Aug 11 2020
As the story of an artistic family in a materialistic time, Die Schaukel reminded me of The Family Fang, though of course Kolb’s work predates Kevin Wilson’s novel by more than three quarters of a century. The Lautenschlags are a Franco-German family who moved from Paris to Munich not long after the Franco-Prussian War led …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/08/11/die-schaukel-by-annette-kolb/
Aug 08 2020
How does a human civilization react to news of its possible impending collapse, with the only option for survival a major upheaval touching every person in it and changing its power structure entirely? That’s the overriding question of John Scalzi’s Interdependency series. The Last Emperox is the third and concluding part of the story, following …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/08/08/the-last-emperox-by-john-scalzi/
Aug 02 2020
What if Arthur, like Uther, was an ambitious thug and the knights of the Round Table were a collection of weirdos and ruffians who say “fuck” a lot? That’s more or less the premise of Lavie Tidhar’s By Force Alone, and although I finished the book relatively quickly during my recent vacation in the Eifel, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/08/02/by-force-alone-by-lavie-tidhar/
Jun 28 2020
Pacing, and the parts of the story not told, shape The Fated Sky the second book in Mary Robinette Kowal’s Lady Astronauts series. The Calculating Stars ended with Elma York, the series’ first-person narrator, on her way to the moon. By the beginning of The Fated Sky, there is a colony on the moon with …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/06/28/the-fated-sky-by-mary-robinette-kowal/
Jun 27 2020
You have better things to do with your time than read this book, or at least the latter two-thirds of it. The first-person narrator, Alexander, is interesting, and a bit odd in an interesting way. He’s a historian of sorts, unattached to any academic institute, specializing in the ancient Near East: Chaldean studies, Aramaic studies, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/06/27/die-schule-der-nackten-by-ernst-augustin/
Jun 26 2020
Rural Bavaria at the outbreak of the Great War still moved to the rhythms of nature and the seasons. Village life revolved around the inn, the smithy, and the farms that surrounded both. Generations shared the same house, the young people paired up early and had little choice but to stick together, and families kept …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/06/26/die-rumplhanni-by-lena-christ/
Jun 21 2020
Because I don’t have a subscription to the OED, I will take Merriam-Webster at their word that the first appearance of “listicle” was in 2007, several eternities ago in internet terms — back when you still had to have a .edu address to get a Facebook account (back when youngish people still thought Facebook was …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/06/21/hugo-awards-2020-short-story-nominees-2/
Jun 17 2020
Fourteen years after completing his multi-book Witcher Saga with The Lady of the Lake, Andzej Sapkowski returned to the world of Geralt of Rivia, not to continue the story but to add in some adventures from his hero’s early years. It’s an odd way to end the series and, perhaps, his writing career, as I …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/06/17/season-of-storms-by-andrzej-sapkowski/
Jun 14 2020
Oktoberfest brings a lot of customers to Wilhelm Gossec’s this-and-that shop. The hideously overpriced merry-go-round horse in the window captures their attention, and they wind up leaving with a souvenir, an old piece of Bavarica that Gossec has snagged at an estate sale, or maybe even an oil painting artfully half hidden so that the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/06/14/munchen-blues-by-max-bronski/
May 29 2020
Now this is more like it! John Hornor Jacobs concludes his trilogy of cowboys and Romans with style and panache, picking up the pace, tightening the narrative, and never losing the joy of pulpy adventure even as he delivers more complex characters and greater depth in this alternate world. As Infernal Machines begins, longtime partners …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/05/29/infernal-machines-by-john-hornor-jacobs/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire