One of the best things about my favorite local bookstore is the way they host so many cool events and book clubs, and offer the book club selections at 15% off for the month. I’d previously been to an excellent non-fiction gathering to discuss Britney Spears’ The Woman In Me last January, but hadn’t really …
Tag: Dystopia
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/04/10/bitch-planet-vol-1-extraordinary-machine-by-kelly-sue-deconnick-valentine-de-landro/
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/03/27/reports-from-the-deep-end-edited-by-maxim-jakubowski-rick-mcgrath/
Feb 24 2024
Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky
As settings for a post-apocalypse story go, the Moscow Metro is pretty cool. It’s vast, it’s full of secrets, parts of it were actually designed to survive a nuclear war, it lends itself to an episodic tale with lots of changes of scenery. I’m not sure that a whole lot more thought went into it …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/02/24/metro-2033-by-dmitry-glukhovsky/
Oct 18 2023
Heart Attack by Shawn Kittelsen, Eric Zawadzki & Mike Spicer
In comparison to most of the graphic novels for grown-ups I’ve read recently, this felt quite long, but I think there’s a good reason for that. The original, published in 2020, only collected the first six issues of the series. This follow-up contains those and six more chapters that round out, at least for now, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/10/18/heart-attack-by-shawn-kittelsen-eric-zawadzki-mike-spicer/
Jun 27 2023
Tiger Work: Poems, Stories And Essays About Climate Change by Ben Okri
Okay, if you’re a Ben Okri fan, then this is likely going to be your jam. I hadn’t read any of his award-winning work before this collection, so I absolutely jumped at the chance to read the latest publication of the first Black, and at the time youngest, winner of the Booker Prize. And it’s …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/06/27/tiger-work-poems-stories-and-essays-about-climate-change-by-ben-okri/
Jun 17 2023
The Ten Percent Thief by Lavanya Lakshminarayan
In Apex City, known in former centuries as Bangalore, meritocracy and sound scientific management principles have produced a city that has not only survived the environmental catastrophes, it is home to thriving humanity and extraordinary individuals extending what is humanly possible in many fields of endeavor. In the Virtual society inside Apex City, seventy percent …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/06/17/the-ten-percent-thief-by-lavanya-lakshminarayan/
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. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/03/02/scurry-by-mac-smith/
Dec 30 2022
Wrapping Up
Time for some short takes to clear the desk for the coming year. Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk. Nobel winner Tokarczuk uses very short chapters, each titled “The Time of …”, to depict life in an archetpyal Polish village from just before the outbreak of the First World War through the last years …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/12/30/wrapping-up-3/
Jun 24 2022
Clementine, Book One by Tillie Walden
It’s become vanishingly rare for there to be anything new to say about the zombie apocalypse. This book is no different, but will likely hit the sweet spot for fans of the subgenre, and especially for those who don’t think that there’s enough teenage angst already in the existing corpus. In this expansion on Robert …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/06/24/clementine-book-one-by-tillie-walden/
Jun 20 2022
The Past Is Red by Catherynne M. Valente
This is one of those books that I can appreciate, even if I don’t like it. And there’s a lot to like here, so maybe it’s just a me thing. I just… I feel like Cat Valente has a lot to process in terms of abuse and marriage, and that her issues spill out way …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/06/20/the-past-is-red-by-catherynne-m-valente/