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
I should have caught on much faster than I did that this novella is a retelling of Cinderella. I mean, “Cinder” is right there in the title, and the story’s very first word is “Ella,” as in “Ella’s father died of the poison in their tea.” Ella drank less tea and might have survived, except …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/05/30/cinder-house-by-freya-marske/
Here are some of the good bits from the new Murderbot novel, Platform Decay. I’m leaving out context, so I hope no big plot points are revealed. I looked at Farai, and she said, “They’re looking for rogue SecUnits. Rogue SecUnits are always alone.” Well, fuck. I hate it when the humans are right. I …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/05/16/platform-decay-by-martha-wells/
In its 152 pages of main text, A Scandal in Königsberg gives readers a study in religious weirdness, jealousies within small-city elites, the hazards of mixing church and state, bureaucracies and their tendencies towards compromise regardless of facts, and finally the unknowability of some parts of history. Conversely, it is a testimony to what can …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/05/10/a-scandal-in-konigsberg-by-christopher-clark/
At the end of January, I wrote that I was not sure I was going to finish Ehen in Philippsburg (Marriages in Philippsburg). It’s not that the book was bad, as such, it’s just that more than six months had elapsed since I had started reading, and that was a good indicator that the novel …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/05/09/ehen-in-philippsburg-by-martin-walser/
In the world of the White Rat, the gods call clergy and paladins to their service. Clergy are straightforward enough; they minister to the faithful, they administer the affairs of people and property affiliated with the deity, they perform the necessary rites, and so forth. Paladins are holy warriors for their faith; filled with the …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/26/paladins-strength-by-t-kingfisher/
Come for the opening heist in a magician’s home, stay for the burgeoning civil war and Martha Wells’ willingness to keep changing the story. The Element of Fire was her first novel, originally published in 1993. (The current edition was revised in 2022, though her author’s note does not say anything about the extent of …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/25/the-element-of-fire-by-martha-wells/
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 …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/19/chevengur-by-andrey-platonov/
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 …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/18/city-of-oranges-by-adam-lebor/
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’ …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/12/the-wonder-engine-by-t-kingfisher/
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 …
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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