Several things to admit: first, I’m friends with the creators of this excellent webcomic. Despite this friendship, and my knowledge that Eric Menge is a brilliant writer, I’m absolutely wretched at keeping up with webcomics as they publish, even his. I get sidetracked and forget to check in, and while I’m not one of those …
Category: Alternate History
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/30/snow-by-night-volume-1-calcination-by-eric-menge-brittany-michel/
Apr 12 2018
The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter (The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club Book 1) by Theodora Goss
Delightful novel, and well worth the rush read. This is the first in the chronicles of the Athena Club, a group of women brought together by the fact that they are all monsters. Or, to be more precise, the daughters/offspring/creation of mad scientists (as well as the doughty Mrs Poole and the plucky Alice. Let’s …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/12/the-strange-case-of-the-alchemists-daughter-the-extraordinary-adventures-of-the-athena-club-book-1-by-theodora-goss/
Mar 24 2018
Any Day Now by Terry Bisson
For a good part of the way through Any Day Now, I was fairly certain that it would turn out to be the fourth perfect book, and even now I am not entirely sure that it is not. The book won’t be for everyone, though; I bounced off of the novel completely the first time …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/03/24/any-day-now-by-terry-bisson/
Mar 07 2018
The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville
I should not have taken as long as I did to get through China Miéville’s novella, The Last Days of New Paris. The main story is less than 180 pages; the afterword tacks on another 15 or so, and I mostly did not read the notes that are appended afterward. That the words “get through” …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/03/07/the-last-days-of-new-paris-by-china-mieville/
Feb 02 2018
California Bones by Greg van Eekhout
This was fun. It wasn’t deep, but it was fun. California Bones is set in an alternative present in which magic of various kinds works, and California is split into two independent polities — inexplicably not nicknamed Lo Cal and No Cal, although it is implied that southern California is colloquially known as the magic …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/02/02/california-bones-by-greg-van-eekhout/
Jan 28 2018
Time Shards (Time Shards #1) by Dana Fredsti and David Fitzgerald
Wrapping up the newest available seasons of Flash and Legends Of Tomorrow on Netflix (LoT has gotten significantly better in this second season despite still having zero regard for science and physics, whereas Flash in the Savitar season is godawful,) I’m a little leery of time-travel shenanigans right now. But like Fox Mulder, I want …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/01/28/time-shards-time-shards-1-by-dana-fredsti-and-david-fitzgerald/
Dec 22 2017
Wrapping Up
Time for some short takes, to mostly clear the desk for the coming year. The Inexplicables by Cherie Priest. In the fourth of her five Clockwork Century novels, Priest takes a stab at telling her story mostly from the point of view of an unsympathetic narrator. Rector Sherman is an addict, hooked on the “sap,” …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/22/wrapping-up-2/
Nov 26 2017
Ganymede by Cherie Priest
Ganymede, the third of Cherie Priest’s five Clockwork Century novels, follows the efforts of some free people of color to tip the scales of the American Civil War, ongoing for more than 20 years at the time of the book’s events, in favor of the Union by bringing it an experimental Confederate submarine that sank …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/11/26/ganymede-by-cherie-priest/
Sep 27 2017
Pirate Utopia by Bruce Sterling
The collapse of the European empires at the end of World War I produced considerable political strangeness. Béla Kun. The Czech Legion in Siberia. The Bavarian Soviet Republic. Baron Ungern. Flights of fancy, seizures of power, and some powerfully fancy seizures. In Pirate Utopia, Bruce Sterling sails off to another corner of collapsing empires rubbing …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/09/27/pirate-utopia-by-bruce-sterling/
Sep 14 2017
Europe in Winter by Dave Hutchinson
I should say two things right up front about Europe in Winter. First, intermittently during a bicycle tour across one of Europe’s smaller polities that steadfastly refuses to disappear completely is both the right and wrong way to read this book. Wrong, because it surely deserves closer attention that I was sometimes able to give …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/09/14/europe-in-winter-by-dave-hutchinson/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire