Jun 30 2025

Lila Said No by Kiki Frayard & Aileen Bennett

Which parent hasn’t had the frustrating experience of being manipulated and possibly even outsmarted by their young children? It is, after all, to be expected as your kids get older and smarter, but being outwitted by an actual child, especially when you’re trying to get them to do things for their own good, is a special kind of bafflement.

Lila is one of these smart four year-olds. A born negotiator, she’s learned that if she just digs in her heels on doing things as basic as eating her meals, getting dressed and taking baths, her parents will bribe her with treats. This is, obviously, the parents’ fault, but you can’t really blame them as (seeming) first-time parents who have yet to learn better.

However, Lila, in the manner of all spoiled children — and again and again, I’ll say that Oompa Loompa refrain: a child can’t spoil herself, you know — keeps stubbornly resisting the smallest things in order to hold out for treats. When her parents have finally had enough, what will they do to help restore sanity to their household?

Spoiler: they do the smart thing instead of the easiest thing and, by the end, everyone is the better for it. And here’s the thing, this book is as much for parents as it is for kids. There really isn’t an all-encompassing manual for raising children, and we have to take our lessons where we get them. Lila Said No is a very helpful primer for parents dealing with obstinate offspring, as well as a useful fable for kids going through that mulish stage themselves.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/06/30/lila-said-no-by-kiki-frayard-aileen-bennett/

Jun 27 2025

Tantalizing Tales — June 2025 — Part Four

Wow, this has been my first month with four Tantalizing Tales columns, which should give you a good idea of all the very cool books that get pitched to me, dear readers!

Leading the pack is Mike Bockoven’s Come Knocking, a book that I desperately want to find time to fit into my bursting-at-the-seams schedule. The title play is more than just a play: it’s an entire theatrical production that’s taken over six floors of a once-abandoned building in Los Angeles. The reception for it has been overwhelmingly positive, with both critical acclaim and lines out the door for tickets.

But then the unthinkable happens, as a night of bloody chaos kills dozens and injures hundreds attending the show. A shocked nation demands answers. Investigative reporter Adam Jakes is assigned to uncover the truth behind the massacre. Through a series of gripping interviews with survivors, cast members and witnesses, Jakes pieces together the chilling reality behind what was supposed to be the ultimate theatrical experience.

As a former theater professional and perpetual fan of experimental media myself, this is absolutely something I’m panting to read, especially since the book promises to take a good hard look at the “grotesque underbelly of immersive experiences”. I’m also weirdly obsessed with that eerie cover, which gives me a delicious chill in this otherwise near-unbearable summer heat.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/06/27/tantalizing-tales-june-2025-part-four/

Jun 26 2025

You Are A Sacred Place by Madeleine Jubilee Saito

subtitled Visual Poems For Living In Climate Crisis.

It’s always a refreshing surprise to me whenever someone professes belief in both Christianity and climate change. Of all the major faiths, mainstream (and especially Evangelical) Christianity has always struck me as the one least interested in responsible custodianship of the planet, as it focuses more on the end times and afterlife — hilariously, often to the detriment of its own doctrine. Which isn’t to say that no one Christian cares about the environment or humanity’s physical welfare: just that the loudest voices in global Christian culture (recent popes excepted) tend to diminish the importance of taking care of the planet instead of looking after one’s personal abundance, spiritual or otherwise. The ongoing promulgation of, imo, the deeply heretical prosperity gospel has a lot to answer for indeed.

So reading Madeleine Jubilee Saito’s impassioned plea for readers to care about climate change because it’s the moral, if not Christian, thing to do was a lovely change from the dominant perspective that’s allowed abhorrent ideas like tribalism and “empathy is a sin” to take firm root in the mainstream. Not all of her words hit quite as hard as she’d likely want them to, particularly towards the end, but her art is unfailingly perfect in its message, conveying with subtlety and power the importance of caring for the planet as we care for the people we love.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/06/26/you-are-a-sacred-place-by-madeleine-jubilee-saito/

Jun 25 2025

In A Deep Blue Hour by Peter Stamm

Translated from the original German by Michael Hofmann.

It’s weird: this book smells to high heaven of being very firmly Literary Fiction, one of my least favored genres, yet I really enjoyed it. There were definitely parts where the narrator has a thought process so decidedly masculine that I scoffed at the idea of her being a cis woman, but on the whole, I felt that this was a keenly felt, extraordinarily subtle tale of a filmmaker who can’t extricate her life from that of an elusive subject’s.

Andrea is a documentarian who, with her filming and life partner Thomas, is working on a story about the semi-reclusive author Richard Wechsler. He is older, handsome and enigmatic, and seems almost entirely detached from the project. They’d filmed successfully enough in Paris, where he currently lives. Since moving to the Swiss village where he grew up, however, he’s become increasingly elusive.

Frustrated, Andrea decides to explore the village herself, in an effort to ferret out more regarding his past. In particular, she’s looking for the mysterious woman whom she believes inspired so much of Wechsler’s work. What she discovers will affect her life for years to come.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/06/25/in-a-deep-blue-hour-by-peter-stamm/

Jun 24 2025

The Confessional by Paige Hender

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 I could think was how unnecessarily jarring that recalibration of thought had been. I mean, if you’re going to open the book with mention of actual historical events, why not mention where and when they took place, instead of assuming that the reader automatically knows where you’re setting your story? I don’t consider myself a particularly unknowledgeable person, but I don’t see the harm in telling readers right from the get-go exactly where you’re placing the events of your historical horror graphic novel.

My grumpiness aside, The Confessional is an absorbing read, telling the tale of young Cora Velasquez and the coven of vampires to which she belongs. They all live together in a house of ill-repute down in 1920s New Orleans, with the other vampires feeding on patrons without killing them — death being bad for repeat business, after all.

Cora, however, is terrible at being a vampire. She doesn’t know how to feed without killing, and is suffering an existential crisis at the idea that being turned means that she’s lost her immortal soul. She turns to the Catholic church in her vulnerability, developing a crush on handsome Father Orville in the process. He is not immune to her charms either.

One day, she finally confesses to him what she really is while in the sanctity of the confessional. Ashamed, she flees immediately after, so is shocked when he comes looking for her. He has a request, one she’s only too willing to oblige. As their shared secrets tie them more firmly together, will their newfound partnership be their mutual salvation, or will naught but destruction come in their wake?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/06/24/the-confessional-by-paige-hender/

Jun 23 2025

Threat Of The Spider by Michael P Spradlin

Oh, huh, I didn’t realize that this second book in The Web Of The Spider series would have a different protagonist than the first one, but it makes sense!

In Rise Of The Spider, our narrator was young Rolf, who watched with growing horror as the Nazi Party’s hatefulness infiltrated not only his beloved hometown of Heroldsberg, but also seduced his older brother Romer. Rolf and his equally horrified father chased after Romer when the latter ran away to attend a large Nazi rally in Nuremberg, but were unsuccessful in bringing him home.

Threat Of The Spider is told from the point of view of Rolf’s best friend, the sharp-witted and brave — almost to the point of recklessness — Ansel Becker. He’s inherited his courage and outspokenness from his father, a reporter for the Nuremberg Zeitgeist. Heinrich Becker has recently persuaded HQ to let him open up a branch office in Heroldsberg, so he can report on the growing influence and perfidy of the Nazis in their small but representative town. The entire Becker family loathes a movement that they correctly see as capitalizing on people’s desperation and unhappiness to incite violence instead of actually helping the people. The loathing is mutual, as evidenced by the brick lobbed through their front window before the book even begins.

The local police are useless, especially since Police Chief Muller has recently been promoted to head of the Heroldsberg branch of the Nazi Party. Spearheaded by Hans, one of the first Hitler Youth to darken their doorsteps, the local Nazis continue to harass the Beckers, even when the much younger Ansel and his friends routinely prove their match, if not their superior.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/06/23/threat-of-the-spider-by-michael-p-spradlin/

Jun 20 2025

Tantalizing Tales — June 2025 — Part Three

I feel like every one of these columns recently starts with me marveling over how fast time is passing but for real, readers, how is it almost the end of June already?

On the plus side, we have several great books publishing soon, to close out our featured titles this month before turning to July (July! Already!) First off, we have Christina Dodd’s delightfully genre-crossing mystery Thus With A Kiss I Die. Narrated by the vivacious Rosie Montagu, daughter of the infamous star-crossed lovers of Shakespeare’s Romeo And Juliet (rumors of their deaths were, apparently, greatly premature,) this second book in her series continues her madcap adventures in life, love and amateur detecting.

