Mar 05 2023

The Red Prince by Timothy Snyder

How’s this for introducing the subject of your biography?

The Red Prince by Timothy Snyder

Wilhelm von Habsburg, the Red Prince, wore the uniform of an Austrian officer, the court regalia of a Habsburg archduke, the simple suit of a Parisian exile, the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece, and, every so often, a dress. He could handle a sabre, a pistol, a rudder, or a golf club; he handled women of necessity and men for pleasure. He spoke the Italian of his archduchess mother, the German of his archduke father, the English of his British royal friends, the Polish of the country his father wished to rule, and the Ukrainian of the land he wished to rule himself. He was no innocent, but then again, innocents cannot found nations. … It did not occur to him that someone else could define his loyalties or curb his desires. Yet this very insouciance conceals a certain ethical premise. It denies, if only by the whiff of perfume in a Parisian hotel room or a smudge of a forger’s ink on an Austrian passport, the power of the state to define the individual. (p. 4)

Wilhelm was born in 1895 into the House of Habsburg, though the most recent Emperor in his ancestry was Leopold II, who had died more than a century before Wilhelm’s birth. For most of the intervening years, the Habsburg Empire had only had one Kaiser: Franz Josef. He began his rule in 1848 amid revolutions across Europe, and would continue to reign until Wilhelm was a young man. He died in 1916 not long before another wave of revolutions swept the continent. The long reign — just a tad more than two years shy of 70 years in the event — brought with it the problem of succession. Franz Josef’s only son shot himself. One of the Emperor’s younger brothers had been executed by Mexican revolutionaries in 1867. Here is what Snyder has to say about the next two younger brothers:

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/03/05/the-red-prince-by-timothy-snyder/

Mar 02 2023

Scurry by Mac Smith

What a brilliant addition this is to the subgenre of adventuring anthropomorphic animals!

In a world seemingly abandoned by humans, an alliance of suburban mice and rats finds their supplies dwindling, even as the pickings from the houses around them grow ever slimmer. All scouts sent to the closest city, meanwhile, have failed to return. Leader Orim counsels caution, but more rash elements believe that these scouts have found greener pastures, so to speak, so have abandoned the rest of them. Led by Resher, these breakaway rodents want to strike out for the city as soon as possible in order to secure the food that they’re sure is there.

Talented young scout Wix is firmly in Orim’s camp. When rumors of a food-laden truck arrive back at their base, Wix is sent with a party in search of it, the colony’s final mission for food before acquiescing to Resher’s demands. But Orim’s daughter Pict discovers that Wix’s party is being set up, so rushes to warn him. Before the two friends can return to safety, however, a hawk flies away with one of them, setting them both on an odyssey where they’ll discover that there’s so much more to the world than their safe little suburb, and that sometimes even the smallest of heroes can have the biggest impact.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/03/02/scurry-by-mac-smith/

Feb 26 2023

We Never Talk About My Brother by Peter S. Beagle

How to talk about We Never Talk About My Brother? First, note that it predates Bruno by more than a decade. But then what? Considering the astonishing range in this volume’s nine stories and single sequence of poems? Praising the characters’ odd corners that mark them as real people even when they’re inhabiting the best-known archetypes of myth? Marveling at the settings that Beagle brings to life in quick, indelible strokes of his pen? Counting the laugh-out-loud moments to see if there were more of them than heartstoppers?

We Never Talk About My Brother by Peter S. Beagle

Consider the first story, “Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel.” The first-person narrator — David, though he is not named until quite late in the story — is ten and a latchkey kid in New York. Most days after school he goes to the studio of his Uncle Chaim, a painter, and just hangs out, reading comic books or “look[ing] through Uncle Chaim’s paintings and drawings, tr[ying] some of my own, and [eating] Chinese food with him in silent companionship, when he remembered that we should probably eat.” (p. 3) And then an angel appears.

It was very sudden: one moment I was looking through a couple of the comic books Uncle Chaim kept around for me, while he was trying to catch the highlight on the tendons under his models’ chin, and the next moment there was this angel standing before him, actually posing, with her arms spread out and her great wings taking up almost half the studio. She was not blue herself—a light beige would be closer—but she wore a blue robe that managed to look at once graceful and grand, with a white undergarment glimmering beneath. Her face, half-shadowed by a loose hood, looked disapproving. (pp. 3–4)

Uncle Chaim is nonplussed and says “I can’t see my model. If you wouldn’t mind moving just a bit?” The angel says he will paint no one else from this day forth. As if a celestial angel is going to push an artist around. “I don’t work on commission. … I used to, but you have to put up with too many aggravating rich people. Now I just paint what I paint, take it to the gallery.” (p. 4) And so it continues for a while, very droll, very Jewish. When the angel shows more of her radiance — “with the vast, unutterable beauty that a thousand medieval and Renaissance artists had somehow not gone mad (for the most part) trying to ambush on canvas or trap in stone” — Uncle Chaim wavers for a moment. “I thought maybe I should kneel, what would it hurt? But then I thought, what would it hurt? It’d hurt my left knee, the one had the arthritis twenty years, that’s what it would hurt.” (p. 5)

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/02/26/we-never-talk-about-my-brother-by-peter-s-beagle/

Feb 23 2023

Women Of Myth by Jenny Williamson & Genn McMenemy

with the very long but accurate subtitle: From Deer Woman and Mami Wata to Amaterasu and Athena, Your Guide to the Amazing and Diverse Women from World Mythology.

And readers, what a guide! I’m ngl, as a cis woman myself, I’m always at least subconsciously looking for the woman in the work, to see how women are depicted in the oldest tales, i.e. in world mythology. Most of the classics I read as a child treated women as either veritable saints who weren’t meant to be questioned, or quixotic beings treated with the distinctly othering perspective of “women, am I right?” Either way, women were a category that the usually male author (or otherwise fed-up female author at the mercies of a male-dominated press) presented as some exotic, often chaotic being, unknowable and mystifying, unlike all those relatable, heroic dudes.

This has, ofc, gotten better in recent decades, but no volume has been quite as diverse, as global and, frankly, as empathetic and curious about the motivation of women in myth as this terrific book. Divided into three parts — Goddess, Heroine, Monster — Women Of Myth illuminates and discusses 50 figures, from those as well known as Athena and Baba Yaga to the more obscure warriors of Central America and the seductive drowning spirits of North Africa. The lens that Jenny Williamson & Genn McMenemy, creators of the Ancient History Fangirl podcast, use is one that heavily incorporates historical context along with modern research to disprove crusty stereotypes of what women were and weren’t allowed to do way back in the day.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/02/23/women-of-myth-by-jenny-williamson-genn-mcmenemy/

Feb 22 2023

Marry Me A Little by Robert Kirby

This graphic novel might be the most relatable thing I’ve ever read about marriage, especially from the perspective of a white man.

When gay marriage was legalized in 2013, Robert Kirby and his partner John had already been together for about a decade. They shared a dog and a house, and were thrilled that marriage was the next thing they could embark on together too. The actual act of getting married, well, that was another thing. They weren’t opposed to it at all, but the whole concept brought up a lot of questions for Robert, who chronicles them with tenderness and wit in this thoughtful graphic memoir.

From their first date in 2003 to the changes wrought by the pandemic in 2020, this book touches poignantly on what marriage, and especially marriage equality, means to the writer and his husband as a middle-class white gay couple. It can’t help but be political, as Robert grapples with acceptance versus heteronormativity, in addition to introversion versus celebration. It deals, ofc, with the disastrous presidency of 45, and the fears that gay couples continue to face as reproductive rights are attacked, in preparation for the inevitable onslaught on hard won equality rights.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/02/22/marry-me-a-little-by-robert-kirby/

Feb 21 2023

Fitter. Stronger. Calmer.: A Mindful Approach To Exercise And Nutrition by Ellie Goulding

I’ll be honest, I and likely loads of others picked up this book because it has Ellie Goulding’s name on the cover. Lights is such a terrific album (I’m listening to it again as I type) and I always thought the media hubbub over her moving on from Ed Sheeran to Niall Horan was overblown. And yes, she does mention it obliquely in the book, and yes, I absolutely agree with her take on things.

But more importantly to fans and readers everywhere, this is a book about how 30-something Ellie discovered how to nourish her best self. She freely admits to having had an unhealthy relationship with exercise, as well as to having bought into the false dichotomies of good and bad foods. Years of research and experience taught her the two most important things she imparts in this book: food should be nourishment for the body and soul, and exercise is about celebrating what your body can do for you, not punishment for eating.

The rest of the book is written with those two key ideas in mind, and is honestly really inspiring. There’s some “getting rid of toxins” nonsense, but for the most part the book is grounded in common sense and devoid of silly buzzwords. I think the most valuable lesson this book had for me personally was the idea of exercise as a joyful expression of your body and exploration of its capabilities. Ellie reminds us that exercise shouldn’t be about the way you look — tho she certainly doesn’t blame you if you like the way exercise does make you look — but about the way you feel. Our bodies weren’t designed to sit for hours at the computer or on a couch, and we should find the kinds of movement that make us feel most energized.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/02/21/fitter-stronger-calmer-a-mindful-approach-to-exercise-and-nutrition-by-ellie-goulding/

Feb 19 2023

A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind by Michael Axworthy

I imagine that Michael Axworthy’s brief for this book ran something like this: Write a one-volume history of Iran, from as early as possible up through as close to the present as is practical. (The hardback edition was published in 2008; the edition that I have was published in 2010 and has an epilogue that discusses events through late 2009.) It should be roughly 300 pages long, accessible to the educated public, and not overly annoying for specialists. Axworthy appears to have been an excellent choice for such a brief. He was a British diplomat for 14 years, ending with two years as head of the service’s Iran section. At time of publication he was Director of the Centre for Persian and Iranian Studies at the University of Exeter. He wrote a biography of Nader Shah, a man who rose from local strongman to ruler of all Iran in the first half of the 1700s and extended its influence past Kabul into Transoxiana in the north and Delhi to the east. Axworthy is an expert, but not entirely an academic, and he fulfilled his brief admirably.

A History of Iran by Michael Axworthy

By design, Axworthy’s history is primarily political; that is, its main concern is who ruled what territories at what times. He considers other aspects of history — most notably religion and literature — but they are clearly subordinate to tracing the thread of who held power in the Iranian lands (and nearby territories) through the centuries. He begins with what linguistic and genetic evidence can tell historians about the people of the area in times before written records. The Iranian languages are Indo-European, indicating that their speakers came into the Iranian plateau “from what are today the Russian steppes … in a series of migrations and invasions in the latter part of the second millennium BC.” (p. 1) The Elamite empire is known to have pre-dated the Iranian invasions, and archeological evidence has shown that people have lived in the area for many millennia. “From the very beginning then, the Idea of Iran was as much about culture and language—in all their complex patterns—as about race or territory.” (p. 3)

Axworthy has barely introduced the peoples—Medes, Persians, Parthians, Sogdians, and others—who first enter the historical record through Greek accounts before he turns to the importance of religion in Iranian history with a sketch of what can be known about the prophet Zoroaster. From linguistic and textual evidence, Axworthy concludes that Zoroaster lived around 1200 or 1000 BC, roughly the time of the Iranian invasions. “Other evidence supports the view that Zoroaster did not invent a religion from nothing. Instead, he reformed and simplified pre-existing religious practices (against some resistance from traditional priests), infusing them with a much more sophisticated philosophical theology and a greater emphasis on morality and justice.” (p. 6) Axworthy notes that “Modern Zoroastrianism is much more strongly monotheistic, and to make this distinction more explicit many scholars refer to the religion in this early stage as Mazdaism,” after Ahura Madza “the creator-god of truth and light.” (p. 7) Though this religion dates back three thousand years — and further, considering how it incorporated existing beliefs and divine beings — its influence continues in present-day Iran in large and small ways. Large: The dualism present in Zoroastrian thought shows up again and again in religious revelations and developments in Iran. Small: “The names of several of these archangels—for example Bahman, Ordibehesht, Khordad—survive as months in the modern Iranian calendar, even under the Islamic republic.” (p. 7)

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/02/19/a-history-of-iran-empire-of-the-mind-by-michael-axworthy/

Feb 15 2023

The Ink That Bleeds by Paul Czege

I’m not a terribly meta kind of person: I prefer to play games rather than read about them, and heaven knows, I’d much rather spend my precious time actually writing rather than reading about writing. So despite Paul Czege being a valued collaborator of mine, I wasn’t sure how much I was going to appreciate his latest zine, on the subject of writing out journaling games. I mean, I was definitely going to enjoy reading his discussion of my last physically published game, Honey Hex, alongside a number of solo roleplaying games he’s had the opportunity to enjoy over the past twenty years. But was I really going to find reading about writing games a good use of my time?

Oh, reader, in Mr Czege’s more then capable hands, it mostly definitely is! The Ink That Bleeds is a slim volume but beautiful, with an evocative cover and just the loveliest typesetting throughout. More importantly, it is an incredibly thoughtful look at solo journaling games, and especially the concept of bleed.

For those unfamiliar with the phenomenon, bleed happens when the stories we create affect us viscerally in real life, often to our detriment. I’ve been intimately acquainted with the concept since building paracosms as a young teenager, so have often found myself hesitant to truly immerse myself in solo journaling games for fear of evoking the same feelings once more. Writing a story is one thing — I do that with solo journaling games quite often — but getting so immersed that I have trouble differentiating what I’m feeling from what I’m writing is something I’ve been careful to avoid for years. Heck, I even wrote a game about the concept, in an attempt to highlight the good parts of immersion and how players can and often do draw strength from their imaginations. Ultimately and unfortunately tho, my preferred method of avoiding bleed is by avoiding such games altogether, to the detriment of my groaning To-Be Played shelf.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/02/15/the-ink-that-bleeds-by-paul-czege/

Feb 12 2023

The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard

The Red Scholar’s Wake is, by turns, a romance, a meditation on loss, a political intrigue, a story of starfaring pirates, an examination of parenthood, and a tale of interplanetary adventure. That sounds like a lot, maybe too much for fewer than 300 pages, so let me look at it from a slightly different angle. The Red Scholar’s Wake is the story of Xích Si, initially a captive of the Red Banner pirates, and Rice Fish (more fully, The Rice Fish, Resting, but the two-word form of her name is what de Bodard uses throughout the novel), a mindship. In the Xuya universe, a larger body of de Bodard’s work in which The Red Scholar’s Wake takes place, mindships are unions of humans with starfaring ships, mostly machine but with an organic person at the ship’s heart. Rice Fish and Xích Si (de Bodard uses both parts of her name throughout the novel) both use she/her pronouns.

The Red Scholar's Wake by Aliette de Bodard

Huân had been the Red Scholar, the leader of the Red Banner, and Rice Fish had been her wife. The very first sentence of the novel announces her death, making the rest of it both her wake in the sense of a mourning event and also the waves that her passing leave behind. Huân and Rice Fish had forged an alliance of five pirate banners, creating a sanctuary they call the Citadel, and enabling a certain amount of order and security for a people caught between two empires. The price of that security, though, has been curtailing some of their raiding and agreeing to live by rules internally. Not everyone is on board with that program, most notably Huân’s son Hố, who has risen to become leader of the Purple Banner. Rice Fish had been consort and aims to become leader of the Red Banner in her own right, but that is not guaranteed. She wants to secure her position and continue to build on Huân’s legacy.

Xích Si begins the story as a captive of the Red Banner, taken in a pirate raid, most of her shipmates killed, all of the other survivors prisoners likely to be sold into indenture. She has come to the attention of Rice Fish because she apparently has considerable skill with bots and her ship and, by extension, with other key technologies. Rice Fish needs those skills to discover who betrayed Huân and take that information to the banners’ council to secure her position as leader of the Red Banner. So Rice Fish offers Xích Si a marriage contract. I know. I nearly bounced out of the book at that point, which was the end of the first chapter.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/02/12/the-red-scholars-wake-by-aliette-de-bodard/

Feb 10 2023

River Of Wrath (St Benedict #2) by Alexandrea Weis & Lucas Astor

Oh man, I absolutely loved this bananas sequel to River Of Ashes! A large part of this is probably due to the fact that we don’t have to live in the viewpoint of a psychopath, as we did in this novel’s precursor, but instead experience events from the perspectives of people struggling to come to terms with the terrible deaths that have only recently befallen their town.

***SPOILERS FOR RIVER OF ASHES BELOW***

As the book opens, Leslie is still grappling with the senseless murder of her sister Dawn, and the steps she herself took to avenge her fallen twin. In her guilt, she’s dumped her boyfriend Derek out of fear that he’ll figure out what she did and revile her. Her closest friends now are three other victims of the monstrous Beau Devereaux: Kelly, Sara and Taylor. All four of them have been paid off by Gage Devereaux, the town patriarch, to keep quiet about what happened, a bargain they’re happy enough to stomach now that Beau is gone.

But the dead of St Benedict refuse to stay buried. When yet another corpse is found on the banks of the Bogue Falaya river on which their Louisiana town stands, the residents can’t help but wonder if they are indeed cursed. The skeleton has lain hidden for around twenty-five years tho, so Leslie figures that this crime, at least, has nothing to do with her.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/02/10/river-of-wrath-st-benedict-2-by-alexandrea-weis-lucas-astor/