone emphasized the practical colonial status of the country that surrounded the Canal. She works for a Panamanian politico-businessman, and she’s a part of the city’s network of socially elite women, parallel to the men’s networks and just as riven by affairs and personal scores. At times Pendel cannot believe his luck; at others, he cannot meet Louisa’s complex and contradictory psychological demands. Le Carré only partly explores this relationship, which is probably just as well because I do not think it would hold up to protracted investigation.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/04/the-tailor-of-panama-by-john-le-carre/

Apr 03 2026

Tantalizing Tales — April 2026 — Part One

The first quarter of the year is over, friends, and here I am, trying to balance engagement with our dire reality with the joys of slipping away into fiction. One fictional place I’m really looking forward to visiting soon is Erica Wright’s The Museum Of Unusual Occurrence, the first in her brand new Psychic City mystery series.

Aly Orlean is rational, cynical and fiercely proud of her hometown of Wyndale, Florida. She runs the local Museum of Unusual Occurrence, a place that showcases strange events that Aly doesn’t necessarily believe have supernatural explanations, no matter what else the people in Wyndale might claim. She’s happy to let them talk up the place and to take her visitors money, tho, especially since she has Merope, her teenage sister, to take care of.

Things take a decided turn when someone sneaks into the museum and gruesomely stages the fresh corpse of Rose Dempsey, a local twenty year-old, as if she were part of a ritual sacrifice. The police are clueless, and Aly begins to fear that this murder was actually meant as a message to her and to her solitary lifestyle. In order to protect both herself and her sister, Aly’s going to have to figure out not only who killed Rose and why, but why her museum was targeted too.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/03/tantalizing-tales-april-2026-part-one/

Apr 02 2026

Murder By Memory & Nobody’s Baby by Olivia Waite

Oh, boy, am I the worst person to send a speculative fiction mystery to when the mystery is, at best, mid. And that’s the thing: these mysteries could be so good, and have so much to say about the human condition as we hurtle into infinity, if the ideas were at all fleshed out and given room to breathe.

Which is a bit ironic given that being fleshed out is one of the core technologies at the heart of these novellas. The basic premise is that instead of generation ships carrying humanity to new life on a distant planet, the inhabitants have the ability instead to write their memories and personalities into digital books stored in the ship’s Library. These can then be re-downloaded into newly created bodies based on each individual’s own genetic codes when their old ones expire, whether from natural causes or otherwise. The people aboard the HMS Fairweather have thus been alive for centuries.

Ship’s detective Dorothy Gentleman had elected not to be immediately reborn after her latest death, and has essentially been hibernating for the past two years. She’s thus startled, as Murder By Memory begins, to find herself rudely awakened, and not in a body corresponding to her own. Instead, she wakes up in an elevator, her personality and memory abruptly thrust upon another’s in an emergency action that the ship’s computer Ferry has deemed absolutely necessary.

It seems that while the ship is weathering a magnetic storm, some of the books in the Library have been damaged beyond repair, including Dorothy’s. Given her importance to the ship, Ferry shunted her consciousness into the first available body, knowing it would be able to sort everything out later. But another emergency has come up: there’s been a murder aboard the Fairweather. And who better than the newly reanimated ship’s detective to solve it?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/02/murder-by-memory-nobodys-baby-by-olivia-waite/

Apr 01 2026

Armaveni by Nadine Takvorian

subtitled: A Graphic Novel Of The Armenian Genocide.

The older I get, the more I wonder why people who commit genocide are so hellbent on pretending it never happened. It adds a layer of weaseldom to an already terrible thing. Like, it’s bad enough you’re a mass murderer but when confronted with the evidence, you’ll pretend it never happened? That feels like a double erasure, of not only a person’s life but also their very existence.

Perhaps that’s the point, which is why it feels especially important in this day and age that the stories of the murdered, displaced and those otherwise affected by state-led actions of eradication continue to be told. The tragedy of the Armenian genocide is probably one of the best hidden of the 20th century. Even as well-read as I’ve been throughout my lifetime, I didn’t know about it until maybe ten years ago? I’m glad that people are speaking out, and that Nadine Takvorian has turned her family history into this compelling Young Adult graphic novel.

Partially set in 2001, the teenaged Nadine of this book comes from an Armenian American family that doesn’t like to talk about the past. California-born Nadine loves drawing and loves stories, tho knows that there are certain ones that her family refuses to share. Her parents run a specialty food store in the city, where she and her brother Sayat help out on Saturdays. A passing question from a customer regarding her identity, and an essay assignment on what it means to be American from her history teacher Mr Ward, soon combine to have her question her own heritage with greater intensity.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/01/armaveni-by-nadine-takvorian/

Mar 31 2026

Nobi Nobi TRPG Collector’s Box by Takashi Konno

I am trying to wean myself off of the bad habit of buying books and games via Kickstarter that I don’t subsequently have the time to read and/or play. One way to do this, ofc, is to stop buying things. But another way, more pleasing to my heart if tougher on my calendar, is to actually enjoy these things I’ve bought, whether by myself or in groups.

So when several of my local D&D regulars were unable to make it to the only date we could schedule to meet after a several month hiatus, I thought, “it’s finally time to give some of my other games a go!” I primarily wanted to try out the Nobi Nobi Tabletalk Role Playing Game because it’s lightweight, versatile, almost zero prep and, well, I’d been getting marketing emails letting me know that the expansion set is coming out soon, lol. How to decide whether I’m interested in buying the Cyberpunk and Steampunk expansions if I haven’t yet tried the original even?!

I also had another, slightly ulterior but definitely sneaky, motive for wanting to introduce Nobi Nobi to my RPG table. The game calls for the set of Game Masters and Main Characters to rotate from Scene to Scene. I wanted to use this quality to make players feel more comfortable telling stories, doing improv and being the focus, thereby fostering confidence and hopefully inspiring them to take more agency in the rest of our games going forward. Maybe one of them will even offer to GM a game soon! Stranger things, Horatio!

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/03/31/nobi-nobi-trpg-collectors-box-by-takashi-konno/