Apr 30 2025
translated elegantly from the original Japanese by Jesse Kirkwood. Looking back from my grand old age of mumble mumble, I can safely say that the transitory years to adulthood, when you’re no longer a student but expected to be able to mostly fend for yourself and make good decisions are genuinely some of the roughest …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/04/30/a-perfect-day-to-be-alone-by-nanae-aoyama/
Apr 29 2025
We have a fun excerpt for you this week, readers, as we dive into a comic take on your usual Scandinoir crime thriller. Translated from the Finnish by David Hackston, this darkly funny novel is the perfect balance of thrills, twists and laughter. Middle-aged Anni Korpinen is the top salesperson at Steam Devil. She’s worked …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/04/29/the-burning-stones-by-antti-tuomainen-excerpt/
Apr 28 2025
What a terrific way to kick off a Middle Grade fantasy adventure comic series! Dessa Redd is a circus acrobat whose two closest friends are likely her co-workers: the juggler (and thief) Topper and the one-headed giant and strongman Fisk. Their circus isn’t super successful, barely scraping by with enough for all the hands to …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/04/28/three-thieves-vol-1-tower-of-treasure-by-scott-chantler/
Apr 27 2025
History books, if they stick around long enough, eventually become artifacts of their own eras, history in a double sense: explaining earlier periods with the terms and perspectives of their own time, which look different decades later. In the last chapter of Crabgrass Frontier, Kenneth T. Jackson helps the process along by offering his expectations …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/04/27/crabgrass-frontier-by-kenneth-t-jackson/
Apr 26 2025
Annihilation kicks off the Southern Reach series, which was a trilogy for 10 years until VanderMeer published a fourth book in 2024. A movie adaptation of Annihilation was released in 2018. The series, and this first volume in particular, are often described as classics and even appear on some all-time-best lists. It’s fair to say …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/04/26/annihilation-by-jeff-vandermeer/
Apr 25 2025
In which we check out some of the most interesting books to be released here at the tail end of the month before turning our attention to May! First up, we have a newly published memoir, Ana Hebra Flaster’s Property Of The Revolution. A family of Cuban revolutionaries found themselves growing increasingly disillusioned by Fidel …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/04/25/tantalizing-tales-april-2025-part-three/
Apr 24 2025
Winner of the Prix Goncourt, and translated from the original French by Cory Stockwell. There is an unusual form of French novel, of which this is a prime example, called the recit. It’s a sort of self-aware narrative, in which the narrator knows that they’re telling a story, with all the inherent discomfort of self-consciousness. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/04/24/live-fast-by-brigitte-giraud/
Apr 23 2025
As I’ve mentioned before, I love speculative mysteries! In the next few months, we can look forward to murders among scholars on far-future Jupiter, at a magical boarding school in England, and revolving around a small town high school rivalry in the U.S.A., all being published by Tor. If “dark academia” is the zeitgeist, these …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/04/23/speculative-mysteries-to-get-excited-about/
Apr 22 2025
with Clayton Cowles and Rian Hughes on letters and design. Am I getting jaded? I love mythologies and the ways that comic books spin up brand new gods and pantheons and legends and dramas, but reading this book — that feels very much like a cross between Kieron Gillen’s prior The Wicked + The Divine …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/04/22/the-power-fantasy-volume-1-the-superpowers-by-kieron-gillen-caspar-wijngaard/
Apr 21 2025
A Surfeit of Guns picks up the afternoon of the day after the end of A Season of Knives; P.F. Chisholm gives her protagonist Sir Robert Carey no time to rest. In fact, she sends him off on a night patrol that of course turns out to be eventful, though not in the ways that …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/04/21/a-surfeit-of-guns-by-p-f-chisholm/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire