TV #45 of 2020: Star Wars: The Clone Wars, season 4 I’m glad that this Clone Wars season is presented mostly chronologically, rather than the nonlinear hodgepodge of years before, but the narrative is still more scattered than I think I would prefer, with mini-arcs and standalone episodes that don’t really build on one another …
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Book #253 of 2020: The Original by Brandon Sanderson and Mary Robinette Kowal This novella (currently available exclusively as an audiobook) is a thrilling sci-fi adventure, set in a society where most people take in regular doses of “nanogenes” that transform their perception, adding pre-programmed sights, sounds, and textures to an environment that would otherwise …
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Book #252 of 2020: The Floating Admiral by The Detection Club In 1931, Agatha Christie and a dozen of her contemporaries collaborated to produce this mystery novel, each contributing a chapter in turn but not sharing their theories of the case with one another. The result is more than a little disjointed, and it almost …
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Book #251 of 2020: Court of Lions by Somaiya Daud (Mirage #2) This Moroccan-flavored princess-and-pauper sci-fi sequel isn’t exactly bad, but it lacks much of the tension that made the first novel so gripping. The two girls are friends now rather than ruler and reluctant body double, and with the introduction of a new female …
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Book #250 of 2020: A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik (The Scholomance #1) This YA fantasy novel can be a tad exposition-heavy, especially at the beginning, but it offers such a fun setting and enjoyably prickly protagonist that it’s easy to let that slide. The Scholomance is a magic boarding school like none other, a …
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TV #44 of 2020: The Twilight Zone, season 1 In its first year, the latest iteration of this classic anthology series offers a collection of interesting and well-acted premises that never quite stick the landing for a successful denouement. Every episode seems to either trail off without a point or descend into heavy-handed moralizing, and …
Book #249 of 2020: Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland I appreciate the fresh perspective of this YA novel about a Mexican-American girl whose mother was deported and went missing and presumed dead trying to cross back into the country, but the story takes a sudden genre veer midway …
Book #248 of 2020: The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy by Stephanie Kelton I’ll be honest and admit up-front that I don’t have the economics background that is likely necessary to evaluate all of this book’s claims. But it seems clear that neither do most politicians, and that …
Book #247 of 2020: Dune by Frank Herbert (Dune #1) This 1965 sci-fi classic is a triumph of worldbuilding, with an influence on the genre that can be seen everywhere from the desert planets of Star Wars to the feudal intrigue of Red Rising. But it bored me to tears when I tried to read …
TV #43 of 2020: Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 6 Perhaps because Star Trek wasn’t a part of my childhood (and because I prefer my television to have more serial plotting), I’ve never quite loved this show, but it’s generally been a solid collection of sci-fi stories in an interesting sort of setting. So …
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