Author's posts
Imagine, if you will, the absurdly unlikely but highly entertaining hijinks of the TV show Quantico starring a Jessica Jones type, where all the cast have mental superpowers. That is the fun romp that is K. C. Archer’s School For Psychics, in this case the Whitfield Institute to which our heroine, the wisecracking, damaged Teddy …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/04/school-for-psychics-school-for-psychics-1-by-k-c-archer/
One of the great joys to me of reading Pierce Brown is the gif-heavy conversations I have throughout with Alec about my feeeeeeelings. Because Mr Brown gives me so many feelings, tho this book, I admit, was a little less superlative than the original Red Rising trilogy. It’s hard, of course, to scale the same …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/04/iron-gold-red-rising-saga-4-by-pierce-brown/
This powerful book about a woman discovering her own agency through the lens of the Bangladeshi immigrant experience surprised me at how timeless it felt even though it’s set at the turn of the 21st century. It’s very much in the tradition of classics by Thomas Hardy and Willa Cather, documenting with a fine eye …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/03/31/brick-lane-by-monica-ali/
I need more Slough House books. You guys don’t understand: I need them (she says, tapping her veins.) It’s so unfair that Book 5, London Rules, isn’t out yet in the US. ANYWAY, with Spook Street, the Slough House series has officially become my favorite spy series. Aside from being smart and topical, these novels …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/03/25/spook-street-slough-house-4-by-mick-herron/
My first thought on finishing this book is “That was stupid.” And maybe in the late 1980s when this was written, the concepts invoked might have been considered new and interesting enough to paper over the book’s many other faults. In 2018, however, reading Consider Phlebas was a hard, unrewarding slog. First and foremost, this …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/03/21/consider-phlebas-culture-1-by-iain-m-banks/
What a terrific book. What it lacked in pathos for me, it more than made up for in the breadth of its empathy and historical vision. Structured as eight short stories and an epilogue connected by their cast and timeline, Lovecraft Country plunges an ordinary black family of the 1950s and their friends into the …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/03/18/lovecraft-country-by-matt-ruff/
I really wanted to like this more, after the strong recommendation I got for it from Saladin Ahmad, but it was so weirdly annoying! It was very hard for me to believe that a 500 year-old witch who had been instrumental in helping to maintain the health and happiness of a large populace through one-on-one …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/03/17/the-girl-who-drank-the-moon-by-kelly-barnhill/
The fuck was that?! And I don’t mean that in a bad way either, it was just weird as hell and kinda gross. Pulling my professional pants on, I’m pretty sure the greatest part of my disorientation is the fact that, while this is billed as an outer space opera, I couldn’t shake the impression …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/03/11/the-stars-are-legion-by-kameron-hurley/
The more I think back on it, the lovelier this novel grows in my mind. The atmosphere and tone are unsettling and consistently oppressive: I kept thinking how Lovecraftian it was, and yet so much better for not being rife with horrible stereotypes. Bad shit happens early to our four explorers who’ve been sent into …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/03/03/annihilation-southern-reach-1-by-jeff-vandermeer/
Wonderful heroine, great setting, intriguing (but not super clever) mystery. I loved all the attention to period detail (even if my copy had some really weird lapses between the use of “thee” and “you”) and especially enjoyed the blunt way in which pregnancy and delivery are treated. As this book is set in 1800s Massachusetts …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/02/25/delivering-the-truth-a-quaker-midwife-mystery-1-by-edith-maxwell/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire