Dec 08 2017
What has stayed with me in the months since I read The Ballad of Black Tom? The sense of teeming New York in the 1920s, the deft characterizations of the divides among black and white, the delicious irony of seeing an H.P. Lovecraft tale told from a black point of view. The story is eventually …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/08/the-ballad-of-black-tom-by-victor-lavalle-2/
Dec 07 2017
In A Taste of Honey Kai Ashante Wilson tells a love story spanning decades in a fantastic world that looks much like the ancient Mediterranean. One of the lovers is a soldier from an empire that resembles Rome, the other is a young member of a noble house in a North African polity. (I don’t …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/07/a-taste-of-honey-by-kai-ashante-wilson/
Nov 29 2017
In a long-running series there is often a problem with escalation. Characters that started in a low station move up in the world. They face new challenges as they rise; the stakes are implicitly higher for the fictional world, as their actions can now affect more people. At some point, though, the character rises as …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/11/29/night-watch-by-terry-pratchett/
Nov 20 2017
At the Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork, magic leaks into all sorts of things, including the scraps from the wizards’ sumptuous dinners. Some of the rats who were helping themselves to leftovers got an unexpected dose of intelligence as part of the magic in the cooking. And a cat, Maurice, got it too when he ate …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/11/20/the-amazing-maurice-and-his-educated-rodents-by-terry-pratchett/
Nov 09 2017
I keep going back and forth on how I feel about this book. I actually enjoyed the romance in it, and the setting was pretty great. As a woman who was horse-mad as a young girl but who was frustrated in her interests, I reveled in all the great detail that the younger me would …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/11/09/the-scorpio-races-by-maggie-stiefvater/
Nov 03 2017
I HAD ALL THE FEELINGS. I did not, however, cry for forty pages straight as I had with the first book in the series: instead, I burned with all sorts of emotions for and with the characters. There were parts where I literally wanted someone to hold me back, because were it possible to enter …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/11/03/words-of-radiance-the-stormlight-archive-2-by-brandon-sanderson/
Oct 27 2017
Finally picked this up despite getting it free from Tor.com (thanks, Tor!) ages ago, due to Doug’s review tweet. I wanted to know if I’d have similar feelings towards this novella, and I’m going to write down my own thoughts first before reading his review and comparing our experiences. So here is a really terrific, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/10/27/every-heart-a-doorway-wayward-children-1-by-seanan-mcguire/
Oct 20 2017
Doors sometimes open from the mundane world into more fantastical, miraculous realms, and sometimes children find their way through these doors to sojourn a while among the fae, with the King of the Dead, with scientists creating life from dead tissue and electricity, with forms and dreams stranger still. Many of those who return from …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/10/20/every-heart-a-doorway-by-seanan-mcguire/
Oct 19 2017
The setup at the end of The Boy Who Lost Fairyland — intimations that all is not well in the balance between our world and Fairyland; and Something Must Be Done — could have set up the last book in the sequence as a heavy quest, not least because Catherynne M. Valente’s characters are growing …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/10/19/the-girl-who-raced-fairyland-all-the-way-home-by-catherynne-m-valente/
Oct 09 2017
I put down The Obelisk Gate for about three and a half months when I was four-fifths of the way through. One of the main characters, a girl not yet in her teens, did something horrible, and I just couldn’t anymore. I haven’t had that strong a reaction since Elric killed Moonglum near the end …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/10/09/the-obelisk-gate-by-n-k-jemisin/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire