Writer, editor, translator, project manager, reformed bookseller. Currently based in Berlin, following stints in Moscow, Tbilisi, Munich, Washington, Warsaw, Budapest and Atlanta. Previously blogged at A Fistful of Euros, though that is now largely lost to link rot.
Most commented posts
- The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison — 9 comments
- White Eagle, Red Star by Norman Davies — 7 comments
- Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch — 7 comments
- Süddeutsche Series — 7 comments
- Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire — 6 comments
Author's posts
The Slow Horses series is ostensibly about the fuck-ups and cast-offs of British intelligence, gathered together in Slough House and given make-work designed to push them into resigning, while they hope for redemption and a chance to re-join the regular Service. Nevermind that that plan has never worked for anyone; each hopes to be the …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/08/02/real-tigers-by-mick-herron/
In contrast to Cinder House, The Summer War is not a classic fairy tale re-told in a more modern idiom but a re-working of fairytale elements, a new story told entirely in the register of a fairy tale. Thus the kingdom that is the setting for a bit more than half of the story is …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/08/01/the-summer-war-by-naomi-novik-2/
At the beginning of In the Time of Five Pumpkins, Botswana is waiting for the rainy season to begin. The days are hot, the nights do not offer enough relief. People are on edge and prone to be short with each other. That tendency shows up in the novel’s first case, a husband who is …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/07/25/in-the-time-of-five-pumpkins-by-alexander-mccall-smith/
A Long and Speaking Silence, the seventh in Nghi Vo‘s Singing Hills cycle, takes Cleric Chih back to one of their first assignments as a chronicler, a gatherer of stories. On their way to the riverside city of Luntien a moment of inattention led to their being relieved of their purse and stipend, so as …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/07/19/a-long-and-speaking-silence-by-nghi-vo/
Having taken the first two volumes of his Transylvanian Trilogy to immerse readers in the sometimes glittering, sometimes earthy world of Hungarian aristocracy prior to the First World War, Milos Banffy brings his stories to their immutable end in They Were Divided. The concluding book was published in Hungarian in 1940, and there could hardly …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/07/18/they-were-divided-by-miklos-banffy/
Among this year’s Hugo finalists in the four headline fiction categories — short story, novelette, novella and novel — no author has more than one nomination. I don’t think I have a particular view about this distribution. On the one hand, it’s neat when a writer has a banner year and gathers up two or even three …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/07/12/hugo-awards-2026-best-novelette-2/
Galen, the paladin of the third Saint of Steel book, was seen in Paladin’s Strength as Istvhan’s second in command. He also had a reputation as happy-go-lucky, willing to bed more or less any man who struck his fancy, and able to catch them too. Paladin’s Hope begins less cheerfully: with a corpse. Observing the …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/06/28/paladins-hope-by-t-kingfisher/
Dickie Bow got left behind by the spy game after the collapse of European communism, and never really found anything else. By the time that Dead Lions begins — it was first published in 2013 — he’s barely holding on with a job in a sex shop and a routine of steady drinking that will …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/06/27/dead-lions-by-mick-herron/
What does an intelligence agency do with its fuck-ups? Not the operational mistakes, or even the policy disasters, but the people who, for one reason or another, cannot be kept as part of the active service but cannot just be let go. Maybe they embarrassed the agency in some way, and giving them the boot …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/06/21/slow-horses-by-mick-herron/
Since time immemorial, at the eastern edge of the continent the Leviathans have risen from the sea to make their way along the Titan’s Path to the Lake of Khanum. For centuries, though, the Empire has blocked their progress, erecting successive walls across the continent to first contain the Leviathans’ journeys and then prevent them …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/06/20/the-tainted-cup-by-robert-jackson-bennett/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire