Sep 08 2025
I have recently remarked on how my reading brain seems to have pivoted away from classic/cozy murder mysteries to punchy short horror stories as a sort of mental palate cleanser between books, likely due to the shift of my literary consumption to a minimum of three mystery novels per week. So Eric LaRocca’s This Skin …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/08/this-skin-was-once-mine-and-other-disturbances-by-eric-larocca/
Aug 20 2025
Given my literary consumption of recent years, I’m genuinely wondering whether I ought to pivot away from my usual mental palate cleansers of classic/cozy crime in favor of horror anthologies like this one! This volume certainly acted like a much needed reset on my brain, serving up short, sharp and entirely self-sufficient diversions to give …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/08/20/creepshow-vol-3-edited-by-ben-abernathy/
Aug 05 2025
Would I read this comic if it weren’t for the fact that it’s nominated for a Hugo almost every year? Absolutely not. Tho apparently it was not nominated last year (I’ve heard that Vol 8 was Not Great) and I skipped the Hugos the year before, so missed reading the last two books. Not that …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/08/05/monstress-vol-9-the-possessed-by-marjorie-m-liu-sana-takeda/
Jul 01 2025
This manga adaptation of a classic Japanese horror story is shockingly nuanced, as writer and illustrator Mihiro reworks the tale for a modern audience, translated then into English by Itoh Makiko. A bit about the original author himself before we continue. Akutagawa Ryunosuke is widely considered the father of the Japanese short story, with Japan’s …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/07/01/ryunosuke-akutagawas-hell-screen-by-mihiro/
Jun 24 2025
I’m becoming a curmudgeon as I age, but I really do wish this book had explicitly stated at the outset that it’s set in New Orleans. I no longer have time to read blurbs or back matter, so when I realized partway through that this was set in historical America and not fantasy Europe, all …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/06/24/the-confessional-by-paige-hender/
Jun 17 2025
Chuck Tingle’s third horror novel, Lucky Day, will be published by Tor on August 12th, and you can preorder it now! I think it’s his best yet. (Content warning: this spoiler-free review discusses bisexual erasure as it occurs in Lucky Day.) In Lucky Day, we meet Vera, a young, Type-A Statistics professor. Her hair is …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/06/17/lucky-day-by-chuck-tingle-comes-out-in-august/
Jun 05 2025
w a terrific guest chapter by Shawn Kuruneru that really exemplifies the benefit of having someone else come in and contribute their entirely different style to your already well-told story. Three boys are walking to the convenience store one night during fishfly season, when the titular insects rise in swarms off of the nearby lakes …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/06/05/fishflies-by-jeff-lemire/
May 28 2025
I can’t be the only person who picked up this title thinking that there’d be a religious subtext here. And perhaps there is, but the creators chose a much more interesting way to use the title word in this graphic novel, that collects the first (?) four books of the series. Science Officer Orrin Kutela …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/05/28/convert-by-john-arcudi-savannah-finley/
May 14 2025
Despite having one of my least favorite shared universe names, A G Slatter’s dark fantasy novels are one of my few can’t-miss series! And nowhere was I happier to have read almost all of the books in it than here in this latest installment, The Crimson Road. As the novel opens, heiress Violet Zennor is …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/05/14/the-crimson-road-by-a-g-slatter/
Apr 26 2025
Annihilation kicks off the Southern Reach series, which was a trilogy for 10 years until VanderMeer published a fourth book in 2024. A movie adaptation of Annihilation was released in 2018. The series, and this first volume in particular, are often described as classics and even appear on some all-time-best lists. It’s fair to say …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/04/26/annihilation-by-jeff-vandermeer/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire