Apr 20 2026
with beautiful colors by Steve Hamaker. I’m ngl, I want to incorporate that Magic Mistletoe spell into my next character sheet, somehow, some way, lol. I super loved the first Table Titans Club graphic novel but also have a terrible memory, so will freely admit that I spent a good portion of this novel feeling …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/20/table-titans-club-sneak-attack-by-scott-kurtz/
Apr 19 2026
Translated from the Russian by Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler Once again, I have finished a Platonov novel and I am left with the question of where to even begin. Chevengur is horrifying, and hilarious. It is surreal, and realistic; it is a blistering attack on Bolshevism, and full of characters asserting the correctness of …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/19/chevengur-by-andrey-platonov/
Apr 18 2026
City of Oranges, which was published in 2006, must have been a difficult book to write, even in the comparatively less fraught time of the early 2000s. Adam LeBor — whom I knew a little bit many years ago in Budapest, so I will refer to him as Adam — attempts an open-minded and honest reckoning with …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/18/city-of-oranges-by-adam-lebor/
Apr 17 2026
Lol, just as I thought I was coming out of the woods, I’m back to being bedridden and canceling chamber orchestra rehearsals because I’m feverish, fatigued and, in a new development, achey at primarily my extremities instead of all over. Is that progress? I’m so tired, I don’t even know any more. But I’ve been …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/17/tantalizing-tales-april-2026-part-three/
Apr 16 2026
The sequel to the bestselling Let’s Split Up finds the Sanera Four assembled again in the town that catapulted them to macabre fame only one short year earlier. Jokester jock Cam never actually left, choosing to take on a role as assistant at his former high school instead of going to college. Meanwhile, both his …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/16/be-right-back-by-bill-wood/
Apr 15 2026
Let’s Split Up was the fastest selling UK Young Adult debut of 2024. It’s said to appeal to the demographic that loves both the Scream movie franchise and Scooby Doo fans, but I suspect that this leans more to the former than the latter, at least if my reaction to it has been anything to …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/15/lets-split-up-by-bill-wood/
Apr 14 2026
subtitled What A Single Tree Can Be. And in the case of the oak, the answer is “a lot!” Growing up in Virginia, I had two massive oak trees in my front garden which, along with the red maple I spent hours climbing, were my favorite trees for the longest time. My dad made a …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/14/just-one-oak-by-maria-gianferrari-diana-sudyka/
Apr 13 2026
Hello, dear readers! Today we have an excerpt from a thrilling novel that reads like it could have been ripped from tomorrow’s headlines! In his debut novel The Counterfeit, historian and national security intelligence veteran Ralph DeFalco depicts a disturbingly plausible near future in which China has won a Pacific War against the United States …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/13/the-counterfeit-by-ralph-defalco-excerpt/
Apr 12 2026
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’ …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/12/the-wonder-engine-by-t-kingfisher/
Apr 11 2026
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 …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/11/emergent-tokyo-by-jorge-almazan-studiolab/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire