Doreen Sheridan

Professional book critic, amateur cellist, full-time polymath. Occasional game designer, perpetual game enthusiast. Mom of 3. Arsenal till I die. I like a good story. My other mystery reviews can be found here: https://www.criminalelement.com/author/dvaleris/

Most commented posts

  1. Deathless (Leningrad Diptych #1) by Catherynne M. Valente — 12 comments
  2. Sweet Tea by Piper Huguley — 7 comments
  3. I Was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloane Crosley — 6 comments
  4. A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan #1) by Arkady Martine — 6 comments
  5. Busting Vegas by Ben Mezrich — 5 comments

Author's posts

Slay by Brittney Morris

Before this devolves into a rant on stupid Adobe products, let me first admit that I couldn’t read the entire book, as the first page of each chapter was entirely invisible to me. That said, I did very much enjoy what I did read, and Slay was exactly as good as expected where expected. Very …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/09/27/slay-by-brittney-morris/

Firefly – The Big Damn Cookbook by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel

God, this book is just so freaking gorgeous. So I have a weekly cooking column over at CriminalElement.com called Cooking The Books, where I find mysteries with recipes and cook from them. Aside from your expected culinary cozies, I’ve also worked from the Red Sparrow series (yes, the basis of of the movie starring Jennifer …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/09/24/firefly-the-big-damn-cookbook-by-chelsea-monroe-cassel/

Wonderland: An Anthology edited by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane

First of all, Titan Books just has the best speculative fiction short story anthologies. Between this and the recent Wastelands 3: The New Apocalypse alone, I feel entirely spoiled with exposure to some of the best minds working in fantastic fiction today. Wonderland collects 20 brand new short works (18 stories, plus two poems from …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/09/17/wonderland-an-anthology-edited-by-marie-oregan-and-paul-kane/

Little White Lies (Debutantes Book 1) by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Oh, gosh darn it, if I’d known that the next book in this series was coming out in November, I’d have held off on reading this for a while! I mean, I’m glad I did read it — Jennifer Lynn Barnes consistently writes amazing stuff — but these next few months are going to feel …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/08/30/little-white-lies-debutantes-book-1-by-jennifer-lynn-barnes/

The Oracle Queen (Three Dark Crowns #0.1) by Kendare Blake

Wait, that’s it?! No fair! So this is the prequel novella to the Three Dark Crowns series, explaining why all oracle queens are now drowned at birth. Exquisitely written, as always, it also does a mean thing to us readers: it sets up a terrific protagonist then has everything go terribly wrong not only for …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/08/25/the-oracle-queen-three-dark-crowns-0-1-by-kendare-blake/

The Warehouse by Rob Hart

Oh gosh, this was one of those deeply affecting cautionary tales that you finish and need to put down and just sort of sit and recover from for a while. Set in a near-future where the trajectory of global (but especially American) capitalism has come to its merciless inevitability, the largest employer in the country …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/08/20/the-warehouse-by-rob-hart/

Hate to Want You (Forbidden Hearts #1) by Alisha Rai

What a delightfully fast read! Great romance novel featuring a pair of childhood sweethearts forced apart by their family circumstances, who manage to find their way back to each other. The twist, or hook, is that they’ve spent the last decade seeing each other for only one night a year, meeting at whichever coordinates she …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/08/17/hate-to-want-you-forbidden-hearts-1-by-alisha-rai/

The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth #1) by N.K. Jemisin

So on the one hand, this is some gorgeously written, truly imaginative sci-fi set in a world where the science seems like magic, so much so that the book reads like a terrific fantasy novel. It’s also a sharply drawn parable of slavery and gilded cages, based on inherent powers owned by people dubbed orogenes …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/08/14/the-fifth-season-the-broken-earth-1-by-n-k-jemisin/

An Anatomy of Beasts (Faloiv #2) by Olivia A Cole

Hurray, work finally calmed down enough again for me to read a library book! After the events of the first book in the series (that you should really read before picking up this one,) our heroine Octavia is on the run from the rest of the humans of N’Terra. She finds refuge with the Faloii, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/08/09/an-anatomy-of-beasts-faloiv-2-by-olivia-a-cole/

Sweet Dreams by Tricia Sullivan

In near-future London, Charlie Aaron volunteers for a drug trial to help make ends meet. Nothing seems to happen, but several months later, she develops a crippling narcolepsy that sees her fired from her desk job, unable to make the anonymous ASMR videos that are her side gig, and thus evicted from the cupboard under …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/23/sweet-dreams-by-tricia-sullivan/