Author's posts
This is like The Secret Garden but with mermaids and pirates instead, and with characters that I, at least, liked from start to finish (as a pragmatic child, I found it hard to care for any of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s insipid and annoying creations.) Billed as a sequel to The Little Mermaid, Of Salt And …
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/23/of-salt-and-shore-by-annet-schaap/
Imagine Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus crossed with Doris Lessing’s The Good Terrorist, filtered through a China Mieville sensibility of industrial magic set firmly in the history and myths of Iceland. That’s what you’re getting in Shadows Of The Short Days, Alexander Dan Vilhjálmsson’s wildly inventive, deeply thoughtful debut novel, which he translated himself from its …
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/20/shadows-of-the-short-days-by-alexander-dan-vilhjalmsson/
One of the things I was most impressed by in this first novel of Rebecca Roanhorse’s new epic fantasy series is how effortless it all feels. She’s created a brand new universe using the indigenous cultures of the Americas as its basis, and there isn’t a single moment of self-conscious telling instead of showing. It’s …
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/19/black-sun-between-earth-and-sky-1-by-rebecca-roanhorse/
It’s been so long since I’ve read a standalone YA novel that I barely know what to do with myself at the end of A Golden Fury, in no small part due to Samantha Cohoe’s gifts as an author. Despite the ending being quite firmly The End, I’m so invested in these characters and their …
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/16/a-golden-fury-by-samantha-cohoe/
Q. Every book has its own story about how it came to be conceived and written as it did. How did Dracula’s Child evolve? I think it’s been evolving ever since I first read Stoker’s extraordinary novel at around eleven or twelve (oddly, and I suspect not entirely coincidentally, the same age as Quincey in …
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/15/an-interview-with-j-s-barnes-author-of-draculas-child/
The Fallen Hero continues the epic drama of The Dragon Warrior series as Faryn tries to find her place with the New Order based out of Manhattan’s Chinatown, only to discover that the gods aren’t done with her yet. Still reeling from her younger brother’s decision from the end of her last quest for the …
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/13/the-fallen-hero-the-dragon-warrior-2-by-katie-zhao/
Bear with me for a moment while I serve up a relevant anecdote here. When I was 8 years old, on a layover in London, I climbed the stairs of the narrow house of the auntie who was hosting my mother and me, and turned on the TV in the bedroom. I was fresh out …
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/12/greensmith-by-aliya-whiteley/
Oh, wow, a book that updates Chinese mythology for young Western readers! You know, I’ll admit that I don’t know much about Chinese deities beyond Kwan Yin, aspects of Buddha and what I remember from absorbing various tales of the Monkey God via TV and comics (as well as the usual prominent holiday-related mythologies) so …
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/09/the-dragon-warrior-the-dragon-warrior-1-by-katie-zhao/
Q. Every book has its own story about how it came to be conceived and written as it did. How did She Lies Close evolve? The inspiration for She Lies Close came from my family’s move to a new neighborhood years ago and finding out that a guy down the street was being prosecuted for …
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/08/an-interview-with-sharon-doering-author-of-she-lies-close/
Genuinely surprised after reading this to learn that Elizabeth Bear has no military/police background. Or, perhaps, like myself, she spent formative years around military, which would definitely explain the wholly authentic feel she brings to the ex-military protagonist and judiciary command structure of the universe she creates here in Machine which, while the second in …
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/10/06/machine-a-white-space-novel-white-space-2-by-elizabeth-bear/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire