Nov 17 2021
Like, I knew this was a portal fantasy of two exes navigating the multiverse that opens up in an IKEA-style store, but the blurb and the cover especially did not prepare me for the excellent hijinks that ensued! I’m also a bit ashamed to admit that I really want to go visit IKEA again after …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/17/finna-litenverse-1-by-nino-cipri/
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 15 2021
Sarah Gailey has long been on my Want-To-Read list, so when I saw their latest novella nominated for a Hugo, I was super excited to finally have the opportunity. Plus, a story about female librarians braving the Wild West to bring books from settlement to settlement? Sign me up! Upright Women Wanted certainly delivers on …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/15/upright-women-wanted-by-sarah-gailey/
Nov 14 2021
I read Invisible Cities ages ago when I worked for a bookstore in Atlanta and was reading more consciously literary things. I picked it up again recently thanks to a Twitter thread. Jo Walton had been doing a series of 50 manipulated images of Venice. As she wrote, “In honour of Italo Calvino’s Le Citta …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/14/invisible-cities-by-italo-calvino/
Nov 13 2021
It’s 1922 and the Ku Klux Klan is marching in Macon, Georgia. The Klan I know from history is bad enough, but the Klan in Ring Shout is supplemented by literal monsters that Clark’s first-person narrator Maryse Boudreaux and her friends Sadie and Chef can see through the human form that the Ku Kluxes have …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/13/ring-shout-by-p-djeli-clark/
Nov 12 2021
Seanan McGuire can be so hit or miss for me, and this one was, unfortunately, another miss. But it was a very near-miss, and one that could easily have been a hit, as I love Jack Wolcott and was panting to read this story of her continuing adventures. Last we’d seen, Jack had taken the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/12/come-tumbling-down-wayward-children-5-by-seanan-mcguire/
Nov 11 2021
The first volume of this outstanding homage to RPGs absolutely broke my heart. It was my favorite for last year’s Hugo for Best Graphic Story, but I was unsurprised that it didn’t win. It’s VERY niche, even for nerds, and not everyone was going to adore it the way I did. The second volume amplifies …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/11/die-vol-2-split-the-party-by-kieron-gillen-stephanie-hans-clayton-cowles/
Nov 08 2021
It’s sheer coincidence that I saved this for Native American Heritage Month, but I’m so glad the Hugos forced me to finally get around to reading it! Elatsoe is the full name of Lipan Apache Ellie Bride, a teenage girl who lives in a Texas much like our own but with certain significant differences. For …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/08/elatsoe-by-darcie-little-badger/
Nov 06 2021
For a certain kind of person, this book is a source of great joy. Fortunately, I am that kind of person, and I have kept coming back to it since I bought it in February. I first became aware of Art & Arcana when I flipped through an electronic version that came as part of …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/11/06/dungeons-dragons-art-arcana-a-visual-history-by-michael-witwer-et-al/
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/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire