Sep 20 2021
Confession time: Though I have read Dune several times after encountering it at an early and impressionable age, I don’t think that I have read it this century. My recollection is more impressionistic than detailed, and my impression is that the movie got all of the most important parts of the story up on the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/20/from-page-to-screen-dune/
Sep 19 2021
Glück divides Descending Figure into three sections, “The Garden,” “The Mirror,” and “Lamentations,” though I cannot say that I found the division particularly helpful or enlightening. Certainly there is a lot of lamenting in the final section, but there is a lot of it in the rest of the collection as well. This is a …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/19/descending-figure-by-louise-gluck/
Sep 18 2021
I don’t have all that much to say about Fletcher and Zenobia except that reading it makes me very happy, every time. It hits just the right note of whimsy without being twee. It’s mildly melancholy at the beginning, then enlivened, then worrisome again, and then everything is pleasantly resolved at the end. What more …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/18/fletcher-and-zenobia-by-victoria-chess-and-edward-gorey/
Sep 17 2021
Bluntly, I don’t know anyone working in speculative fiction today who consistently writes such disturbingly weird shit. But not like in a gratuitous way. Aliya Whiteley doesn’t want to shock you, necessarily, but she is unafraid to plumb into the deeper, uglier parts of the human psyche to examine the monstrous and strange, to ponder …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/17/from-the-neck-up-by-aliya-whiteley/
Sep 16 2021
There’s a huge caveat to my review of this book today: I got an e-galley for Kindle, which was so strangely formatted as to make me constantly second guess whether I was reading a new poem or a continuation of the last one every few stanzas. This pervading doubt is not terribly conducive to enjoyment …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/16/rooms-of-the-mind-by-makenzie-campbell/
Sep 15 2021
I honestly wasn’t sure when I started reading this book where Catherine Baab-Muguira was going with it, and to be completely honest, I’m still not sure how to categorize this work now that I’m done reading it either. I do know that I finished reading this with stars in my eyes and hope in my …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/15/poe-for-your-problems-uncommon-advice-from-historys-least-likely-self-help-guru-by-catherine-baab-muguira/
Sep 14 2021
For the first three-quarters or so of this book, I was absolutely enthralled. Qian Julie Wang tells the story of her relatively prosperous, if politically oppressed life in Northern China before her Ba Ba emigrates to America, followed by herself and her Ma Ma five years later. They overstay their visas, becoming undocumented while Ba …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/14/beautiful-country-a-memoir-by-qian-julie-wang/
Sep 13 2021
This debut fantasy novel has all the things that pique my interest, starting with a motley team of rogues coming together for a daunting heist, each with their own ulterior motives and back stories that unfold as the novel progresses. There’s adventure, romance, multiracial representation and plot twists galore! So I should totally love this …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/13/among-thieves-by-m-j-kuhn/
Sep 12 2021
“As a heartless killing machine, I was a total failure.” That’s Murderbot to a T. All Systems Red introduces Murderbot, a part-mechanical part-organic construct more formally known as a Security Unit, one of many produced to keep humans safe in an interstellar civilization. Before the story began, this Security Unit had hacked its governor module …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/12/all-systems-red-by-martha-wells/
Sep 11 2021
This is not real. We’ve seen it all before. Slow down, you’re screaming. What exploded? When? I guess this means we’ve got ourselves a war. And look at — Lord have mercy, not again. I heard that they went after Air Force One. Call FAA at once if you can’t land. They say the bastards …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/11/twenty-years-on/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire