Dec 10 2021

Cardboardia Vol 1: The Other Side Of The Box by Richard Fairgray and Lucy Campagnolo

This delightful adventure follows four young friends (or three young friends and one pesky younger sister, according to at least one of our foursome) as they’re drawn into the strange and wonderful realm of Cardboardia, there to serve as heroes or villains, depending on whom you ask.

If you ask our four protagonists, ofc, they’ll all claim to land firmly on the hero side, even as they all have very different personalities and ways of coping with their lives back in the real world. Pokey Stilton is the youngest, the pesky little sister to Mac, the quiet, troubled one who may have been the very first to get a glimpse into what Cardboardia has to offer and why. Pokey’s certainly the most eager explorer of this odd new place, after getting separated from the responsible, if hardly straitlaced enough for her conservative parents, Maisie. The fourth member of their group is the even-keeled Bird, whose calm temperament comes from a lifetime of dealing with his own rambunctious siblings.

Mac, Bird and Maisie are all classmates who are planning a sleepover that Pokey also desperately wants to attend, but when Pokey and Maisie accidentally stumble into Cardboardia while at school one day, all thoughts of sleepovers are banished from their minds. When an accident shoves Maisie back into the real world without Pokey, Maisie must recruit the boys to help her rescue the younger girl. Weirdly, everyone in Cardboardia keeps staring at the trio as they begin their search for Pokey, and they soon discover why. Apparently, they’re on a Most Wanted list. But whose list is this and why have they deemed the kids public enemies?

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Dec 09 2021

If This Gets Out by Sophie Gonzales and Cale Dietrich

Funny story, I actually had a brief Twitter conversation with the very lovely Sophie Gonzales about this book and how, while it is a romance, it isn’t a rom-com, as many are expecting. I thought this misapprehension was due to a combination of the cartoon-y cover and the glowing blurbs that all accentuate how light and adorbs it is — the kind of stuff you’d see in the marketing for a rom-com. And now I’ve read the book, and can confirm that while there are definitely humorous parts in the prose (mostly courtesy of Angel and Jon,) this book is definitely on the more serious side of YA romance.

Essentially, Ruben and Zach are members, with the afore-mentioned Angel and Jon, of the mega-selling boy band Saturday. Ruben has been told by Chorus Management, the company that basically runs Saturday’s entire existence, to stay in the closet despite being openly gay for years. Since each of the boys in the band is meant to fit an appealing archetype, Ruben acquiesces, comfortably enough filling the Nice Guy role while wishing he had more chances to showcase his vocal abilities. The Nice Guy, ofc, doesn’t get the starring roles, despite the stage-trained Ruben easily having the best vocal range of the group. Chorus assures him that this is all temporary but Ruben is starting to have his doubts.

Zach is the Bad Boy, tho in reality he’s the quiet one with the dream of becoming a singer-songwriter in the vein of the pop punk bands he admires. Alas that Chorus prefers to go with more easily palatable pop music for Saturday’s repertoire. But they do encourage him to keep writing, in hopes of eventually snagging some songwriting credits. Zach is also straight… he thinks. When he finds himself attracted to Ruben, he starts having to reevaluate everything he thought he knew about himself, as well as everything he thought he’d be able to put up with as the price of being part of Saturday.

As Ruben and Zach fall in love, the pressures to keep their relationship quiet and not rock the boat begin to get to them, even as the pressures of being in a boy band start to wear on all its members. With media rumors rife about (fake) feuds and (even faker) girlfriends, can the four guys who originally started Saturday out of friendship and a shared love of music find a way to hold on to their bond and their band without losing their integrity?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/12/09/if-this-gets-out-by-sophie-gonzales-and-cale-dietrich/

Dec 08 2021

The Loud House Special: Love Out Loud by The Loud House Creative Team

It’s always a delight to catch up with the Loud House comics, even if I do have to re-read the cast of characters intro each time to make sure I know who’s who before plunging in!

This volume is dedicated to love in all its forms, whether it be romantic, familial, platonic or platonic wanting to be more. From Lucy feeling sad at not getting a card from her sister Leni, to Luna and her girlfriend writing shmoopy songs together, to Lalo trying to make a new friend at the dog park, this was a wonderfully broad and inclusive look at the way love improves our lives, with more than a dose of The Loud House’s trademark humor. The stories are all short sketches but pack a lot in, not only of the Loud family’s tales, but also scenes from the lives of the Casagrandes, Changs and McBrides.

The art is in keeping with the cartoon shows and, as always, it sometimes takes me a minute to differentiate between all the many blondes. I think I’m finally getting familiar enough to figure out the rest of who’s who without needing to think too hard or head back to the introduction to decode them tho! And that isn’t the fault of the art at all: there are just so many characters here, as there would be in real life, which adds to the fun realism of the series.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/12/08/the-loud-house-special-love-out-loud-by-the-loud-house-creative-team/

Dec 07 2021

Her Second Death by Melinda Leigh

Her Second Death is a kick-ass short story introduction to Melinda Leigh’s on-going Bree Taggart mystery series. It takes place just days after Detective Taggart’s transfer to the Homicide division of the Philadelphia Police Department. And while this is the first official homicide she’s been assigned to — and is, in fact, her second case with this department — it’s far from the first homicide she’s ever been involved with.

What that was and how it impacted her life and career form a large part of this wonderfully dense short story, that packs a whole lot of mystery into fewer than fifty pages. It also provides a lot of excellent character work both for Detective Taggart and her highly experienced, no-nonsense new partner Detective Dana Romano, as they’re called out to investigate the shooting death of one James Tyson, found shot in the head in his car one cold December morning. This story really whetted my appetite for more in the Bree Taggart series, which I’ve now added to my never-ending To Be Read pile.

We here at the Frumious Consortium are so honored and pleased to be able to kick off the book tour for this terrific short story. Keep reading for an excerpt, as well as for an Amazon giveaway!

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/12/07/her-second-death-by-melinda-leigh/

Dec 06 2021

The Last Witch: Fear & Fire (The Last Witch #1-5) by Conor McCreery, V.V. Glass & Natalia Nesterenko

Gosh, ’tis the season for some truly affecting graphic novels!

The Last Witch is the story of Saoirse, a young Irish girl who just wants to beat her best friend Padraig to the witch’s tower on the outskirts of town one Imbolc, never mind the superstitions about witches coming out to prey on children that very day. Her father totally busts her for venturing into forbidden territory, and while Padraig slips away, she gets sent back to the village to mind her younger brother Brahm. He isn’t feeling very well, and their dad wants her to fix some soothing tea for him. Resentfully, she does so, but once she thinks Brahm is asleep, she sets out to find Padraig and prove that she’s just as brave as he is, if not more.

Alas, Brahm only pretended to be sleeping and demands she take him with her. Saoirse reluctantly accedes, but while walking through the forest, they run into their wise grandmother, Nan, who promises to keep their secret: every kid needs a little adventure in their life, after all. After another long walk, Saoirse and Brahm reach the hedge that’s meant to block off the forbidden area, and think they hear Padraig calling for them. It’s not a spoiler to say that it isn’t Padraig, or to say that what the siblings encounter will turn their lives upside down. Soon, they’re on the run with their Nan as Saoirse must learn to control her powers in order to stop a great evil from destroying the entire world.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/12/06/the-last-witch-fear-fire-the-last-witch-1-5-by-conor-mccreery-v-v-glass-natalia-nesterenko/

Dec 05 2021

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher

“There was a dead girl in my aunt’s bakery.” There’s the first problem right away. Worst of all for the dead girl, of course, but a horrifying start to the day for Mona, the fourteen-year-old first-person narrator of A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking. Then things get worse.

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher

Not right away, of course; Mona partly distracts herself from the horror of the body in the kitchen (“the red stuff oozing out from under her head definitely wasn’t raspberry filling”) by thinking of worse things that have been in the kitchen, like a zombie frog that had crawled in from the canals.

Poor thing had been downstream of the cathedral, and sometimes they dump the holy water a little recklessly, and you get a plague of undead frogs and newts and whatnot. (The crawfish are the worst. You can get the frogs with a broom, but you have to call a priest in for a zombie crawfish.) (Ch. 1)

Like a sensible young teen, Mona knows when she’s out of her depth. She decides to wake her Aunt Tabitha. “Not that Aunt Tabitha had bodies in her bakery on a regular basis, but she’s one of those competent people who always know what to do. If a herd of ravenous centaurs descended on the city and went galloping through the streets, devouring small children and cats, Aunt Tabitha would calmly go about setting up barricades and manning crossbows as if she did it twice a week.” (Ch. 1) It will turn out that Mona is one of those people too, though she does not know it at the outset. She discovers how much she can do by seeing what needs to be done and setting to it, even when the adults around her are scared or unable.

The setting is a standard fantasy city — one of many in the lands, ruled by a Duchess, defined by a river and numerous canals, tolerant of magic users — because Kingfisher (a pen name of Ursula Vernon) is far more interested in exploring the nuances of people than the details of places. What happens when, say, a murder victim turns up in their bakery? Or indeed in the local bakery where they get their favorites? Though of course Mona and her aunt don’t say “murder” at first because even though two constables had come out and one had gone to fetch the coroner, they were still a respectable bakery.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/12/05/a-wizards-guide-to-defensive-baking-by-t-kingfisher/

Dec 04 2021

Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire

Because I had enjoyed Sumi so much as a character in Come Tumbling Down, I picked up Beneath the Sugar Sky, which I had somehow missed when it was a Hugo finalist in 2019, expecting to find more of her and of Confection, the Nonsense world where she found her proper home. That turned out to be an error along the lines of watching “The Search for Spock” because you wanted to see more of Spock.

Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire

Sumi was dead, to begin with. Then her daughter Rini fell from a door in the sky into the turtle pond at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. Rini was born in Confection to Sumi and a candy-corn farmer in the years after Sumi defeated the Queen of Cake and ended her despotic reign. None of those events could come to pass now that Sumi was killed in Down Among the Sticks and Bones. Causality runs a bit differently in Confection, or Rini wouldn’t exist at all, but it is catching up to her. Having a mother who died before she could be born is gradually causing Rini to come undone. In the time that it has taken her to make her way to the Home, part of her hand has disappeared into the nothingness that will be her fate if Sumi can’t be returned to the living. Can Eleanor and her students help?

Despite the Home’s rule against quests (the other two are “No solicitations. No visitors.”), that is precisely what four of them do. Kade, the only student who does not want to return to the world behind his personal door, is Eleanor’s second in command. Christopher longs for his Skeleton Girl and the happy bones of Mariposa; if any of the current students know enough about Underworlds and returning someone from death, it’s Christopher. Cora is a new student and until recently a mermaid. She’s one of the two that Rini nearly lands on at the turtle pond. Nadya is the other, and she’s also looking for a way back to a water world. Rini has a bracelet from a wizard on Confection that can open doorways between the worlds, something that is usually nearly impossible, and soon the five of them are off to try to reassemble Sumi’s body and reunite it with both her spirit and a spark of life that will bring her back and let Rini be born. They will have to hurry, though. Rini is losing herself at an alarming rate.

Rini is fun to have around. What makes perfect sense to her strikes the students as very odd, and she has a direct way of putting things that still leaves the other characters perplexed. She was, for example, naked when she fell from the sky. Which she characterizes thus: “‘A cake’s a cake, whether or not it’s been frosted,’ said [Rini] primly.” (Ch. 3)

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Dec 03 2021

Amazing Ash & Superhero Ah Ma by Melanie Lee and Arif Rafhan

Y’all, I did not expect this book to make me cry but it sure did.

Ash Tan is a young Singaporean girl stressed out from having the National Exams looming over next year’s horizon, particularly since she isn’t very good at math. When she gets her latest bad grade, her mom takes away her handphone (that’s cellphone to those of you outside of Southeast Asia,) resulting in a strained relationship between Ash and her mom, Grace, who works full time to support them and Grace’s own mom, whom Ash calls Ah Ma, a traditional name for Grandmother. Ah Ma is Ash’s caretaker while Grace is at work, but with age, her mental health is deteriorating.

When Ash sees Ah Ma slip outside for a walk one night, she’s torn as to whether to follow. Ash is supposed to accompany Ah Ma whenever her grandmother goes out nowadays, but she’s also supposed to be studying hard and proving to her mother that she’s worthy of getting her handphone back. When Ah Ma suddenly vanishes from sight, a terrified Ash runs down to find her, and discovers a secret that could change her ordinary life forever.

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Dec 02 2021

The Mermaid, the Witch, And The Sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

I honestly think it does a great disservice to this book to consider/market it as YA. For starters, I very nearly bounced off it in the first few pages when a main character, who we’re clearly meant to feel sympathy for, brutally kills an unarmed man. Had I gone in thinking this was a regular fantasy novel, I would’ve probably been okay, but as a YA novel, that seemed like way too much too soon.

I’m glad I persevered tho, even if, in the end, I strongly stand by my opinion that this book is far too mature to be labeled YA. Said MC, Flora, has adopted the male persona of Florian in order to help her survive life on the Dove, a slaving ship that pretends to be a passenger vessel in order to lure in victims before shackling and selling them off. Florian hates it here, but stays because it’s still a safer place for her to live with her brother Alfie than the cold streets of the Imperial city they fled as homeless orphans.

Lady Evelyn Hasegawa is not much loved by her noble parents, who seem relieved more than anything else to ship her off to wed a new money Imperial commander several months’ sea travel away. Remanded to the care of the pious Lady Ayer, she embarks on the Dove with little optimism. When Florian is set by the Dove’s first mate to guard Evelyn’s honor from the rest of the leering crew (as a high-born virgin commands a higher price from the slavers of the Red Coast,) Evelyn is drawn to the young sailor and decides to teach him how to read. Their growing friendship causes Florian to second-guess her own role in what will inevitably happen to Evelyn and the other passengers. And that’s even before the sailors capture a mermaid and bring it aboard.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/12/02/the-mermaid-the-witch-and-the-sea-by-maggie-tokuda-hall/

Dec 01 2021

The Math Kids: An Incorrect Solution (The Math Kids #5) by David Cole

with illustrations by Shannon O’Toole.

The Math Kids are starting fifth grade in a pretty glum mood. Not only are they not all in the same class any longer, but the boys, Justin and Jordan, have been stuck with a teacher known as Miller the Killer, who has no love for math and barely teaches it. When Justin and Jordan try to inject a little more of their favorite subject into the rest of their classes, Mr Miller gets punishment-happy, and poor Jordan gets saddled with both bad grades and two weeks of detention. Justin hatches a grand plan to make Mr Miller start liking math, even as the girls stand up to the bullies in their own classroom. But it’s another bully who catches Justin’s eye, and leads him to a crisis of conscience. Can our four heroes use their math skills to solve these seemingly impossible problems? After all, not even the Millennium Prizes problems could remain unsolved forever.

This was a charming middle-grade novel that deftly incorporates math into everyday life, not only providing brain teasers for young (and older) readers to enjoy, but also teaching brand new techniques for solving math problems. I wasn’t familiar with the lattice method of multiplication before this book and while I’m old enough to be more comfortable continuing to use the old-fashioned form of multiplication for large digit numbers, I will absolutely use the mind-bending percentage tricks explained here in future! I really need to hand a copy of this book to my fifth-grader who also loves math and brain teasers, which is about the highest compliment I can hand out to any book for younger readers I come across nowadays.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/12/01/the-math-kids-an-incorrect-solution-the-math-kids-5-by-david-cole/