Author's posts
Gosh, I wish every aspiring literary thriller author who’s planning on writing some heartfelt, wordy, incredibly dreary and often borderline racist tale of suburban scandals would just read this graphic novel and go ahead and reevaluate whether this manuscript they’re working on actually says anything that the Brubaker/Phillips crew hasn’t covered perfectly already. My day …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/01/25/where-the-body-was-by-ed-brubaker-sean-phillips-jacob-phillips/
A large part of me is glad that Tara Isabella Burton was not writing novels back when I was a teenager, because I would have made her books my entire life aesthetic. Her three novels to date — Social Creature, The World Cannot Give, and now Here In Avalon — revolve around women who are …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/01/23/here-in-avalon-by-tara-isabella-burton/
I somehow managed to persuade my 13 year-old to read this with me, and we were both incredibly delighted by this sweet, spunky tale of a young girl living in the middle of nowhere who discovers that magic really does exist in her life. Ten year-old tomboy Avery helps her father run a gas station …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/01/22/you-wish-by-jeff-victor/
Ngl, reading this felt like what I imagine an acid trip would be like. I guess one good thing about it is that it made me want to listen to more of The Who’s music? Good thing this graphic novel is being released with an accompanying vinyl LP! (Link at the bottom, tho you can …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/01/18/life-house-by-pete-townshend-james-harvey-david-hine-max-prentis/
One of the silver linings of 2023 being such a garbage year for me emotionally was the fact that it encouraged me to start making better use of my many Tarot decks, not (necessarily) to divine the future — tho my weekly spreads do have the concerning habit of choosing to focus on Arsenal games …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/01/17/guided-tarot-box-set-by-stefanie-caponi/
I went into this thinking, mostly due to the publisher, that it was a graphic novel. I was a bit surprised to open it up and find that, while there are certainly very lovely, impactful illustrations courtesy of Karl Johnsson, this is very much a middle-grade chapter book. That’s not a bad thing at all, …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/01/16/children-of-the-phoenix-vol-1-the-eye-of-the-storm-by-oskar-kallner-karl-johnsson/
Y’all. Y’ALL. I was barely thirty pages into this book and I wanted to take up my sword and shield and fight to the death for Britney. And I know that autobiographies aren’t gospel: they’re always going to tell you only one point of view. But damn, y’all. Even if she was exaggerating (and I’ll …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/01/11/the-woman-in-me-by-britney-spears/
Hunh, this had better not be the last book in the Counterfeit Lady series, as seemed to be hinted at in the afterword. I understand how this seventh volume would be a thematically appropriate story to finish on, but it absolutely lacked the larger part of why so many readers, myself included, have adored these …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/01/10/city-of-betrayal-by-victoria-thompson/
I have been trying really hard not to buy more Tarot decks, but the moment I saw the graceful figures Gerta Oparaku Egy uses on her cards, I knew I had to own this one. This deck was inspired by three disparate influences that resonate deeply with me. The first and most obvious is dance, …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/01/09/divine-deco-tarot-by-gerta-oparaku-egy/
(this review was originally written before the turn of the year, so apologies for some end of 2023 recap misery near the bottom there.) As is tradition, I took some time out of my day this past Christmas to sit down and read another installment of my beloved Bad Machinery series by John Allison. I’m …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/01/08/the-case-of-the-missing-piece-bad-machinery-9-by-john-allison/