Teresa Nielsen Hayden has observed that while plot is a literary convention, story is a force of nature. In Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett explores some of the things that can happen when these forces of nature latch on to people in his most unnatural of settings. People think that stories are shaped by people. In …
Tag: Fantasy
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/10/27/witches-abroad-by-terry-pratchett/
Oct 21 2015
New Amsterdam by Elizabeth Bear
There isn’t a zeppelin on the cover to let readers know this is an alternate history, but by way of making up for it, Elizabeth Bear sets the book’s first story on board hydrogen-filled German airship. The Hans Glücker is on its way from Calais to the jewel of British North America, the eponymous New …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/10/21/new-amsterdam-by-elizabeth-bear/
Oct 09 2015
Of Noble Family by Mary Robinette Kowal
Of Noble Family is the fifth book of Mary Robinette Kowal’s Glamourist History series. The series crosses Regency romances with alternate (but not terribly alternate) history and a dash of domestic magic. The series follows Sir David Vincent and his wife Jane, accomplished glamourists; that is, practitioners of the arts of magical illusion known in …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/10/09/of-noble-family-by-mary-robinette-kowal/
Oct 08 2015
The Well-Favored Man by Elizabeth Willey
A friend whose taste I respect recommended The Well-Favored Man to me, and, while I didn’t bounce off of it, I didn’t respond with quite the enthusiasm we both thought I might. She zipped right through it and has, I think, re-read it again in the meantime, while I dawdled the weeks away, and read …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/10/08/the-well-favored-man-by-elizabeth-willey/
Oct 07 2015
Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett
They seem such slight things, the Discworld books. Mostly slender paperbacks with the unmistakable art on their covers and the absurd premises piled on one another (it’s turtles all the way down), usually stacked up in the first few pages. Suddenly it’s a couple hundred pages later, there has been laughter, there has been at …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/10/07/reaper-man-by-terry-pratchett/
Sep 21 2015
TRUST by Jodi Baker
Series: Between Lions (Book 1) Hardcover: 296 pages Publisher: BookBaby (October 3, 2015) Language: English ISBN-10: 0986431710 ISBN-13: 978-0986431715 Publisher’s Description TRUST is a young adult, mythological, urban fantasy thrill ride about the darkly fantastical, supernatural Museion that has secretly protected humanity’s greatest treasures for millennia, and Anna, the sixteen-year-old New York girl who …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/09/21/trust-by-jodi-baker/
Sep 11 2015
The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski
It should have been painfully obvious to me from the blurb that this would involve retellings of fairy tales, but I did not realize till I was well into the Beauty And The Beast tale and then ZOMG, THIS IS MY JAM!!! Andrzej Sapkowski has written a terrific fantasy novel with a sympathetic hero, and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/09/11/the-last-wish-by-andrzej-sapkowski/
Sep 08 2015
The Once And Future King by T. H. White
When I first started reading this, I was so completely taken aback by the Boys’ Own, jolly-good, public school vibe of the writing that I honestly wasn’t sure whether I was going to like it. The first part was, thus, slow-going for me, used as I was to depictions of Arthurian romance that were a …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/09/08/the-once-and-future-king-by-t-h-white/
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/08/18/spirits-abroad-by-zen-cho/
Aug 11 2015
Landline by Rainbow Rowell
Deeply moral and achingly romantic, this is a book about a woman inadvertently reaching into the past to try to fix problems in her marriage to a man she desperately loves. Rainbow Rowell is a terrific writer of dialog and characters, and though Landline felt a bit shallow in places (by which I don’t mean …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/08/11/landline-by-rainbow-rowell/