Category: Fabulous Ones

Paladin’s Strength by T. Kingfisher

Paladin's Strength by T. Kingfisher

In the world of the White Rat, the gods call clergy and paladins to their service. Clergy are straightforward enough; they minister to the faithful, they administer the affairs of people and property affiliated with the deity, they perform the necessary rites, and so forth. Paladins are holy warriors for their faith; filled with the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/26/paladins-strength-by-t-kingfisher/

Chevengur by Andrey Platonov

Chevengur by Andrey Platonov

Translated from the Russian by Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler Once again, I have finished a Platonov novel and I am left with the question of where to even begin. Chevengur is horrifying, and hilarious. It is surreal, and realistic; it is a blistering attack on Bolshevism, and full of characters asserting the correctness of …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/19/chevengur-by-andrey-platonov/

The Wonder Engine by T. Kingfisher

The Wonder Engine by T. Kingfisher

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’ …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/12/the-wonder-engine-by-t-kingfisher/

Emergent Tokyo by Jorge Almazan + Studiolab

Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City by Jorge Almazan + Studiolab

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 …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/11/emergent-tokyo-by-jorge-almazan-studiolab/

The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher

The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher

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 …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/03/22/the-hollow-places-by-t-kingfisher/

What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher

What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher

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, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/02/01/what-stalks-the-deep-by-t-kingfisher/

That’s Dickens with a C and a K, the Well-Known English Author

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/12/24/thats-dickens-with-a-c-and-a-k-the-well-known-english-author-5/

An Unrelated Pair of Books by Emily Tesh and Lois McMaster Bujold

Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold

The thing about The Incandescent by Emily Tesh as a novel about a magic boarding school in England is that it’s told from the adults’ point of view, adults who take their responsibilities seriously, and who have real lives that are separate from what is happening to the students. Boarding-school stories often assign the teachers …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/12/13/an-unrelated-pair-of-books-by-emily-tesh-and-lois-mcmaster-bujold/

Hugo 2025 Chat

“There are no cast-iron rules about short-story writing, even on word count. Author A.L. Kennedy … asks, ‘Where do you draw the line formally between a novella and a long short story and a short-short story and a literary letter?’ The enduring blurring of boundaries of the short form exhibit themseleves in ranging award rules on word count on what posits as sudden fiction, shorter fiction or a novelette. “I am exhilarated today to see the short story, perhaps more so in speculative fiction, pulsing with vigour and accessibility, and with no mind to perish any time soon.”

Doug Merrill: Hi everyone! Emily Lauer: Hello! Doug: Hi Emily! Doreen Sheridan: Hello, all! I can confidently say that I’m happy they started a poetry category (and that my favorite won, lol) Doug: I’m glad that there’s a poetry category, too, and glad that it seems to have gone over well this year. Now to …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/11/09/hugo-2025-chat/

Three from T. Kingfisher

Swordheart by T. Kingfisher

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 …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/10/04/three-from-t-kingfisher/