Sep 27 2017
The collapse of the European empires at the end of World War I produced considerable political strangeness. Béla Kun. The Czech Legion in Siberia. The Bavarian Soviet Republic. Baron Ungern. Flights of fancy, seizures of power, and some powerfully fancy seizures. In Pirate Utopia, Bruce Sterling sails off to another corner of collapsing empires rubbing …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/09/27/pirate-utopia-by-bruce-sterling/
Sep 14 2017
I should say two things right up front about Europe in Winter. First, intermittently during a bicycle tour across one of Europe’s smaller polities that steadfastly refuses to disappear completely is both the right and wrong way to read this book. Wrong, because it surely deserves closer attention that I was sometimes able to give …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/09/14/europe-in-winter-by-dave-hutchinson/
Sep 11 2017
As a young Asian girl with shallow roots in Virginia and a voracious reading appetite, I was absolutely seduced by Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind. Once I settled permanently in America, moving north over the course of a decade from Virginia to DC to Maryland, widening my circle of colleagues and friends, and becoming …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/09/11/underground-airlines-by-ben-h-winters-2/
May 02 2017
There’s no denying that this is a beautifully written book. Catherynne M Valente takes Russian and Slavic folktales and melds them with Russian, particularly Leningrad, history of the early 20th century. Her descriptions of falling in love and of the secret languages and compromises of marriage make for compelling, wholly believable and empathetic reading. And …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/02/deathless-leningrad-diptych-1-by-catherynne-m-valente/
May 01 2017
The height of my to-be-read pile could be measured in years, if the books could somehow fit into a unified pile. And that doesn’t count a particular moving box in the basement, in which some really good books, or at least some really interesting-looking books are awaiting their turn to come upstairs. (Some of them …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/01/tales-of-the-squee/
Apr 24 2017
Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters is a hell of a book. The premise is that amendments to the US Constitution in the 1860s preserved the Union and averted the Civil War, but at the cost of continuing to accept slavery in states that chose to keep their peculiar institution. In the 21st century, a …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/04/24/underground-airlines-by-ben-h-winters/
Feb 11 2017
So I was trying to explain to a friend why I think this book is important for the generation of YA readers who may encounter it, thinking, much like Gilded Cage’s Abi does (and I did, tbh, when I first picked it up,) that it’ll be a romantic Upstairs/Downstairs sort of novel with magical powers, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/02/11/gilded-cage-dark-gifts-1-by-vic-james/
Sep 27 2016
League of Dragons brings the Temeraire series to a fitting conclusion. The story picks up right where Blood of Tyrants left off: with Napoleon retreating to the west through the Russian winter. Novik captures the terrible pity of that march, the unrelenting cold of the borderlands, and the folly of men who tried to carry …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/09/27/league-of-dragons-by-naomi-novik/
Sep 21 2016
The premise of Naomi Novik’s Temeraire novels is simple: Patrick O’Brian with dragons instead of ships. What’s not to like? The first three or four books are pretty much a lark. The history is alternate – dragons! – but not too alternate, because otherwise there wouldn’t be any Royal Aerial Corps, nor any wicked Napoleon to …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/09/21/blood-of-tyrants-by-naomi-novik/
Aug 30 2016
I love so much how my experiences with Jo Walton’s books just get better and better. I spent the climactic scene of The Just City with one hand clutched to my breast, knowing something terrible was coming and feeling a kind of horror and relief when it finally did — horror because it truly was …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/08/30/the-just-city-by-jo-walton-2/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire