Sep 13 2026

Patriot by Alexei Navalny

“But life works in such a way that social progress and a better future can only be achieved if a certain number of people are willing to pay the price for their right to have their own beliefs. The more of them there are, the less everyone has to pay. And the day will come when speaking the truth and advocating for justice will be commonplace and not at all dangerous in Russia.” (back cover) Unfortunately, that day will never come for Alexei Navalny, for he has paid the full price of his life.

Patriot by Alexei Navalny

Navalny was born in 1976 near Moscow. He was a bit of a scrawny city kid, and during the school summer break, he was sent to his father’s extended family in a village in northern Ukraine. He returned from a summer of village life well fed and a bit bigger, and the cycle repeated itself the next year. The spring before he turned 10, the Chernobyl explosion spread radiation across the region, and the village where his father was from was evacuated. Navalny was 15 when Yeltsin stood on the tanks. He was a Soviet kid, growing up in a Russia that knew both promise and crisis. He was too young to be a kitchen dissident and samizdat reader, to have the astonishing and occasionally bloody-minded bravery of an Anna Politkovskaya. He was too old to be reflexively cowed by the system that Putin built. He finished a law degree in 1998 and further training in public finance in 2001.

He has some stories of what Russian business was like in the early 2000s. One place he worked took the whole company to Turkey each year for a week, for morale building. It became a tradition, and then a legend. Navalny arrived at the business just as the bosses were trying to cut back. On the whole, the stories in Once Upon a Russia are better and wilder. As Navalny presents himself in Patriot, wild is not exactly his style. “It may sound corny, but it’s true: I wanted my efforts to make the world a better place.” Accordingly, he gradually soured on business. “My company, building offices in Moscow, offered no such opportunities. I shuddered at the thought that my whole life might be spent helping certain people make an extra couple of million dollars.” (both p. 180)

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/09/13/patriot-by-alexei-navalny/

Sep 12 2026

Über Zensur by Ai Weiwei

The title translates as On Censorship, and over the course of his life, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has encountered it far more than most people. (The book was originally published in English; I received this edition as a birthday present. It was translated into German by Luca Groß, and it reads both smoothly and clearly.) His father was the poet Ai Qing, and thanks to the censorship of the Chinese state and the Chinese Communist Party, the Ai family was exiled from Beijing to northeastern China in 1958, and then further to Xinjiang in 1959. The family did not return to Beijing until 1976, when the younger Ai was 19. By 1978, he was part of an avant-garde art group, and in 1981 he was one of the earliest reform-era Chinese students in the United States. A chance encounter led to a friendship with Allen Ginsburg, and a living link to America’s beatniks and counterculture history.

Über Zensur by Ai Weiwei

He has worked in a wide variety of media, and he has also been a civic activist. He drew particular ire from Chinese authorities when he conducted an independent investigation into why so many buildings, especially schools, collapsed following the Sichuan earthquake of 2008. Local and national authorities wanted to censor reports of corruption; they also wanted to prevent an open accounting of how many children died in the quake’s aftermath. A police beating led to a cerebral hemorrhage, which was treatable because he was in Munich when it occurred. In 2010, local authorities in Shanghai slated his studio for demolition, and placed him under house arrest. In 2011, he was arrested on tax charges; the Chinese state confiscated his passport. In 2015, he was allowed to leave China and he settled in Germany until 2019. He declared Germany a closed society and decamped for England. He now divides his time between England, where his children are in school, and Portugal.

Censorship and control, and his reactions against them, have shaped his life and art. The best parts of this brief book are where he relates his own experiences as a way of illustrating the harm that censorship imposes on people’s lives. The book itself comprises about a score short essays, from the initial definitions of “On Censorship” and “What is Censorship?” to more oblique considerations in “Surveillance” and “Understanding the Unknown.” He offers more detailed ideas in “Censorship and Privacy” or “Censorship and Education.” For Ai, censorship is any control or attempted control of a person’s thoughts and expression by an institution with the power to try to enforce such control. Self-censorship is particularly important, because the authorities do not have the capacity to be everywhere, so they rely on people to censor themselves.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/09/12/uber-zensur-by-ai-weiwei/

Sep 11 2026

Tantalizing Tales — September 2026 — Part Two

Hello, dear readers! I got my flu shot yesterday and have been struggling a wee bit more than usual ever since, so all I want to do is climb back into bed with a book. The question, ofc, is which one? A strong contender is definitely Freya Marske’s Bodies Of Magic, publishing next week!

Medical school meets dark academia in the hallowed halls of the Academie of the Grand Duchy of Sieuxerr. Mages with the healer’s gift are given five grueling years in which to master their powers. At the end of that time, they’re subjected to the Grand Exam, which will determine the course of the rest of their lives.

Unfortunately for the overachievers among them, the Grand Exam is also a group project. Candidates are only told five days in advance who their randomly selected teammates will be. Together, the team will have to successfully complete five practical cases. They will either all pass together or all fail together.

Academie students Estiene, Alys, Moyna, Jehane and Clement are all aware of this, and have all prepared themselves as best they can for the attempt. There’s no preparing, however, for their discovery of the corpse of Ysabel Caudotte, the school’s best student. All five of them have a connection to Ysabel and know that they have to solve her murder, even if some people would rather her death be considered a suicide. The students only have five days to figure out whodunnit tho, or risk jeopardizing their entire futures.

I fell in love with Ms Marske’s writing while reading the inventive and unapologetically horny Cinder House — it was actually my first choice for Best Novella for the 2026 Hugo Awards — so can’t wait to experience her take on a dark academia murder mystery here!

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/09/11/tantalizing-tales-september-2026-part-two/

Sep 10 2026

Piggy by Ann Hood & Anna Quaranta

Sweet but slight, almost like a condensed version of the Toy Story movies but with a lot less action.

Piggy has belonged to their human ever since the little girl was a baby. Once upon a time, Piggy was pink, pristine and perky: the very epitome of a huggable, loveable stuffed animal. But being a child’s constant companion, indoors and out, takes a toll on cleanliness, so into the wash Piggy must eventually go. As time goes on and washes increase, Piggy starts losing their fabulousness. What, however, are they gaining instead?

I was honestly a little surprised that the book ended as it did! I think that is more the result of me centering myself as an adult reader instead of thinking solely as the intended child audience tho. Children don’t need a whole bunch of morals to be strung together in order to learn something: the lesson here about relative value is already important enough to stand on its own, especially if the young child is learning how to read independently. The language is spare but concise, making this book a good choice for learners.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/09/10/piggy-by-ann-hood-anna-quaranta/

Sep 09 2026

Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky

This was the only Hugo Awards 2026 nominee for Best Novel that didn’t come in the Voter’s Packet, so I got on the waitlist for it at the library, thereby ensuring that I’d actually read the book this year, lol. So on the one hand, I was unsurprised that not being in the packet meant that this novel polled last in the Hugos voting: we voters are nothing if not conscientious about voting only on what we’ve actually been able to experience! But that’s also a shame, because this was definitely one of 2025’s best novels of both sci-fi and horror.

The titular Shroud is the nickname given to a moon wreathed in a perpetual darkness that’s nearly impenetrable to most, if not all, contemporary sensors. Lacking in oxygen and possessing a higher gravity than humans can function in without significant augmentation, it’s not the kind of place that’s hospitable to human life.

That won’t stop capitalism tho! When the crew sent by the corporation to assess Shroud for asset stripping comes into orbit, we get a glimpse of the depressingly likely dystopia that far-future society in the stars has become, with corporate citizens being sent in and out of hibernation depending on their perceived utility to the company. (Also, please forgive me for the paucity of proper names in this review: I won Library Loan chicken but do not now have a copy of the book to reference as I type, alas. There were unsurprisingly a lot of people who were interested in reading this after me!)

Anyway, Juna and Mai are two members of a six-person team assigned to evaluating Shroud via mechanical solutions. Mai is a grumpy, big-brained engineer and Juna is essentially the administrative assistant who has to know how to do at least a little of everybody else’s job. A freak accident to their orbital station sees them shunted into an exploratory pod Mai had built, then plunged directly down to Shroud’s inhospitable surface. As they figure out how to survive the planet and get back to the only known point where they might still be able to contact what (hopefully) remains of the orbital, they run into local fauna, and have to figure out whether these strange new lifeforms are friend or foe.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/09/09/shroud-by-adrian-tchaikovsky/

Sep 08 2026

Art Attack (The Sherlock Society #3) by James Ponti

with a special shout-out to Yaoyao Ma Van As, who’s done an even better than usual job on the terrific cover.

Young sleuth Alex Sherlock is absolutely stunned when one of the most popular girls in school sits down next to him and his best friend Yadi while they’re having lunch one day. He’s crestfallen when his older sister Zoe almost immediately chases her away, but Zoe has arrived with both Lina, the last member of their detecting club, and some exciting news. The website that The Sherlock Society set up to receive inquiries has finally landed a credible and potentially profitable case. The siblings’ Grandpa, former investigative reporter and current honorary member of TSS, will arrive after school to pick them up and chaperone their appointment.

Bennett Turner is a property developer who wants to attract a young, hip crowd to his most recent property, the luxurious but also eco-friendly and socially responsible Grove Bohemia. After reading about TSS’s success in solving a case that had baffled detectives for years, he decides that they’re perfect for a somewhat delicate business matter of his that requires investigation. The Miami graffiti artist known only as Funky Munky has recently ascended to near-Banksy levels of fame, and Turner wants to hire them to paint a buzzworthy ten-storey mural for the Grove Bohemia. He’s willing to pay FM two hundred thousand dollars — and TSS a ten percent finder’s fee — but has no way of making contact with the deliberately elusive art provocateur, whose graffiti is not always legal nor welcome by the powers that be.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/09/08/art-attack-the-sherlock-society-3-by-james-ponti/

Sep 04 2026

Tantalizing Tales — September 2026 — Part One

Happy September, everybody! I genuinely don’t understand how this year has simultaneously felt so protracted yet also seemed to pass by in the blink of an eye. I’d put it down to my mystery illness but apparently, I’m not the only person I know who feels like this, so.

If you’d like a less baffling way to marvel at the passage of time, check out the most exciting debut of the coming week, Gigi Waldorf’s Murder On The Upper East Side. Yes, that’s a pseudonym (of bestselling author Kit Frick) that, with the cover text, absolutely evokes the beloved original Gossip Girl series by Cecily von Ziegesar. I am, ofc, Team Blair forever!

In this homage, Hannah Miller is a journalist who finds herself at a glittering charity gala attended by many of the people she went to school with at the ultra-prestigious Prescott Academy of New York a decade ago. As a scholarship student, she’d felt like an outsider, and hoped that she could finish her senior year by flying under the radar and avoiding the sting of Queen Bees Madison DuPont and Elle Harrington. Alas, things did not go quite as she’d planned.

Ten years later, Madison DuPont is still Queen Bee. Her big welcoming speech at the gala is, however, punctuated by her extremely unexpected death soon after. Fingers quickly point to Hannah, who was seen talking to Madison mere moments before she died. In order to clear her name, Hannah will have to get close to her former classmates once more, unearthing all their secrets to find the one person who hated Madison enough to want her dead. Trouble is, there are more than a few people at the gala with secrets that they’d kill to keep concealed…

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/09/04/tantalizing-tales-september-2026-part-one/

Sep 03 2026

Books, Iced Coffee & A Side Of Dragons by Amanda Lovelace & Raquel Trave

Sometimes, a sugar rush is exactly what you need to get you through the day.

Books, Iced Coffee & A Side Of Dragons is the graphic novel equivalent of a fully loaded iced coffee that you know probably isn’t the healthiest choice for you but is, at least in the moment, a much-needed bit of self-care. It’s a gentle romance presented in vignettes, where the stakes never seem very high because you already know that everything will work out in the end. The most fantastical element here tho are the presence of small dragons, which are treated as household pets and occasional helpers, depending on their attributes and abilities. That aside, this story is very much based on our world, down to the discriminatory politics and health care policies.

Anyway, Luci has recently opened a bookstore on the Jersey Shore that features, among other titles, plenty of LGBTQIA+ representation. Business is slow, but her cheerful assistant August is always ready with a pep talk, whether it comes to running the book store or chatting up Aster, the friendly coffee shop owner next door whom Luci has a crush on. But Luci is shy, and therefore stunned when Aster gives her her number on a coffee cup sleeve. Luci is too afraid to call… until she finds a dragon stuck up a tree and needs help fast. Aster practically flies to the rescue, kicking off a charming romance that is not, however, without its share of obstacles.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/09/03/books-iced-coffee-a-side-of-dragons-by-amanda-lovelace-raquel-trave/

Sep 02 2026

Pop Manga Myths And Monsters Coloring Book by Camilla d’Errico

I have really been in the mood to make low-commitment art lately, so what a pleasure it was to finally crack open this coloring book and give it a whirl!

Camilla d’Errico is a fine artist globally renowned for her pop-surrealist oeuvre. Her vision translates beautifully to coloring books, of which this is her latest (I want to say tenth.) I had the privilege of reviewing her Pop Manga Paint And Ink Coloring Book earlier this year and adored it, so was very excited to try out a more industry-standard version of her work, printed on the more usual non-watercolor-friendly paper.

The art, ofc, continues in the same fantastical genre, tho focusing more specifically on the titular myths and monsters. These are absolutely not coloring books for young children, btw, as some of the art leans heavily into the scary side of the latter. But anyone who can handle PG-13 monstrosities will be delighted at the variety of manga-esque mythic art available here, of which a half-colored sample graces the front and back covers.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/09/02/pop-manga-myths-and-monsters-coloring-book-by-camilla-derrico/

Sep 01 2026

As If by Isabel Waidner

Compellingly written but also so set on not being too weird — or, perhaps, in being decidedly ambiguous — that it feels oddly unsatisfying, especially to a genre enthusiast like myself.

Aubrey Lewis is a forty-six year-old actor who’s sunk into a depression following the death of his wife Laurie. He subleases an apartment filled with someone else’s things, and listlessly considers getting back into acting again, following a chance meeting with a former co-worker who thinks he’d be great for a reboot she’s been working on.

When Lindsey Korine walks into Lewis’ apartment and starts making himself at home, Lewis doesn’t even dispute the other man’s right to be there. Korine has just walked out on his own wife Laurie, who survived the disease that killed Lewis’ spouse. Korine has never had much of a career, but he’s interested in acting. The two men are physically alike enough that when Korine decides to take Lewis’ spot at the audition, no one seems to notice the difference.

Lewis, meanwhile, has been co-opted by the living Laurie to take Korine’s place, for the benefit of their son. The more he gets comfortable playing the part of Korine, the less he wants to go back to his old life. As the two men gradually begin to confront the results of their choices, they begin to wonder whether the road not taken was the road they should have been on all along, and what they should do about it now that they have.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/09/01/as-if-by-isabel-waidner/