Despite having fallen head over heels for Lysander in the prior novel, A Daughter Of Fair Verona, Rosie finds herself trapped in an engagement with Escalus, the Prince of Verona himself. So when his father, the deceased Prince Escalus the Elder, appears, asking her to solve his murder in exchange for helping to reunite her with her one true love, she barely hesitates. Sure, it’s weird that Elder is a ghost, but she did just unmask and stop the city’s first serial killer. How hard could this task be, especially with such a valuable prize waiting for her at the end?

Ms Dodd continues her forward-thinking, feminist romp through Shakespeare’s greatest hits by adapting Hamlet to her charming mash-up of mystery and history, through the lens of the irresistible, self-aware Rosie.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/06/20/tantalizing-tales-june-2025-part-three/

Jun 18 2025

In The Bone-Cracking Cold by M Bartley Seigel

Wow, reading this poetry collection really brought up a lot of issues I have with media and identity, none of which are meant to cast aspersions on this book at all, but which definitely distracted from my enjoyment of it.

So let’s table that discussion for at least the end of this review, and discuss the actual book instead. This collection of over sixty poems is mostly centered on the author’s experience living in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula: fitting given that he’s a former poet laureate of the area. There are a lot of poems that feel very specific to the region, a sort of inside baseball that I’m not a fan of given my belief that the best poetry makes it a point to relate, to embrace the universal or at least to paint a picture vivid enough that people who have no experience with the subject matter can still go “Ah! I see!”

But there are also a lot of poems here that succeed at making at least this reader feel what it’s like to experience life in the UP. The title piece, for example, is a gorgeous love poem nestled in the local environment: I didn’t know before looking them up what a sugarbush or a sundog are, but the rest of the poem gives it all enough context to make lyrical sense. Lake Superior is another beautiful work that masterfully draws past, present and concerns for the future into one affecting piece. Land Acknowledgment, 1842 Ceded Territory does the same, and is easily one of my favorite pieces in the book. These poems all work that delicate balance of “here are some specific things about this place that I think you should know, related to universal themes that you will already recognize, in carefully calibrated language.”

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/06/18/in-the-bone-cracking-cold-by-m-bartley-seigel/

Jun 17 2025

Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle comes out in August!

The cover of Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle features colorful and violent playing card art. 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 so smooth, and her skirt is so smooth! And her book is coming out in a couple days, and her hot girlfriend loves her, and she is about to come out to her mother! Everything’s coming up Vera.

And then, right in the middle of a fraught discussion while her mother is telling her that bi people don’t exist, it begins to rain fish in Chicago. Vera’s mom dies a gory death, one of Vera’s friends is bashed to death by a crazed chimpanzee wielding a typewriter and dressed as Hamlet, and all around the world, nearly eight million people suffer similarly unlikely and grisly deaths on the same day. It becomes known as the Low-Probability Event (LPE).

Something like that changes the world. The story of Lucky Day picks up four years later, and Vera has retreated into feral ceiling-staring and ramen-eating; her relationship, her career, and her trust in any kind of predictability of the world shattered. Agent Layne of the Low-Probability Event Commission invades her solitude with a proposition: he wants Vera to help him investigate a company that seems somehow connected to the event that shook the world, the very company that Vera set out to expose as con artists in her book four years ago.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/06/17/lucky-day-by-chuck-tingle-comes-out-in-august/

Jun 16 2025

Free Bird by Christine Mott & Ofra Layla Isler

subtitled Flaco The Owl’s Dreams Take Flight.

I cannot be the only person who keeps confusing Flaco the owl with the red tailed hawks who also famously made New York City their home. Fortunately, this picture book helps clear up any misunderstanding caused by the unwittingly cognate names!

Told in the first person, this anthropomorphized tale leads us from Flaco’s early life in the Central Park Zoo, where he stares at the walls of his enclosure and dreams of living a life wild and free. One day, a sparrow points out the hole in Flaco’s cage and invites him to come join the other birds (lol) in the outdoors. Flaco is hesitant since he’s never lived out of captivity. But he has a dream and he’s determined to pursue it, even if he doesn’t really know how to fly or hunt or survive on his own.

With the encouragement of other animals (lol. Look, I’m sorry, as someone who knows full well what owls actually eat, it’s impossible not to laugh at the idea that the small animals depicted in the book would cheer him on instead of immediately running for cover at the sight of him,) Flaco learns how to make his way in the outdoors. Tho his concerned minders from the zoo set out traps to try to recapture him, he manages to evade them all and take full advantage of the sights of New York City, living out his dream of freedom and inspiring others to realize their ambitions as well.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/06/16/free-bird-by-christine-mott-ofra-layla-isler/