January 2018 archive

The Snowman (Harry Hole #7) by Jo Nesbø

Why, yes, I borrowed this in anticipation of the movie, and while I never got around to watching the latter (and likely never will,) I can safely say that it’s much smarter than those insipid trailers. Also, oddly, I kept picturing Daniel Craig as Harry Hole instead of Michael Fassbender, who is just too darn …

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The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy #1) by S.A. Chakraborty

I needed this to be good and not only did it come through, it came through with big brass bells on! Honestly, it had me from the scene where Ali was staring at the courtesans and his companion steps between them and admonishes him to look away because OH MY GOD, S. A. Chakraborty understands …

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Taking Stock of 2017

This was a good year for reading. No household relocations, no major changes on the job front, no international incidents. That adds up to a longer list of books (somewhat eclectically defined) read than any year since I began keeping these lists. Voting for the Hugo award drove a lot of my reading in the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/01/04/taking-stock-of-2017/

The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

What a lovely start! In The Wee Free Men, the thirtieth Discworld book and the second explicitly marked as intended for young adults, Terry Pratchett introduces Tiffany Aching, a young witch who would go on to feature in four more novels, including Pratchett’s last. Likewise, he introduces a new setting, a rural area known as …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/01/03/the-wee-free-men-by-terry-pratchett/

Mission Child by Maureen F. McHugh

Mission Child begins on the other side of the Prime Directive. The first-person narrator, Janna, is a member of a renndeer-herding clan on a world that isn’t Earth but that was colonized by humans at some point in the unspecified past. Settlement took place long enough ago that an indigent species has been re-engineered to …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/01/02/mission-child-by-maureen-f-mchugh/