Apr 12 2026
The Wonder Engine continues and concludes the story begun in Clockwork Boys. To recap: Three misfits have been offered reprieves from their respective criminal sentences (two death, one life in prison) if they can find a way to stop the Clocktaurs, semi-mechanical, semi-magical contraptions that are slowly but surely conquering the lands surrounding the misfits’ …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/12/the-wonder-engine-by-t-kingfisher/
Apr 11 2026
Isn’t this neat? Tokyo is one of the world’s greatest cities, and is regularly praised for its success on a human scale even as the population of the metropolitan area has soared past 30 million. In Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City, Jorge Almazan and his team of more than two dozen researchers and editors …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/11/emergent-tokyo-by-jorge-almazan-studiolab/
Apr 04 2026
The Tailor of Panama is Harry Pendel, half of the Savile Row partnership of Pendel & Braithwaite, relocated to Panama City some years back. A large portrait of the late Arthur Braithwaite — shipped over from England at his widow’s insistence and damn the expense — presides over the premises just off the prestigious Via …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/04/the-tailor-of-panama-by-john-le-carre/
Mar 22 2026
Kara’s Uncle Ed owns the Glory to God Museum of Natural Wonders, Curiosities and Taxidermy. It’s a highlight of downtown Hog Chapel, North Carolina, and in all its glorious weirdness, it was a childhood sanctuary. Uncle Ed likes nearly everyone he meets, bless him, and he’s ecumenical in his beliefs, but he’s also getting up …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/03/22/the-hollow-places-by-t-kingfisher/
Mar 21 2026
Once Upon a Russia, which carries the subtitle “Voices from a Vanished Era,” collects slightly more than 100 short essays from Westerners who lived and worked in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It’s a personal project, born of a 2024 reunion with a friend and colleague that “unfolded into hours of nostalgic …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/03/21/once-upon-a-russia-edited-by-steven-a-fisher/
Mar 08 2026
Well I suppose that Jakob von Gunten is a bildungsroman because it follows its young and eponymous first-person narrator through his later school years and ends with his departure from the Institut Benjamenta. On the other hand, its 144 pages raise some doubts about whether it qualifies as a Roman, although the Süddeutsche Zeitung published …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/03/08/jakob-von-gunten-by-robert-walser/
Mar 07 2026
with an introductory essay by Owen Hatherley After two books on Soviet bus stops, an eccentric topic from a world that’s receding into history, photographer Christopher Herwig turned his attention to a slightly more expected topic: stations of various metro systems across the former Soviet Union. This book echoes its predecessors in size and style. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/03/07/soviet-metro-stations-by-christopher-herwig/
Feb 22 2026
Nine Goblins is not just the story of nine goblins, one elf, and some weird things that happen, it’s also the origin story of T. Kingfisher. Under the author’s real name of Ursula Vernon, she had a successful and award-winning webcomic named Digger and more than a dozen published children’s books. But she had more …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/02/22/nine-goblins-by-t-kingfisher/
Feb 01 2026
T. Kingfisher’s third Sworn Soldier novella — following What Moves the Dead and What Feasts at Night — takes Alex Easton and their* batsman Angus to America at the urgent behest of their friend James Denton, a doctor last seen by readers not far from where the House of Usher had fallen. He had returned home, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/02/01/what-stalks-the-deep-by-t-kingfisher/
Jan 31 2026
Most years, I set aside a couple of books that I have gotten a decent way into and decide that I am just not going to finish them. (Each year since 2020, it’s been either one or two.) This year, I’ve already DNF’d two and it’s only late January. I’m not one of those people …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/01/31/a-brief-visit-to-dnfland/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire