Sep 28 2025
After introducing readers to the lost world of Hungarian nobility before the Great War in They Were Counted, Miklós Bánffy continues their stories toward the great catastrophe that is coming, that only a very few of them can see looming on the horizon. These two books, along with They Were Divided form Bánffy’s Transylvanian Trilogy, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/28/they-were-found-wanting-by-miklos-banffy/
Sep 27 2025
No Longer at Ease follow Things Fall Apart a generation later, although that is not immediately apparent. What is immediately apparent is that Obi Okonkwo is in a heap of trouble. He is in the dock, on trial in a case that has been the talk of Lagos for weeks, and the only thing remaining …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/27/no-longer-at-ease-by-chinua-achebe/
Sep 21 2025
Things Fall Apart grabbed me from its very first page, even though nearly 70 years have passed since its first publication. It had fallen into the category of reputed classics that I have never quite gotten around to, what with there being a lot of books both old and new, and if not for the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/21/things-fall-apart-by-chinua-achebe/
Sep 20 2025
The Tomb of Dragons is that rare third book of a trilogy that makes me view the first two books very differently. All three of the “Cemeteries of Amalo” share a world and time with Addison’s classic, The Goblin Emperor. The first-person narrator of the trilogy is Thara Celehar, a cleric of Ulis and a …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/20/the-tomb-of-dragons-by-katherine-addison/
Sep 14 2025
Peter Grant and Beverly Brook have survived the first two years as parents of twins, and unsurprisingly they are in need of a vacation. Peter’s family being what it is, and his job being what it is, the trip up to Scotland more closely resembled a circus caravan than a cozy family outing. To be …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/14/stone-sky-by-ben-aaronovitch/
Sep 13 2025
The fourth, and presumably final, Lady Astronauts of Mars novel begins with an echo of the opening of the first. “Do you remember where you were when the stars came out? I was with my husband, on Mars.” (p. 14) It’s 1970, and there hasn’t been a clear night sky on Earth since early March …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/13/the-martian-contingency-by-mary-robinette-kowal/
Sep 07 2025
In Cetaganda Miles Vorkosigan, who is all of 22 years old, is sent to represent his home world of Barrayar at the funeral of the Cetagandan Dowager Empress. Accompanying him is his cousin Ivan Vorpatril, who is not much older. Cetaganda possesses a sprawling empire, by the terms of the Vorkosigan series, “eight developed planets …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/07/cetaganda-by-lois-mcmaster-bujold/
Sep 06 2025
Ivan Vladislavić paints his Portrait with Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked in a pointillist style, dividing up not quite 200 pages of main text into 138 anecdotes and observations, each of which shows some aspect of his life in the city in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The sections are numbered, enabling the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/06/portrait-with-keys-by-ivan-vladislavic/
Sep 01 2025
I never did finish writing my review of Ancillary Mercy, the final book of Ann Leckie‘s Imperial Raadch trilogy, but here is part of its beginning: Presger Translator Zeiat may be my favorite character in science fiction from 2015. I’ll have to think about it a little while more to be sure, but she is …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/01/translation-state-by-ann-leckie/
Aug 30 2025
The first two pages of The Kite Runner establish that as a child in Kabul in 1975, the first-person narrator witnessed or did something life-changing, something that so indelibly marked him that he carried it into the novel’s present day, which is December 2001. The summer of that year the narrator, who is living in …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/08/30/the-kite-runner-by-khaled-hosseini/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire