Category: Short Stories
Short story collections are often hit or miss for me. Particularly when they’re the collected works of a single author: I often find myself rooting for said author to do well with each new story even as I’m quietly disappointed by the sum of the collection. This is especially true for writing that’s critically lauded …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/08/19/her-body-and-other-parties-by-carmen-maria-machado/
If A Study In Brimstone was the introduction to Warlock Holmes, and The Hell-Hound Of The Baskervilles essentially his origin story, then My Grave Ritual brings the machinations of The Woman to the forefront. Not for G.S. Denning the consignment of Irene Adler to a single story. She is, instead, a constant, if elusive, presence …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/04/my-grave-ritual-warlock-holmes-3-by-g-s-denning/
Weirdly, given how I love and devour mystery novels, I have never really been into reading Sherlock pastiches. For that matter, I’ve never been a huge fan of the source material, having read the originals only insofar as they were available to me in the library of a paternal uncle whom my family visited in …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/23/a-study-in-brimstone-warlock-holmes-1-by-g-s-denning/
So for real, Binti is a terrific character and the setting is amazing and the way Nnedi Okorafor builds a whole universe and sci-fi system is breathtakingly good considering the novella doesn’t even break a hundred pages but Jesus fuck, I was not okay with how the Meduse were deferred to. They did something to …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/11/09/binti-binti-1-by-nnedi-okorafor/
I didn’t even know this existed till I stumbled across a free Kindle copy. It’s really a novella (about 80 pages) of what happens when Tom and Huck get entangled in a murder mystery, based on an actual case that Mark Twain freely admits to using in the opening paragraphs. It’s an entertaining story set …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/11/03/tom-sawyer-detective-by-mark-twain/
“The Tomato Thief” by Urusla Vernon will have my first-place vote for this year’s Hugo award in the category of best novelette. It is a sideways return to the world of “Jackalope Wives,” which won the Nebula in 2014 for best short story, and is the only other story of hers that I have read. …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/20/the-tomato-thief-by-ursula-vernon/
“The City Born Great” by N.K. Jemisin should win this year’s Hugo for short story. The conceit of the story is that great human cities have a life of their own. Maybe that life awakens quickly, maybe it takes centuries or millennia, but at some point the genius loci becomes a thing in itself. Birth …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/07/the-city-born-great-by-n-k-jemisin/
This book is easily split into two parts, perhaps three. The first four stories are overtly supernatural and horrific, having to do with a fabled play, The King In Yellow, and its unhappy effects on its readers. The second bit transitions away from TKIY, seguing from horror and romance to horrors of a different sort …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/03/07/the-king-in-yellow-by-robert-w-chambers/
A solid collection of stories, some better than others, but none, if I’m being quite honest, really a groundbreaker. My favorites were likely The Inn Of The Seven Blessings by Matthew Hughes (whom I’d never heard of before) and Tawny Petticoats by Michael Swanwick (whose Mongolian Wizard series I adore!) The non-fantastic entries were, I …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/12/05/rogues-edited-by-george-r-r-martin-and-gardner-dozois/
I was initially resistant towards reading this book. If it was bad, I would feel a certain kind of “malu,” the nearly indescribable shade of embarrassment Malaysians feel when one of their own commits a faux pas, akin but not quite the same as the East Asian concept of losing “face.” And if it was …
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/08/18/spirits-abroad-by-zen-cho/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire