Dec 18 2021
The 2021 World Science Fiction Convention, DisCon III in Washington, DC, is in full swing as I write. In fact, presentations of this year’s Hugo Awards are set to begin in 15 minutes an hour and fifteen minutes, and I plan to write about those in the morning when I wake up and find out …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/12/18/putting-the-world-into-worldcon/
Dec 16 2021
First, a small pat on the back to myself for slowly but surely catching up on my reading backlog. Second, a huge pat on the back to everyone involved with Rick Riordan Presents, an imprint that showcases fantastic middle-grade fiction based on world mythologies. The representation is gloriously diverse and fascinatingly educational. I love mythology …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/12/16/the-cursed-carnival-and-other-calamities-new-stories-about-mythic-heroes-compiled-by-rick-riordan/
Dec 11 2021
It’s 1978. There is only one Star Wars movie, and it doesn’t have a subtitle or an episode number. Star Wars is still playing in some movie theaters, more than a year after its release. There are a ton of toys, and fans are busily imagining what their beloved characters were up to before and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/12/11/splinter-of-the-minds-eye-by-alan-dean-foster/
Nov 29 2021
I’ve read Frank Herbert’s Dune once, when I was 8 and it was the only other English-language book in my grandparents’ house, after Robert Louis Stevenson’s far more age-appropriate Kidnapped. Dune left an indelible mark: I thought in terms of worm sign and the Weirding Way for years, even as I knew uneasily that there …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/29/from-page-to-screen-dune-by-frank-herbert/
Nov 28 2021
Like Doreen, I initially thought that Riot Baby was an imperative phrase, not a descriptive one. Instead of getting his characters to riot, Onyebuchi has them bide their time and keep absorbing the hits that life, in this particular instance life as working-class Black Americans, gives them. Those hits start early, and keep coming. Riot …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/28/riot-baby-by-tochi-onyebuchi-2/
Nov 19 2021
I don’t remember the last time a novella, oh heck, any book, has been so strong and thoughtful before totally collapsing for me in the last two pages. “Riot Baby” is not a directive, as I’d mistakenly believed: it’s a nickname. Kev is born during the L.A. riots that blaze in the aftermath of the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/19/riot-baby-by-tochi-onyebuchi/
Nov 09 2021
I have super enjoyed the other books in the YouNeek YouNiverse so far but this, I feel, is the best of them yet! Set in a near future Nigeria, Wale Williams is the son of a workaholic scientist, Dr Tunde Williams, whose absorption in his work leads to a tragedy that tears their family apart. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/09/e-x-o-the-legend-of-wale-williams-part-one-by-roye-okupe-sunkanmi-akinboye-raphael-kazeem/
Nov 03 2021
I actually hadn’t read the original text of Parable Of The Sower before this, but I have read and loved Parable Of The Talents. I’ve also read and, in retrospect, disliked Kindred — I had good things to say about it at the time, but the way Sarah treated her ancestress feels more selfish and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/03/octavia-e-butlers-parable-of-the-sower-a-graphic-adaptation-by-damian-duffy-and-john-jennings/
Nov 01 2021
I sincerely love it when I jump into a series arc at the midpoint without any prior introduction, but end the book free of any nagging questions as to things that might have come to pass before. I feel like this is the hallmark of a good writer, and certainly not a trait every author …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/01/invisible-kingdom-vol-2-edge-of-everything-by-g-willow-wilson-christian-ward/
Oct 30 2021
Harrowhark Nonagesimus, generally and more pronounceably known as Harrow the Ninth, is one weird chickadee. Even among advanced necromancers, a company not generally known for bland probity, Harrow stands out. Readers of this book’s predecessor, Gideon the Ninth, know it; anyone wandering in on this book as the starting point in the Locked Tomb series …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/10/30/premature-evaluation-harrow-the-ninth-by-tamsyn-muir/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire