Book #118 of 2025: The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks Big on vibes but short on plot, unfortunately. I was fine with the worldbuilding remaining a bit mysterious early on, but there never really are many concrete details for us to latch onto. Instead we have a generic alternate history of …
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TV #39 of 2025: Ballard, season 1 Bosch and Bosch: Legacy have both wrapped up after a combined ten seasons, but the franchise survives in the form of this latest entry, whose protagonist was introduced in the final episode of the latter series. She’s a detective working cold cases for the LAPD, and her new …
TV #38 of 2025: Derry Girls, season 1 There’s some great specificity to this sitcom about a group of teenagers in Northern Ireland during the Troubles of the 1990s, but six half-hour episodes isn’t quite enough space for the first season to find its footing. I’m also not a huge fan of how all the …
Book #117 of 2025: The Devil Three Times by Rickey Fayne Author Rickey Fayne’s debut novel is an ambitious and challenging text that unfortunately loses me structurally as it goes along. It’s a multigenerational tale spanning almost two centuries, which is an approach I’ve enjoyed in other works. Here, however, the handoff isn’t a clean …
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Book #116 of 2025: Home of the American Circus by Allison Larkin This is a slow-paced and largely plot-free example of slice-of-life storytelling — sort of the literary fiction equivalent of the cozy fantasy genre, I suppose. Usually in tales with this type of premise, where a protagonist returns to their estranged family, I’d expect …
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Book #115 of 2025: Kaddish.com by Nathan Englander Mixed feelings on this one, though I appreciate the #ownvoices Jewish elements. I think a condensed version of the plot could have been effective as a short story, but it’s too thin for a full-fledged novel, with the transition between the protagonist in the past and the …
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Book #114 of 2025: Hex and the City by Simon R. Green (Nightside #4) A largely forgettable urban fantasy sequel, featuring a bland supporting cast and case of the week. On the former side, the protagonist has a new roster of temporary sidekicks, none of whom I can recall ever appearing again after this: Madman, …
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Book #113 of 2025: My Friends by Fredrik Backman Bestselling Swedish author Fredrik Backman is hit-or-miss for me, and this latest story squeaks in straight down the middle. I’m going to give it three-and-a-half stars, rounded up, because while I don’t think it’s nearly as strong as Beartown or A Man Called Ove, it is …
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Book #112 of 2025: The Return of Fitzroy Angursell by Victoria Goddard (The Red Company Reformed #1) There’s not really a wrong order in which to read author Victoria Goddard’s sprawling Nine Worlds fantasy saga, but I would say that this particular volume is probably best picked up sometime after The Hands of the Emperor, …
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Book #111 of 2025: The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami This new science-fiction novel offers a modern spin on Minority Report, in which people can be arrested and indefinitely detained on the basis of an algorithm determining they’re statistically more likely to commit an upcoming violent crime. It’s a kafkaesque nightmare for the Moroccan-American protagonist, …
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