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Featured
Blog Launch
Hello! My name is Joe Kessler, and I’ve been blogging in one form or another since 2004. This is the launch of my new home for that, where I’ll be posting book reviews and other short pieces of writing. I’m also debuting a Patreon site for anyone who would like to support my efforts through… Read more
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Book Review: Blacktail by Scott Hawkins
Book #174 of 2026: Blacktail by Scott Hawkins This horror-tinged magical realist novel starts out well, with a clear declaration of bloody purpose. It’s a story with a mostly animal cast, and it begins with our young wolf protagonist falling in love and mating with a pet dog chained outside near his woods. When the… Read more
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Movie Review: Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)
Movie #53 of 2026: Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) Look, I’m as surprised about this as anyone, but in my opinion this latest Ghostbusters film is honestly the best of the lot. It inherits a lot of strengths from its immediate predecessor on the character front, retaining a tight focus on our young heroine and her… Read more
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Book Review: Star Wars: Tarkin by James Luceno
Book #173 of 2026: Star Wars: Tarkin by James Luceno Better than I expected for a 2014 Star Wars novel — still in that era when Disney had declared a new canon for the franchise but hadn’t yet released any movies in it — that focuses on the eponymous minor villain from the original film.… Read more
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Book Review: The Traveler by Joseph Eckert
Book #172 of 2026: The Traveler by Joseph Eckert I’m of mixed minds about this high-concept science-fiction novel, which I suppose is what the new Goodreads three-and-a-half star rating option is intended to convey. Although I didn’t care for the direction it eventually takes, I really enjoyed the first half of the story, which I… Read more
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Book Review: Mercury by Ben Bova
Book #171 of 2026: Mercury by Ben Bova This sixteenth Grand Tour novel is one of the more standalone entries in that sequence, although Saito Yamagata and his son Nobu have been around as minor supporting characters beforehand. The biggest swerve here turns out to be the plot, however, with author Ben Bova trading his… Read more
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Book Review: Doctor Who: Iceberg by David Banks
Book #170 of 2026: Doctor Who: Iceberg by David Banks (Virgin New Adventures #18) David Banks played the villainous Cyber Leader in four Classic Doctor Who stories across the 1980s (Earthshock, The Five Doctors, Attack of the Cybermen, and Silver Nemesis), and also published a reference book called simply Cybermen in 1988, in which he… Read more
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Movie Review: Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)
Movie #52 of 2026: Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) A good movie but not a great one, in my opinion. I like that this installment has a distinctive energy and shape to its plot compared to any of the prior entries in the series, focusing not on a blue-collar business of hunting ghosts in New York City… Read more
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Book Review: Killman Creek by Rachel Caine
Book #169 of 2026: Killman Creek by Rachel Caine (Stillhouse Lake #2) Morbid curiosity got me to return for this sequel, and I still don’t really see how Rachel Caine and her later posthumous cowriter managed to stretch the series out to seven books in the end. But this is a decent followup to Stillhouse… Read more
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Book Review: The Fractured Dark by Megan E. O’Keefe
Book #168 of 2026: The Fractured Dark by Megan E. O’Keefe (The Devoured Worlds #2) I’m still interested in the characters and setting of this Altered Carbon-esque space opera, but this middle volume of the trilogy feels a bit aimless compared to its action-packed predecessor. It doesn’t help that we’ve left the pressure cooker situation… Read more
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TV Review: Kevin Can F**k Himself, season 1
TV #46 of 2026: Kevin Can F**k Himself, season 1 This 2021 series goes far on the strength of its central gimmick, which is that whenever the titular character is on the screen, the whole thing is written and filmed like a twentieth-century multicam sitcom, complete with bright lights, heavily stylized acting and writing, canned… Read more
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