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
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/
I am glad that successive Worldcons have decided to make Best Poem a permanent category. Poetry is probably the oldest literary genre, and limiting the Hugo award to prose meant missing out. Speculative or fantastic poetry is difficult, because a work has to be both: good poetry and something beyond the mundane, whether science fiction, …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/06/19/hugo-awards-2026-best-poem-2/
True to form, two of this year’s finalists in the category of Best Short Story are listicle stories. I guess by now they’re just another variation in the form, rather than an innovation. The strength in the variation is that it allows an author to show numerous different perspectives or aspects of a situation within …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/06/14/hugo-awards-2026-best-short-story/
This year’s list of Hugo Award finalists in the category of Best Graphic Story of Comic is unusual in that for the first time since 2016 neither Saga nor Monstress is among them. The balance between one-offs and continuing characters/series is a little more usual, with three volumes from each. The ongoing series are a …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/06/13/hugo-awards-2026-best-graphic-story-or-comic/
The 2026 Hugo Award for Best Related Work — which isn’t called the Hugo Award for Everything Else but at this stage in its evolution maybe should be — hews closer to its bookish roots this time around. Four of six finalists are books, or at least very book-like, with a podcast and a spreadsheet rounding …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/06/07/hugo-awards-2026-best-related-work/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire