Apr 18 2025
with Dave Sharpe on letters. What a clever post-apocalyptic spin on the noir genre! Bingo Finder is a scavenger in the utopian farm village of Ellay, venturing into the ruins of urban neighborhoods to find anything that might be worth bartering. On one trip with her best friend Fenn, she finds what, to her, is …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/04/18/tectiv-vol-1-noirtopia-by-richard-ashley-hamilton-marco-matrone/
Sep 24 2024
When the lovely publicist at Abrams Comics pitched this graphic novel adaptation to me, I made him laugh by replying, “I’ll be honest: I desperately hated The Road but am wildly curious to see what Manu Larcenet brings to the story. He can’t make it worse!” You can read my original review of the source …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/24/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-by-manu-larcenet/
Jun 20 2024
Hunh, I didn’t realize that almost all of the novelette nominees in this year’s Hugo Awards category have their own entries on Goodreads. I’ll have to populate my shelves there accordingly. Anyway, my favorite novelette this year by a country mile was C. L. Polk’s Ivy, Angelica, Bay. She’s long been one of the authors …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/06/20/hugo-awards-2024-best-novelette-nominees/
Apr 07 2024
The cover of After the Apocalypse looks crinkled and dog-eared, as if the calamities within its pages have begun to seep out into the world beyond. The clock on the book’s cover is set to a few minutes after midnight, a reminder that after the worst has happened, things go on for at least some …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/04/07/after-the-apocalypse-by-maureen-f-mchugh/
Feb 24 2024
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/
Jan 18 2024
Ngl, reading this felt like what I imagine an acid trip would be like. I guess one good thing about it is that it made me want to listen to more of The Who’s music? Good thing this graphic novel is being released with an accompanying vinyl LP! (Link at the bottom, tho you can …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/01/18/life-house-by-pete-townshend-james-harvey-david-hine-max-prentis/
Dec 30 2022
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/
Oct 19 2019
I gave myself a few days to properly mull over this book, and you guys. My biggest impression still is “that’s not okay.” First, stylistically (thematically?), I really, really hated that N. K. Jemisin veered away from the hard sci-fi of the first novel to get all fake(?) magicky. Honestly, when Alabaster (still hate that …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/10/19/the-obelisk-gate-the-broken-earth-2-by-n-k-jemisin/
Aug 14 2019
So on the one hand, this is some gorgeously written, truly imaginative sci-fi set in a world where the science seems like magic, so much so that the book reads like a terrific fantasy novel. It’s also a sharply drawn parable of slavery and gilded cages, based on inherent powers owned by people dubbed orogenes …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/08/14/the-fifth-season-the-broken-earth-1-by-n-k-jemisin/
Jul 22 2019
Trail of Lightning delivers perfectly cromulent action and adventure in the Navajo corner of a world that has suffered a partly supernatural climate apocalypse. Maggie, the book’s first-person narrator, is a badass. Trained by a near-god in the arts of combat, she adds magical powers of speed and killing prowess, powers drawn from her Navajo …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/22/trail-of-lightning-by-rebecca-roanhorse/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire