TV #85 of 2021: ReBoot, season 3 An absolute delight, all the way through to that daft but earned Penzance recap number that closes everything out. This run starts right where the last one left off (although a year and a half had passed for viewers), and it continues the strong streak of serialized plot …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: Cytonic by Brandon Sanderson
Book #350 of 2021: Cytonic by Brandon Sanderson (Skyward #3) [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with this author.] I love author Brandon Sanderson’s work in general, and I’ve been enjoying this YA space opera, but I have to admit to finding this latest volume a bit perfunctory. There are big worldbuilding reveals of the kind …
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Book Review: The First Journey by K. A. Applegate
Book #349 of 2021: The First Journey by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs Alternamorphs #1) I went into my adult reread of this choose-your-own-adventure Animorphs title with pretty low expectations, and yet it somehow still managed to disappoint. Who exactly is the audience here? The tone is more juvenile than the main novels, with lots of …
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Book Review: Strange Dreams edited by Stephen R. Donaldson
Book #348 of 2021: Strange Dreams edited by Stephen R. Donaldson Rating each story in this 1993 collection individually, they average out to just three-out-of-five stars overall for me. It’s an uneven bunch, yet there are still some winners among the lot. (No fives, but 10 fours, along with 11 threes, 5 twos, and 2 …
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Book Review: Blacktop Wasteland by S. A. Cosby
Book #347 of 2021: Blacktop Wasteland by S. A. Cosby Between this novel and author S. A. Cosby’s later Razorblade Tears, I am fully ready to crown him the Elmore Leonard of the state of Virginia, demonstrating that late crime writer’s same flair for action scenes, local dialect, and colorful characters with particular codes of …
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Book Review: You Feel It Just Below the Ribs by Jeffrey Cranor and Janina Matthewson
Book #346 of 2021: You Feel It Just Below the Ribs by Jeffrey Cranor and Janina Matthewson This novel technically takes place in the dystopian setting of authors Jeffrey Cranor and Janina Matthewson’s “Within the Wires” podcast, but you don’t need to have listened to that first in order to enjoy it — all I’ve …
Book Review: Gods of Riverworld by Philip José Farmer
Book #345 of 2021: Gods of Riverworld by Philip José Farmer (Riverworld #5) This somewhat-vestigial sequel to the core Riverworld plot is actually an improvement over the past couple titles, although it’s still not great. Having finally reached the grand tower at the head of the river in the previous story, the remaining protagonists spend …
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Book Review: Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly
Book #344 of 2021: Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch #14) The Liam Neeson movie Taken came out in 2008, and it sure seems like author Michael Connelly was trying to ride its coattails for this Bosch novel the following year. The start of the story concerns a liquor store robbery-homicide that may have …
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Book Review: Elfangor’s Secret by K. A. Applegate
Book #343 of 2021: Elfangor’s Secret by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs Megamorphs #3) Is there any Animorphs opening more unsettling than this one, with its in-media-res presentation of an alternate universe where our heroes are still fighting the same covert alien invasion, but as citizens of a racist, slave-holding empire? Rachel is nowhere to be …
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Book Review: Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology by Deirdre Cooper Owens
Book #342 of 2021: Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology by Deirdre Cooper Owens An incredibly heavy yet informative read on how the modern field of gynecology was created in the age of American slavery, with enslaved black women its unwilling participants. They were involved as patients for experimental techniques, of …
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 