May 05 2023
I wrote about Whispers Under Ground that I found the Rivers of London comfort reading, despite the uncanny events, the grisly murders, and the hints about horrible history in British magic. Broken Homes shows that I can still count on a narrator I enjoy spending time with, that there will be adventures and scrapes, and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/05/05/broken-homes-by-ben-aaronovitch-2/
Apr 23 2023
An unconsidered moment of kindness sets Silver in the Wood in motion. Tobias Finch had been in his cottage during an autumn downpour when he spied “a young man in a well-fitted grey coat stumbling along the track with wet leaves blowing into his face and his hat a crumpled ruin in his hands.” (p. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/04/23/silver-in-the-wood-by-emily-tesh/
Sep 04 2022
I’m only three books into the Rivers of London series, and already they feel like comfort reading. I can feel confident that with each new Peter Grant book I pick up, I will encounter characters I enjoy spending time with — the narrator first and foremost — that they will have adventures and scrapes, that Aaronovitch will …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/09/04/whispers-under-ground-by-ben-aaronovitch/
May 08 2022
Butler to the World begins with an American academic paying a visit to Oliver Bullough. Leading up to the publication of Moneyland, and even more since, Bullough has been writing about financial corruption, and particularly the ways that advanced, rule-of-law democracies have been helping corrupt rich people around the world keep and protect their ill-gotten …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/05/08/butler-to-the-world-by-oliver-bullough/
Feb 20 2022
Jazzmen dropping dead in circumstances that are unusual even by their standards. Incontrovertible, if circumstantial, evidence of a real-life vagina dentata. These two sets of mysteries set the stage for the events of Moon Over Soho, events that will show readers more about Constable Peter Grant, much more about his mentor in magical policing Detective …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/02/20/moon-over-soho-by-ben-aaronovitch-2/
Nov 22 2021
The blurb makes you think this is going to be a comedy, and perhaps for some it is. But it reminded me very much of my first pro theater production, a play with what I thought was a bleak if occasionally funny script, set in a series of airport waiting areas. We performed it to …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/22/gigantic-by-ashley-stokes/
Nov 16 2021
Meet Daisy Sparrow, a young peasant witch living in Elizabethan England. Together with her beloved Mum, she brews and sells potions and other assorted concoctions at market fairs. But she wants more from life than just helping people who probably didn’t need that much help to begin with, even if she’s painfully shy when it …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/16/the-queens-favorite-witch-book-1-the-wheel-of-fortune-by-benjamin-dickson-rachael-smith/
Nov 05 2021
The first comic that really expanded my idea of what graphic novels could do was Camelot 3000 by Mike W Barr and Brian Bolland, which I read as a young adolescent, then again less than a decade ago. It certainly was not as good for me the second time around, but I’ll always treasure the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/05/once-future-vol-1-the-king-is-undead-by-kieron-gillen-dan-mora-tamra-bonvillain/
Sep 24 2021
Harkaway takes the epigraph for Gnomon from The Emperor by Ryszard Kapuscinski. “When the first question was asked in a direction opposite to the customary one, it was a signal that the revolution had begun.” Ethiopia, as portrayed in The Emperor is a land of whispers and intrigues, barely contending with modern technology, shaped by …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/24/gnomon-by-nick-harkaway-pt-2/
Sep 22 2021
Some time past the middle of the twenty-first century, Britain offers its citizens the safest, most democratic, best-adjusted society in human history. Every person under the System is encouraged — though not compelled — to spend a certain amount of time each week voting, and is semi-randomly assigned to decision-making bodies for the duration of their session. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/22/gnomon-by-nick-harkaway-pt-1/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire