TV #22 of 2021: Star Wars: The Clone Wars, season 7 If only this last run of the animated Star Wars prequel could be limited to its final four episodes, I think I would give it my first five-star rating of the series. That sequence represents a powerful prelude to the tragedy of Revenge of …
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Book #61 of 2021: Among the Beasts & Briars by Ashley Poston This story has it all: a generic fantasy setting, under-explained and inconsistent magic, a random and meandering plot, weirdly colloquial dialogue, and juvenile characters — both protagonists and antagonists alike — with no credible motivation driving their actions. Also quasi-bestiality, after the heroine’s …
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Book #60 of 2021: The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey This novel raises a few interesting dilemmas of futuristic technology, although it waits so long to establish its sci-fi premise that I think I should probably be circumspect in this review. (I will say that the marketing description of ‘Westworld meets Killing Eve‘ is almost …
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Book #59 of 2021: Doctor Who: The Novel of the Film by Gary Russell For the most part, this is a pretty straightforward novelization of the 1996 Doctor Who movie, which isn’t great, but certainly has its share of goofy charm. (It was produced after the original program was cancelled in 1989, and was intended …
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Book #58 of 2021: The Removed by Brandon Hobson This is a very fractured narrative, theoretically exploring the pain of a Native American family whose son was shot and killed by the police, but with a distance of 15 years from that event and minimal overt connections across the four protagonist POVs, which stymies the …
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Book #57 of 2021: Noumenon by Marina J. Lostetter (Noumenon #1) I’ve enjoyed much of this novel’s middle sections, but the beginning is boilerplate sci-fi, and I’m not quite satisfied by the rather abrupt and open ending. It’s the story of an interstellar fleet launched to investigate a strange object detected in deep space, a …
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Book #56 of 2021: Trunk Music by Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch #5) Like the other titles in its series, this is a reasonably solid procedural crime thriller — albeit a little heavy on coincidences, such as the protagonist encountering an old flame / new potential suspect while pursuing a lead in a different city or …
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TV #21 of 2021: Community, season 2 A big step up from an already-great first year, albeit not quite the flawless season I thought I remembered and wish it could be. The characters and serialized plotlines are each more complex, and Pierce’s turn as an overt villain in particular is a superb escalation which feeds …
Book #55 of 2021: Star Wars: The High Republic: Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule This debut title in the new High Republic project leaves a lot to be desired. In theory, the novel is functioning to introduce an earlier era when no other canonical Star Wars stories have yet been set, as well …
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Book #54 of 2021: Amari and the Night Brothers by B. B. Alston (Supernatural Investigations #1) Harry Potter comparisons can be a tad reductive and overdone, but that really is the vibe of this middle-grade adventure from debut author B. B. Alston, with a tween hero’s introduction to a hidden society of strange creatures and …
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