TV #7 of 2022: The Book of Boba Fett, season 1 This spinoff title coasts by on the lingering coolness of a live-action Star Wars show and the fun of revisiting the aftermath of Jabba the Hutt’s death from Return of the Jedi, but it’s a substantial step down in quality from its parent series …
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Book #20 of 2022: The Boy Who Lost His Birthday: A Memoir of Loss, Survival, and Triumph by Laszlo Berkowits with Robert W. Kenny [Disclaimer: Although I did not meet him until 2016 and never knew him especially well, I am a member of the temple where Laszlo Berkowits served as Rabbi Emeritus until his …
Book #19 of 2022: How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu This is less a novel than a sequence of tangentially-related chapter-length stories, and although individual moments either tug at the heartstrings or pose some intriguing sci-fi concepts, I’m pretty lukewarm on the project as a whole. It’s a book about a …
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Book #18 of 2022: Skin of the Sea by Natasha Bowen (Skin of the Sea #1) I love that this YA historical fantasy novel features Black mermaids and other elements drawn from #ownvoices West African folklore, a simple fact of representation that I know is going to matter deeply to a lot of readers. I …
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Book #17 of 2022: Suicide Run: Three Harry Bosch Stories by Michael Connelly A very quick read, containing just three short stories about detective Harry Bosch. (Another collection of three, Angle of Investigation, was released the following month; I have no idea why the publisher didn’t treat them as one single volume.) Of these, I …
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Book #16 of 2022: Visser by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs Chronicles #3) The Chronicles have been a consistently strong corner of the Animorphs franchise — perhaps surprisingly so, given how little they feature of our familiar teenage animal-morphing freedom fighters. In this third volume, for example, the spotlight lands on Visser One, the Yeerk commander …
Book #15 of 2022: Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children #7) I might be over this series, which initially wowed me in its considerations of children who depart from dangerous yet fulfilling fantasy worlds only to discover a mundane life that no longer understands them. There’s great pathos in that concept …
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Book #14 of 2022: The Actual Star by Monica Byrne There’s so much to love about this novel that I hardly know where to start. It’s speculative fiction, yet thoroughly researched, with a thoughtful and detailed note at the beginning reviewing the care with which author Monica Byrne has approached this project as well as …
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TV #6 of 2022: Fringe, season 5 A very strange season, and a very strange ending to Fringe. Following up on the flash-forward episode “Letters of Transit” from the previous year, this final run finds the team frozen in amber for two decades, then thawed out to fight the invading Observers who have meanwhile taken …
Book #13 of 2022: Reaper of Souls by Rena Barron (Kingdom of Souls #2) This #ownvoices YA fantasy novel — unrelated to the Diablo III expansion that amusingly shares its name — picks up soon after 2019’s Kingdom of Souls leaves off, with its protagonist newly empowered in the Orisha magic she never thought would …
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