Oct 09 2025

A Palace Near The Wind by Ai Jiang

One of these days, I’ll like a piece by Ai Jiang, but today is not that day.

I’m just so baffled by her writing, and in a way that doesn’t even make me want to lay the blame at her feet necessarily. This is actually one of the few, perhaps only, times that I’ve questioned the professional choices of a Titan editor, because (for a start) what is with the weird ass grammar in this? Maybe it’s just an effect of having an ARC — or maybe it’s an effect of the current allergy in genre writing towards the perfect tenses — but I was two pages in and already wanted to bring out the red pen to fix the most glaring errors.

Thankfully, the grammar gets less glaringly bad as the book progresses, which is one small mercy. Another is that the premise of this first novella in a duology remains as interesting as when I originally said yes to it. Our main character Lufeng is the Eldest Daughter of the Feng people. One by one, her mother and sisters have left their forests to marry into the Palace, as the realm of the Land Wanderers is known. The Palace is constantly encroaching on the Feng woods, uprooting plant life and sending the indigenous Feng away in search of a better life, often into the heart of the Palace itself (or something: the details are vague.)

Now it’s Lufeng’s turn to leave the forests and marry the King. She’s determined to find her family and bring them safely home. If she has to kill the king in order to do that, then so be it. But the more time she spends at the Palace, the more secrets she uncovers about what’s really going on between the Palace and Feng. Will she be able to save her family? Will they even want to be saved?

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Oct 08 2025

Night Light by Michael Emberley

I continue to be confused by the distinction between picture book and graphic novel in this line of I Like To Read comics, but when the results are as outstanding as they are here, it seems unusually pedantic (even for me!) to quibble.

Night Light is another beautiful book from Michael Emberley’s series featuring a caretaker and child of indeterminate species. They’re snuggling down for bedtime reading when the lights in their city suddenly go out. This is a problem because Child wants one more story, and the one flashlight that they have handy is running out of batteries. So what are a creative caretaker and child to do? Turn to the skies, ofc!

This is a sweet story about not only adapting to adversity but also being considerate and, perhaps most importantly, learning to find the beautiful in the unconventional. There is a bit of unspoken commentary regarding light pollution towards the end, tho it’s entirely likely that I’m reading a little too much into that.

What I can say for certain is that Mr Emberley’s art continues to charm as much as his story does. The colors are especially gorgeous as Caretaker and Child experience different permutations of light and darkness in their quest to get just one more bedtime story in. The palette of blues, purples and golds is rich and arresting.

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Oct 07 2025

The Betrayal by Heather Ogden (EXCERPT)

Hello, readers! Today we have a scene-setting excerpt for you from Heather Ogden’s debut Young Adult dystopian novel, The Betrayal.

This first book of the The Lies We Fear series centers on Angelette Arabella, the seventeen year-old daughter of the most powerful man in Libertis, a megalopolis large enough to be considered a nation.

From the publisher: “Angelette Arabella has spent her life in the shadow of the man the nation calls a hero—her father, Valerius, the revered leader of Libertis. To the world, he’s a savior. To her, he’s simply “Dad.” But when a staged kidnapping spirals into something far more dangerous, Angelette is forced to face the truth: her life, her family, and the world she’s always known are carefully crafted illusions. And the man who built them is hiding more than secrets—he’s hiding control.

“As betrayal bleeds from every corner of her life—her brothers vanished, her mother silenced, and her only friend not who she seems—Angelette must decide: remain the obedient daughter, or become the threat her father fears most.

“Because the truth isn’t just dangerous in Libertis, it’s treason.”

Read on for a peek into the book, and into the true heart of Valerius!

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/10/07/the-betrayal-by-heather-ogden-excerpt/

Oct 06 2025

The Holy Roller: Volume One by Andy Samberg, Rick Remender, Joe Trohman, Roland Boschi & Moreno Dinisio

Yes, it is absolutely ludicrous to have a vigilante whose main weapon is a bowling ball, but he’s out there fighting neo-Nazis and we 100% need more of that nowadays!

And it isn’t just some cut-and-dried good guy vs generic white nationalists story either. There’s a lot of nuance in this book, as well as plenty of pointed allusions to the nightmare of governance currently in charge of the USA. The wild thing is that I’m sure Andy Samberg, Rick Remender and Joe Trohman were all “how far can we push the bounds of credulity in this book?”, saw The Holy Roller go to print, then turned on the TV or social media in recent days to discover that reality is even more ridiculous than half the stuff in here! There are no guardrails on this administration, which is partly why it’s so important that popular culture fights back, loudly and with both humor and integrity. And that’s exactly what this book does. Sure it gets violent and ugly — I mean, is there a pretty way to fight with a bowling ball? — but it’s an important reminder that sometimes you just gotta punch the Nazi.

Anyway, the story opens on young Levi Coen, a middle schooler whose dad is obsessed with bowling. Levi only goes to the bowling alley to play video games and crush on pretty Amy Henry, the owner’s daughter. Unfortunately, Amy’s brother Clyde is a huge jerk who taunts Levi, then bans him from the alley for life when Levi loses a bet.

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Oct 05 2025

Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törless by Robert Musil

Where Miklos Banffy spends nearly 1500 pages of his Transylvanian Trilogy chronicling the life of Hungarian nobility across their half of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, in The Confusions of Young Törless, Robert Musil compresses much of the experience of the Austrian half into less than a tenth of that in a tale of life in a pre-WWI military academy. (Not to worry about Musil, though. His magnum opus, The Man Without Qualities, runs well past 1500 pages.) The academy is meant to be preparing the boys — co-education of girls was barely thinkable at that time, the first young Austrian woman having passed the general qualification for university studies just ten years before Törless was published in 1906, and co-education at a military institute was definitely not thinkable — for service to the empire, and to Kaiser Franz Josef who had reigned for more than half a century. Musil, though, is not interested in the routines of school, drills and lessons, or the kind of plot that drives many boarding-school novels. His subject is adolescence, the inner life of young Törless.

Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törless by Robert Musil

Indirectly, Musil also comments on the kind of education that was thought normal, even ideal, for the young men who would one day assume leading positions in Austro-Hungarian society. It could hardly be further from the contemporary approach shown, for example, in The Incandescent by Emily Tesh. First and foremost, the school is concerned with its own reputation; all of the students know that scandalous behavior will result in expulsion, most likely done over a break when the errant cadet would simply not return and no one would mention him ever again. Secondarily, the school is concerned with the appearance of good order in its routines. The book shows very little class time and a great deal of scuttling about at night, sneaking into inaccessible corners of the institute and occasionally visiting beerhalls or prostitutes in the adjoining small town. As long as the cadets return by curfew and do not bring the academy into disrepute, they seem to be allowed to do what they want. The teachers are not completely indifferent; when Törless reveals that certain mathematical constructions (imaginary numbers, for example) are causing him philosophical distress, the math lecturer receives him at home one afternoon, and talks him through some of the propositions and helps relieve a few of his worries. He also inspires Törless to acquire a copy of some of Kant’s works, which Törless tries to read on his own but does not make much headway.

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Oct 04 2025

Three from T. Kingfisher

One of the things about living in a country where English is not the dominant language is that when books turn up at your local English-language bookstore, you snag them because there may not be another chance any time soon. (People will say that a quarter of the way through the twenty-first century, I am ignoring options for online shopping. Yes, I am.) For whatever reasons within the UK publishing business, T. Kingfisher aka Ursula Vernon is enjoying a publication renaissance there, and many of her works from the mid-2010s to the present are appearing on Berlin booksellers’ shelves for me to snap up. Since May, I have acquired ten, read three so far, am looking forward to the rest, and regret nary a penny spent.

Paladin's Grace by T. Kingfisher

The three that I have read so far — Paladin’s Grace, Swordheart and Clockwork Boys — all share a setting: the world of the White Rat. It’s a recognizably low-magic fantasy world, long on details that matter to the story but otherwise uncluttered by languages, magic systems, maps, plate tectonics or any of many dozens of other things that can fill up a novel without filling out the characters or their stories. Kingfisher is writing about people first and foremost, and while she brings the setting sufficiently to life for me to believe in it, her world is not likely to inspire its own reference works. One aspect that is important in all three is that the world’s gods are real and demonstrably active in human affairs. Some people, paladins called to service and clergy above all, have direct contact with the god they have chosen, or that has chosen them. Divine effects are not as reliable as science or other crafts, but enough of them are real that acknowledgement of the gods is close to universal.

As of this writing, there are three different series set in this world. The two Clocktaur War books tell of a terrifying semi-mechanical, semi-magical army that seems relentless in its ability to conquer the lands around the city where they first appeared. Swordheart came about when

my husband and I were in the kitchen and I was ranting about how much Elric—Michael Moorcock‘s Elric—whined about everything. “If you ask me,” I said, “the real victim was the sword Stormbringer. The sword had to listen to him whine and couldn’t leave. But does anybody ever ask the magic sword’s opinion? Noooo.” (p. 437)

Swordheart has a lot to say about what the magic sword thinks about everything going on nearby. Since its publication in 2018, it has been a standalone novel, though one that very much wants a sequel. Earlier this year, Kingfisher revealed that a sequel, titled Daggerbound, will be published in the second half of 2026. The third series is called The Saint of Steel, and so far there are four — Paladin’s Grace, Paladin’s Strength, Paladin’s Hope, Paladin’s Faith — out of an expected seven. On her web site, Kingfisher recommends reading them in the order just listed: Clocktaur, Swordheart, Paladins.

I didn’t do that.

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Oct 03 2025

Tantalizing Tales — October 2025 — Part One

Happy October, readers! This month is all about the cozy, the creepy or the criminal, and maybe a little bit of all three!

Our first selection for you is definitely on the cozier side, tho with a distinct frisson of crime. Juno Black’s Mockingbird Court is the last (at least for the foreseeable future) installment of the beloved Shady Hollow mystery series, which features anthropomorphic animals solving mysteries in their woodland town.

In this sixth book, however, the murder in question will take us outside the boundaries of Shady Hollow and into the big city! Shady Hollow itself is busy preparing for the Harvest Festival when an unexpected figure shows up. Bradley Marvel is a bestselling author whose last visit to the area probably didn’t go as well as anyone anticipated. This time things are worse, as he’s on the run. A body has been found in his penthouse apartment, and he skipped town before he could be arrested.

He swears he didn’t do it tho. Intrepid reporter Vera Vulpine and her friends will have to figure out what really happened at a remove… until Vera realizes that the victim is someone she knows. Worse, her connection to the victim implicates her in the crime too. Will she and her friends be able to unravel the mystery before an innocent person is convicted of murder?

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Oct 02 2025

The Dungeonmeister Deck Of Side Quests by Jef Aldrich & Jon Taylor

subtitled 75 Mini Adventures to Empower Your Fantasy Campaign.

I genuinely enjoy every Dungeonmeister product Jef Aldrich and Jon Taylor put out. A lot of this is due to the fact that I’m a busy Dungeon Master myself, so every little bit helps in bulking up my Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. This is especially true of the game I’m currently running, based on the Ghosts Of Saltmarsh 5E book. I love my nautical adventures, but the GoS campaign book is really just a string of sea-themed modules sandwiched between two hard covers, with very little connecting tissue between each. Thus I’ve had to write a bunch of my own side quests to flesh out the story, often relying on any suitable pre-written ones to help liven things up and give my player characters something to do while traveling between point to point in the book.

So this deck was a definite godsend, with seventy-five oversized cards and an accompanying guidebook. The cards themselves are printed front and back: the front has the hook/description, while the back has possible outcomes depending on how the PCs plan to deal with the issue presented. The scenarios, while all fantasy-themed, range the gamut from urban to rural, from benign to potentially lethal, from whimsical to potentially campaign-changing. Ofc, this means that you’re probably not going to be able to incorporate every card into one campaign, but that’s okay.

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Oct 01 2025

Don’t Sleep With The Dead by Nghi Vo

I didn’t super love the book for which this novella is a sequel. The Chosen And The Beautiful was Nghi Vo’s somewhat uneven, I felt, retelling of The Great Gatsby. But I do enjoy Ms Vo’s writing, as well as the novella form, so was happy to dive in here.

Don’t Sleep With The Dead is set in New York City some twenty years after the disastrous events of TCatB, as 1939 fades into 1940. Jordan Baker has moved to Paris, where the phantoms of dead soldiers march through the streets. Our viewpoint character here instead is Nick Carraway, who’s recently published a book that sounds a whole lot like F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

As DSwtD begins, Nick is caught up in a raid on gay men cruising in Prospect Park. He manages to escape with the intervention of someone he can barely believe is alive again: Jay Gatsby himself. But was Nick mistaken? Was his desire to see Gatsby again the reason for this unexpected manifestation?

Unable to let go of the idea of Gatsby somehow being alive, he begins to wander the city, in search of answers and, perhaps, solutions. Along the way, he leads readers on a mystical tour of the strange reality he lives in, powered by magic and demons, punctuated by occasional phone calls with Jordan, who saved him once but can only do so much over distance and time. But the shade of Gatsby lingers over everything. What will Nick do — and what will he sacrifice — to either find Gatsby or lay his spirit to rest for good?

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Sep 30 2025

Next Up in Beloved Speculative Series from TOR!

the title of what stalks the deep appears in white against an animal head on the cover For me, it takes a certain amount of faith to read an ongoing series – I need to either know that I will feel satisfied after each installment, or I need to trust the author has a plan for the following books, which will stick the landing eventually. I absolutely trust T Kingfisher to do one or the other, and luckily, the next up in her Sworn Soldier series, What Stalks the Deep comes out today!

What Stalks the Deep

As has previously been addressed, I am a big fan of T Kingfisher’s work. In the Sworn Soldier series, our point of view character is Alex Easton, whom we grew to love in What Moves the Dead, a retelling of “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and with whom we got scared witless all over again in What Feasts at Night. As long as you remember Alex, I don’t think you need to reread the first two to dive into this new book, and frankly, if you are willing to be a little bit in the dark about references to past experiences, I bet you could read this one fresh.

In What Stalks the Deep, Alex goes to America to help old pal Dr. Denton, whose cousin seems to have gone missing down a possibly haunted coal mine. Alex investigates the disappearance in this West Virginia setting somewhat unwillingly, meeting a new cast of characters and being confined to small, dark, subterranean spaces. It has just as creepy and just as satisfying of a resolution as the previous installments in the series.

This Fall you can also look forward to Queen Demon by Martha Wells, which continues the Rising World series; A Mouthful of Dust, the sixth book in the Singing Hills Cycle by Nghi Vo; and Brigands and Breadknives, a sequel to Travis Baldree’s Legends and Lattes. Thanks, TOR Publishing Group, for keeping us all going with reliable speculative series in these trying times. More on each of these beyond the cut!

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