Oct 26 2025
In Rituale — Rituals to give the book its English title — Cees Nooteboom begins in the middle, goes back to the beginning, and then skips a bit to get to something of an ending. As middle beginnings that might well be endings go, the first sentence in Rituals is arresting: “On the day that Inni …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/10/26/rituale-by-cees-nooteboom/
Oct 25 2025
When T. Kingfisher, whose real name is Ursula Vernon, was re-reading “The Fall of the House of Usher” two things struck her. The first, as she writes in her author’s note at the end of the book “was that Poe is really into fungi. He devotes more words to the fungal emanations than he does …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/10/25/what-moves-the-dead-by-t-kingfisher/
Oct 12 2025
In deepest, darkest Kent, Coopers Chase is a retirement community built from what was once a convent. As part of its sale to private investors, the development has kept its original chapel and the burial ground where the sisters were laid to rest from the 1870s until the late twentieth century. Coopers Chase is bucolic, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/10/12/the-thursday-murder-club-by-richard-osman/
Oct 04 2025
One of the things about living in a country where English is not the dominant language is that when books turn up at your local English-language bookstore, you snag them because there may not be another chance any time soon. (People will say that a quarter of the way through the twenty-first century, I am …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/10/04/three-from-t-kingfisher/
Sep 28 2025
After introducing readers to the lost world of Hungarian nobility before the Great War in They Were Counted, Miklós Bánffy continues their stories toward the great catastrophe that is coming, that only a very few of them can see looming on the horizon. These two books, along with They Were Divided form Bánffy’s Transylvanian Trilogy, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/28/they-were-found-wanting-by-miklos-banffy/
Sep 27 2025
No Longer at Ease follow Things Fall Apart a generation later, although that is not immediately apparent. What is immediately apparent is that Obi Okonkwo is in a heap of trouble. He is in the dock, on trial in a case that has been the talk of Lagos for weeks, and the only thing remaining …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/27/no-longer-at-ease-by-chinua-achebe/
Sep 21 2025
Things Fall Apart grabbed me from its very first page, even though nearly 70 years have passed since its first publication. It had fallen into the category of reputed classics that I have never quite gotten around to, what with there being a lot of books both old and new, and if not for the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/21/things-fall-apart-by-chinua-achebe/
Sep 20 2025
The Tomb of Dragons is that rare third book of a trilogy that makes me view the first two books very differently. All three of the “Cemeteries of Amalo” share a world and time with Addison’s classic, The Goblin Emperor. The first-person narrator of the trilogy is Thara Celehar, a cleric of Ulis and a …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/20/the-tomb-of-dragons-by-katherine-addison/
Sep 14 2025
Peter Grant and Beverly Brook have survived the first two years as parents of twins, and unsurprisingly they are in need of a vacation. Peter’s family being what it is, and his job being what it is, the trip up to Scotland more closely resembled a circus caravan than a cozy family outing. To be …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/14/stone-sky-by-ben-aaronovitch/
Sep 13 2025
The fourth, and presumably final, Lady Astronauts of Mars novel begins with an echo of the opening of the first. “Do you remember where you were when the stars came out? I was with my husband, on Mars.” (p. 14) It’s 1970, and there hasn’t been a clear night sky on Earth since early March …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/13/the-martian-contingency-by-mary-robinette-kowal/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire