Jul 25 2025

Tantalizing Tales — July 2025 — Part Four

This is the first time I’ve had to write a Tantalizing Tales Part Four, dear readers! I did confirm with a publicist friend that it has been an unusually busy summer this year, though neither we nor the BlueSky brain trust could figure out why. Very happy to hear your theories, if you have them!

First up for our roundup column is the book with my favorite cover this week, Rebecca Danzenbaker’s Soulmatch. In a world where your past lives determine your future, a sharp-witted girl confronts a major twist of destiny, embroiling her in a high-stakes game of danger, corruption and heartbreak.

Two hundred years after World War III, the world is at peace, all thanks to the soul-identification system. Every eighteen-year-old must report to the government to learn about their past lives, in a terrifying process known as kirling. Good souls leave the institute with their inheritance, a career path and, if they’re lucky, a soulmate. Bad souls leave in handcuffs.

It’s a nerve-wracking ordeal for Sivon who, given her uncanny ability to win every chess match, already suspects that her soul isn’t normal. Turns out that she was right to worry. Sivon’s results stun not only her but the entire world, making her the object of public scrutiny and anonymous threats.

Saddled with an infuriating and off-limits bodyguard, Sivon is thrust into a high-stakes game where souls are pawns and rules don’t exist. As the deaths keep mounting, Sivon must decipher friend from foe while protecting her heart against impossible odds. One wrong move could destroy the future lives of everyone Sivon loves. She can’t let that happen, even if they’ll never love her back.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/07/25/tantalizing-tales-july-2025-part-four/

Jul 24 2025

We Called Them Giants by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans & Clayton Cowles

Ooh, look, a standalone graphic novel from one of my favorite creative teams! And, interestingly, an object lesson in how to write a book that doesn’t explain everything yet still manages to feel both satisfying and complete, which I’ll delve into more later on in this review.

This is also my first review of the Graphic Novels slate for the 2025 Hugos. I’m still torn as to whether I want to do a complete roundup column for the category, but I can safely say that this was not my favorite of the bunch.

Which isn’t to say that it wasn’t good! Stephanie Hans’ art is spectacular as always, as is Clayton Cowles’ lettering. The Blah Blah Blah motif was a nice moment of levity in an otherwise grim book that essentially centers around the premise of unexpected compassion in the midst of devastation.

Essentially, Lori wakes up one day and discovers that everyone has disappeared. As a foster child, she’s used to feeling abandoned but still feels an intense sense of relief when she encounters Annette, a schoolmate with a much more optimistic outlook on life. Until, that is, they discover that food supplies are unexpectedly low and electricity no longer works either. Together, they go questing for food and safety, in a world that was already hostile to teenage girls even in times of abundance.

Unsurprisingly, the world has devolved into the standard dystopia of violent gangs taking the center of power, with nonconformists like Lori and Annette ekeing out an existence on the margins. The big difference here is that oversized wolves hunt the remaining humans, forcing our heroes to edge ever closer to capture by the local gang. Until, that is, someone shows them another way.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/07/24/we-called-them-giants-by-kieron-gillen-stephanie-hans-clayton-cowles/

Jul 23 2025

Hugo Awards 2025: Best Novelette

Managed another reading category for the Hugos this year! Will review the other categories I’ve read through after tonight’s voting deadline, but figured I’d start with the next fastest to read: the nominees for Best Novelette.

As is my wont (but not Doug’s!) we’ll go from my favorite on down. Tho I must say that I definitely noticed the difference between my enjoyment of this category vs the short stories this year, a conversation that Doug and I have previously indulged in regarding prior nominees. Some years the novelettes feel far superior; this was not one of those years, alas. Still some good reads here, beginning with Naomi Kritzer’s The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea.

Morgan is a former academic who is justifiably annoyed by her husband Stuart’s old-fashioned attitude towards the distribution of their family responsibilities. Moving to the coast only makes things worse, as she learns of the local legend of the Four Sisters, the four large rocks that stand guard over the town of Finstowe. When her proximity to the water reminds her of whom she used to be, will she be able to fight to reclaim her true self?

The supernatural elements of this story work perfectly as a metaphor to remind people who lose themselves in relationships that it is possible to find yourself once more. It’s fascinating how the legend referenced here has so many variants worldwide, and almost never a bad time to retell it in hopes of finding a reader who desperately needs to apply its lessons to their own lives.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/07/23/hugo-awards-2025-best-novelette/

Jul 22 2025

When People Leave by Leslie Rasmussen (EXCERPT)

We have another terrific excerpt for you today, dear readers, with an absorbing, dual viewpoint look at one of the most traumatic experiences of a person’s life, and the mysterious circumstances that precipitated it.

Leslie Rasmussen’s When People Leave is subtitled A Story Of Love, Lies And Finding The Truth. It follows the three Weiss sisters as they grapple with the aftermath of their mother Carla’s shocking suicide. She left behind no explanation and no note, leaving the women reeling.

The close knit sisters take a break from their everyday lives, their men and their personal issues to move into their mother’s Los Angeles home, searching for answers even as they plan Carla’s funeral. What they discover will lead them on a cross-country trip in pursuit of a mysterious stranger who may have clues as to their mother’s hidden past. But are the women ready for what they’ll discover, especially when it could change everything they ever believed to be true?

Exploring familial relationships, grief, anger and resolutions, this is a tender, heart-filled contemporary novel. Read on for an illuminating excerpt!

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/07/22/when-people-leave-by-leslie-rasmussen-excerpt/

Jul 21 2025

Calypso by Oliver K Langmead

My kingdom for pdfs properly formatted for Kindle!

That gripe aside, wow, was I finally glad to be able to read Oliver K Langmead’s novel in verse. And I get it, the pdf was meant to preserve the gorgeous art and design of the book, which it definitely does. It just took way longer to read on my Kindle than it should have because the print was so tiny!

Anyway, the poetry inside is divided into narratives centering four different people: Rochelle, the engineer and moral center; Sigmund, the architect and visionary; Catherine, the biologist and creator, and the Herald, the storyteller and historian. All four are on the colony/generation ship Calypso, where the first three went into extended cryosleep on their way to a brand new planet, in a universe where terraforming has already turned Mars and Venus into habitable environments for humanity. The new planet the four are headed to, however, is light years beyond our solar system.

Rochelle, especially, feels guilt for leaving her children behind. It’s never really explained why she felt compelled to join this expedition to begin with, which I thought was rather odd. It’s obvious why Sigmund and Catherine went, and the Herald had no choice, being the descendant of generations of crew who’ve ensured that the sleeping technicians and colonists are taken care of on their long trek through the stars. Things, ofc, do not quite go to plan, as Rochelle wakes to find a ship entirely different from what she expected.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/07/21/calypso-by-oliver-k-langmead/

Jul 20 2025

Hugo Awards 2025: Best Short Story

Officially, I’m taking a break from reading for the Hugo Awards this year. I’ve found participating in the Hugo process as a reader and voter wonderfully rewarding, not least because it has introduced me to authors I would have completely missed otherwise, but I’m also a conscientious voter, and that means I try to read enough of each work in the categories I vote in to give it a fair shake. That adds up to a significant share of my annual reading page — I am not one of the people who can read upwards of 200 books a year — and this year I felt it would be more of a chore than a joy. I chose to take a year off even before the finalists were announced, so it’s no reflection on the finalists. In fact, the publishers may come out ahead on me this year, since there are several finalists I want to read and will obviously not be receiving in the Hugo reader’s packet.

Uncanny Issue 57, which contains "Stitched to the Skin Like Family Is" by Nghi Vo

But then I read Doreen’s post, and I thought that looking in on one category, with manageable reading, would be a fun thing to do even in an off year. In theory, I like formal experiments — yay! stretch what it is that a story can do, push limits on what’s considered a story — but I am coming to realize that I almost never like an experiment better than a really well-told narrative. This year’s short story finalists had four experimental stories, and it’s not surprising that I preferred the two narratives. Here are some short thoughts on each, in ascending order of my preference.

“Five Views of the Planet Tartarus” by Rachael K. Jones offers a bare-bones account of horrific punishment in a spacefaring society that can afford the resources to mete out eternal orbital confinement as the penalty for treason. The story pulls names from Greek mythology — Tartarus, of course, and also a Sibylline Court — but the setting and society are not even sketched, just gestured toward. Speaking of Sibyls, the story is more of a dream or a vision than a tale. Jones says so with the story’s title, so a reader should not expect anything else. I found the work more of an evocation of elements that I already knew; I don’t know if the set-up could support a story rather than a set of views, but in any event that’s not what Jones chose to write. It’s a horrific vision with a kick at the end, but there isn’t anything else.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/07/20/hugo-awards-2025-best-short-story/

Jul 18 2025

Tantalizing Tales — July 2025 — Part Three

Was July this huge a month for books in previous years, dear reader, or is this another case of my time blindness? Regardless, we have some delicious reads that have either just or are freshly coming out, beginning with Tess Sharpe’s No Body No Crime, a twisty and gripping romantic thriller about enduring love, true friendship and murder (with an absolutely outstanding cover!)

Murder will either bond you or break you. For teenaged Melanie Tillman and Chloe Harper, their experience of murder was the bonding sort, both in crime and in a love affair that they both believed would last.

But time has a funny way of changing things. Nowadays Mel is single, and a working PI in her rural NorCal hometown. Chloe, meanwhile, has been missing for six years. And their victim Toby Dunne? He’s buried where no one will ever find him.

When the Harper family hires Mel to bring Chloe home to be with her dying father, Mel tracks her ex down to a boobytrapped DIY cabin in the Canadian wilderness. There she learns that what broke them apart wasn’t murder, but the fact that when they buried Toby, they also buried something that belonged to the Newells, the most powerful and politically connected family in town. The Newells are desperate to get it back, and have been hunting Chloe ruthlessly since linking her to Toby’s disappearance. Chloe, in turn, has been hiding out, hoping against hope that doing so will keep Mel safe.

Will the reunited lovers be able to figure out a way to get Chloe home safely to her dad? After losing each other once, they’ll do whatever it takes to make sure they’re never parted again.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/07/18/tantalizing-tales-july-2025-part-three/

Jul 17 2025

Martin Cruz Smith, 1942-2025

I was digging myself out from the bottom of the 270 or so emails in my inbox when I came across this press release announcing the recent death of acclaimed and accomplished author Martin Cruz Smith:

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We at Simon & Schuster are saddened by the death of Martin Cruz Smith, who passed away peacefully on Friday, July 11, surrounded by those he loved. We offer our condolences to his family and to his many loyal readers who have enjoyed his work over the last half-century.

Smith was a writer accomplished in nearly every genre—westerns, horror, historical fiction, and of course mysteries. He was a recipient of the Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award as well as several international mystery prizes, and he has been acknowledged as an inspiration by many bestselling authors including Lee Child and Slow Horses novelist Mick Herron. Smith’s eleven-book series featuring Moscow detective Arkady Renko—beginning with the 1981 publishing phenomenon Gorky Park and concluding with Hotel Ukraine, just released last week—is one of the great achievements in modern suspense writing, with the Washington Post hailing it “a work of art” and the Denver Post claiming, “Along with icons like Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlowe, and Sam Spade, Akrady Renko has become one of the finest fictional detectives to prowl the literary landscape.”

For the last three decades, Smith lived with Parkinson’s, and he innovatively incorporated the condition into the more recent Renko novels, with his protagonist facing it as courageously as the author himself. As Smith writes of Renko in Hotel Ukraine: “He could stay at home, do nothing, and surrender as his symptoms got worse…He was defined by who he was and what he could still do. Put that way, it wasn’t even a choice.”

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/07/17/martin-cruz-smith-1942-2025/

Jul 16 2025

Hugo Awards 2025: Best Short Story Nominees

I have become even more time blind than usual lately, and am woefully behind on any emails that may be reminding me of voting deadlines. Nevertheless, I’m glad that I’m finally getting a chance to look at this year’s Hugo nominees, beginning, as is tradition, with Best Short Story!

And, as is tradition, let’s start with my favorite of the bunch then work our way downwards. I read each nominee in alphabetical order by title, and had a really obvious favorite until I got to the last story, Isabel J Kim’s Why Don’t We Just Kill The Kid In The Omelas Hole. That title alone is a hell of a choice. The lack of a question mark signals that this is a story that has no interest in moral hand-wringing, even if it is based on one of science fiction’s greatest thought experiments on questions of justice and conscience. It was actually that basis that made me avoid this story until I had to read it for the Hugos. Someone taking on what is arguably Ursula K LeGuin’s most famous work? Bold move, considering that it very much needs to live up to its source material in order to succeed.

Readers, I’m pleased to report that it very much does. I have an instinctive repugnance towards accelerationism, as shown by my review of yesterday’s graphic novel, but Ms Kim uses it here in fascinating, thought-provoking ways. When people start killing the kid in the Omelas hole, greater discussions are spurred as to culpability, transparency and the morality of utilitarianism. Most strikingly, this is done both in Omelas and in the “outside” world, reminding readers once again that we too are active participants in this conversation with Ms LeGuin’s text as it continues to apply to our everyday lives. It’s an incredible bit of literary sleight of hand from Ms Kim that, frankly, deserves to win all the awards.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/07/16/hugo-awards-2025-best-short-story-nominees/

Jul 15 2025

Hourglass by Barbara Mazzi

So it’s weird sometimes, when I’m trying to review the first book in a series where a large part of the plot revolves around a mystery. There’s a very delicate balance that authors have to hit in order to make the book feel both satisfying for the reader and like we really need to read more. I’m hoping that in the process of writing this review, I’ll be able to figure out why I felt both dissatisfied with the stopping point but curious enough to want a second book, even if that curiosity is not a burning desire.

Hourglass tells the story of a post-apocalyptic world where the seas have gone dry. Instead, the vast sands left behind have been mined to produce an even more curious sort of sand, that can imbue longevity to a select few known as the Ancient Ones (it is never stated what the terms of this selection are.) These life-extending sands are collected in the massive but delicately engineered hourglass of the book’s title. Engineers and technicians, including a young woman named Twenty, toil to keep the hourglass working correctly. If they do their job well, then perhaps they too will be rewarded with extra years by the sand.

One of the few highlights of Twenty’s life of endless labor are her visits with Martel, the privileged daughter of one of the Ancient Ones. Martel is adept at sneaking her way into the hourglass, which makes it easier for her and Twenty to spend stolen moments together. But one day, Martel does something reckless with the hourglass’ workings. Perhaps she does it out of nerves: her mother is returning to see her after an absence of five years, after all. Or perhaps she has a far more destructive intent. Regardless, her choices set off a chain of events that will change her and Twenty’s lives — and the lives of countless others — for good.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/07/15/hourglass-by-barbara-mazzi/