Book #131 of 2021: Infinity Blade: Redemption by Brandon Sanderson This is the second novella that author Brandon Sanderson wrote as a media tie-in for the titular videogame series, but it’s not really a sequel to his earlier Infinity Blade: Awakening. Instead, much as that story serves to bridge the plot between the first two …
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Book #130 of 2021: How to Argue With a Racist: What Our Genes Do (and Don’t) Say About Human Difference by Adam Rutherford This 2020 title is somewhat misleading, since author Adam Rutherford is not an expert on antiracist engagement, and even he admits that most people who espouse open bigotry do not appear receptive …
Book #129 of 2021: Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot #12) This 1935 story, also published as Death in the Air, is an entertaining, quasi-locked-room whodunnit: a murder that takes place on a passenger plane, although most of Poirot’s follow-up investigations and discoveries are conducted back on the ground. I especially like …
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TV #42 of 2021: Shadow and Bone, season 1 It took me a couple episodes to get fully on-board with this YA literary adaptation, but I believe that’s largely down to the incorrect assumptions that I brought to the experience. All of the promotional materials that I had seen for the show seemed to be …
Book #128 of 2021: Rolling in the Deep by Mira Grant (Rolling in the Deep #1) A short but effective creature feature, following a deep-sea expedition looking to capture or manufacture footage of mermaids for a schlocky TV production. The last thing they expect is to find the real animals who inspired the myths, nor …
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Book #127 of 2021: The One Tree by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant #2) A thoroughly excellent nautical fantasy, fleshing out the wider landscape of this setting, adding fascinating new wrinkles to the series lore, and finally introducing readers to beings like the sandgorgons and Elohim who had been briefly mentioned …
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Book #126 of 2021: The Black Tides of Heaven by Neon Yang (Tensorate #1) Some fantasy stories invent cool worldbuilding but then neglect to tell a compelling narrative within that space; others do the opposite and offer a rousing plot amid a generic landscape of medieval castles and kings. This novella, I am happy to …
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Book #125 of 2021: The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pène du Bois I have a lingering childhood fondness for this funny little title, which taps into a Roald Dahl type of whimsical inventiveness in showing off its various ideas. (My favorite: the bed of ‘continuous sheets’ that cranks a conveyor belt to wash and dry …
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Book #124 of 2021: The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams An interesting bildungsroman of a fictional heroine, told in the context of the real history of the compiling of the Oxford English Dictionary’s first edition around the turn of the twentieth century. Author Pip Williams begins from the observation that neither the female …
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Book #123 of 2021: Passing Strange by Ellen Klages There’s a lot to enjoy in this detail-heavy novella of queer life (and particularly its romance of two women) in 1940 San Francisco, but I wish it would provide greater connective tissue between its chapters — and that the minor fantasy element at the start and …
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