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
- Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire — 6 comments
- The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin — 6 comments
Author's posts
Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes is something of a second-hand autobiography. Wilkins was Pratchett’s personal assistant from 2000 until Pratchett’s death in 2015 of a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer’s. He was also in possession of the notes toward an autobiography that Pratchett made but never turned into a full manuscript. As time went …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/07/23/terry-pratchett-a-life-with-footnotes-by-rob-wilkins/
S.A. Chakraborty spends the first fifty or so pages of The City of Brass creating an alternative fantasy Cairo that’s so multifaceted, so lively, so enthralling and exciting that I never really reconciled to the characters’ departure. Sure, Daevabad is the fabled City of Brass. It’s full of djinn in all of their different clans; …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/07/21/the-city-of-brass-by-s-a-chakraborty/
This review inevitably has spoilers for Silver in the Wood. Emily Tesh returns to Victorian England to show readers what has happened since the end of Silver in the Wood, and it starts out with a right mess. Henry Silver, fastidious when last seen, has allowed Greenhallow Hall to fall into disrepair, nearly into ruin. …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/07/16/drowned-country-by-emily-tesh/
The fourth in Neil Boyd‘s Bless Me, Father series finds the irascible Father Duddleswell laid up with lumbago just as the priest with whom Duddleswell began his career settles in for an extended visit. Father Abe — most definitely not Father Abraham, with seven sons — is getting on in years, but still sly and not …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/06/26/father-under-fire-by-neil-boyd/
By mid-1916, British forces fighting in Europe have mastered the logistics of spiritualism well enough to gain occasional tactical advantages in the never-ending trench warfare of the Western Front. Men die; they report in to the Spirit Corps; the knowledge that they bought with their lives — a sniper’s location here, a hidden advance there, a …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/06/19/ghost-talkers-by-mary-robinette-kowal/
Two novellas in the world of The Last Unicorn? Yes, please. “Two Hearts,” the first, is closer in tone to Beagle’s classic novel. Sooz, who is nine when the story begins, tells of what happens when the griffin who has settled into her village’s woods stops eating sheep and goats, and starts taking away children …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/06/18/the-way-home-by-peter-s-beagle/
In Apex City, known in former centuries as Bangalore, meritocracy and sound scientific management principles have produced a city that has not only survived the environmental catastrophes, it is home to thriving humanity and extraordinary individuals extending what is humanly possible in many fields of endeavor. In the Virtual society inside Apex City, seventy percent …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/06/17/the-ten-percent-thief-by-lavanya-lakshminarayan/
It’s not difficult to guess Orlando Figes’ brief for The Story of Russia: write a history of Russia, accessible to the interested and educated public, acceptable to specialists; keep it under 300 pages; emphasize links between Russia’s deeper past and the government of Vladimir Putin. There is value in the book’s relative brevity, though I …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/06/04/the-story-of-russia-by-orlando-figes/
Well, I was charmed. What do D&D adventurers do when they’ve decided that they’ve quested their last quest and crawled their last dungeon? In the case of Viv, the orc barbarian who’s ready to hang up her greatsword Blackblood, her heart’s desire is to bring to the city of Thune the wonders of a fabled …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/06/03/legends-lattes-by-travis-baldree/
In contrast to Doreen, I do not feel perfectly suited to review Black Water Sister. I’m basically none of the things that the protagonist is, starting with Malaysian and ending with haunted by my maternal grandmother’s ghost. (To be clear, Doreen is not haunted by her grandmother’s ghost either. As far as I know.) None …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/05/21/black-water-sister-by-zen-cho-2/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire