Writer, editor, translator, project manager, reformed bookseller. Currently based in Berlin, following stints in Moscow, Tbilisi, Munich, Washington, Warsaw, Budapest and Atlanta. Also blogs at A Fistful of Euros, though less frequently than here these days.
Most commented posts
- The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison — 9 comments
- White Eagle, Red Star by Norman Davies — 7 comments
- Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire — 6 comments
- Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch — 6 comments
- The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin — 6 comments
Author's posts
This novelette won the Hugo in 2007. I picked it up as a standalone e-book that was part of the Humble Bundle mentioned here, and it’s the first work I’ve read by Ted Chiang. It won’t be the last! The story as a whole is broken into several parts, which nest and braid together in …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/04/27/the-merchant-and-the-alchemists-gate-by-ted-chiang/
The Martian starts with a soon-to-be-classic opening line: “I’m pretty much fucked.” One of humanity’s first manned missions to Mars has encountered a dust storm stronger than their base and their return vehicle can withstand. During the hasty evacuation, a freak accident incapacitates one of the crew of six; even more freakishly, it does not …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/04/24/the-martian-by-andy-weir/
What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light? If every person on Earth aimed a laser pointer at the Moon at the same time, would it change color? Is it possible to build a jetpack using downward-firing machine guns? If an asteroid was very small …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/04/22/what-if-by-randall-munroe/
This was the book that made me wonder whether I just wasn’t enjoying reading books on the smartphone. Bridge of Birds would be terrific in any format, but I had had lukewarm or only just better than lukewarm reactions to two authors I normally quite like, Connie Willis and John Scalzi. Then I tried an …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/04/21/muse-of-fire-by-dan-simmons/
The witches from Equal Rites return in Wyrd Sisters, and it is clear that by this stage of the Discworld series, Pratchett has really begun to hit his stride. From the title page, where he says that Wyrd Sisters is “Starring Three Witches, also kings, daggers, crowns, storms, dwarfs, cats, ghosts, spectres, apes, bandits, demons, …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/04/20/wyrd-sisters-by-terry-pratchett/
One of the hazards of getting a blurb for your book from someone who has written a great book on a closely related subject is that it invites comparisons. Age of Ambition — subtitled Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China — has a blurb from Peter Hessler, whose three books on contemporary …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/04/19/age-of-ambition-by-evan-osnos/
I had almost forgotten how charming Connie Willis’ writing can be. I started reading her in the mid-1990s with Bellwether, which is another one of those books I have to be careful about picking up because I will have a very difficult time putting it down again, no matter what else I am supposed to …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/03/20/inside-job-by-connie-willis/
The beginning of Sourcery is very good, and the end is very good, and I am trying to think of why the middle didn’t work for me as well as Equal Rites and Mort, the two Discworld books that immediately precede it in order of publication. Equal Rites showed some of the magical power that …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/03/17/sourcery-by-terry-pratchett/
Delight, verve, brio, glee, panache, all of these are in Barry Hughart’s Bridge of Birds, the first of three books in the chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox, set in what he calls “an ancient China that never was.” Here is how it starts: I shall clasp my hands together and bow to …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/03/15/bridge-of-birds-by-barry-hughart/
Valour and Vanity by Mary Robinette Kowal is the fourth of her Glamourist Histories series, following Shades of Milk & Honey, Glamour in Glass, and Without a Summer. The series crosses Regency romances with alternate (but not terribly alternate) history and a dash of domestic magic that may yet admit of industrial applications. The teaser …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/03/09/valour-vanity-by-mary-robinette-kowal/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire