Movie #19 of 2017: Thor: Ragnarok (2017) By far the best Thor movie, and one of the better Marvel Cinematic Universe movies overall. Lots of humor, neat worldbuilding, and actual character growth for Thor and Loki! It could have done better by its female characters, but all in all it was a fun ride and …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: The Book of Swords edited by Gardner Dozois
Book #234 of 2017: The Book of Swords edited by Gardner Dozois This is a collection of short stories in the “sword and sorcery” genre, which as far as I can tell is fantasy on the smaller scale, with no evil overlords threatening the world. (I’d say the stakes are lower than epic fantasy, but …
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Book Review: The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin
Book #233 of 2017: The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin (The Broken Earth #2) As this series goes along, it’s starting to feel like author N. K. Jemisin is more interested in showing off her admittedly awesome and intricate worldbuilding than in telling a story with compelling emotional stakes for her characters. It’s still …
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Book Review: The Realms of the Gods by Tamora Pierce
Book #232 of 2017: The Realms of the Gods by Tamora Pierce (The Immortals #4) This is the final book in Tamora Pierce’s Immortals Quartet (within her larger Tortall series), and it sort of resolves the ongoing storyline from the previous books. But most of the novel strands its main characters away from the central …
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Book Review: The Field Guide by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black
Book #231 of 2017: The Field Guide by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black (The Spiderwick Chronicles #1) This was cute, but very short and way below my preferred reading level. I felt like I hardly got a chance to know the characters before the book came to a rather sudden end. I could see myself …
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Book Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
Book #230 of 2017: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart The biggest flaw in this novel about a teenager returning to her family’s vacation home two years after an accident there that she can’t remember is that there’s basically no plot to it. Author E. Lockhart paints a lovely idyllic picture of Cady, her cousins, …
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TV Review: Marvel’s Inhumans, season 1
TV #44 of 2017: Marvel’s Inhumans, season 1 Oh, my god. This show was so awful that it retroactively makes Iron Fist look pretty decent by comparison. We’re never given any reason to care about the characters or their situation, the villains have no clear motivation at all, and the plot basically spins its wheels …
TV Review: The Handmaid’s Tale, season 1
TV #43 of 2017: The Handmaid’s Tale, season 1 Very powerful and difficult-to-watch television. To be honest, I wasn’t really blown away when I read the book this show was based on – it’s definitely a solid dystopian nightmare, but I didn’t find it especially gripping or haunting. This adaptation was all of that and …
Book Review: The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir by Alex Marzano-Lesnevich
Book #229 of 2017: The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich This book is partly a true-crime story about a child molester and murderer, and partly the author’s attempt to work through the sexual abuse that they themself experienced at the hands of their grandfather growing up. Because of …
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Book Review: A Million Worlds with You by Claudia Gray
Book #228 of 2017: A Million Worlds with You by Claudia Gray (Firebird #3) The Firebird trilogy has gotten steadily better as it’s gone along, and this third novel brings it all home nicely. As befits a series finale, the stakes are higher than ever in this book, and the parallel universe-hopping that’s always been …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 