Book #43 of 2016: Calamity by Brandon Sanderson (The Reckoners #3) This conclusion to Brandon Sanderson’s trilogy about post-apocalyptic superpowers doesn’t quite stick the landing. For one thing, the villain set up at the end of book 2 turns out to be far less formidable than the foes David and the other Reckoners have faced …
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TV #33 of 2016: Archer, season 7 Given its ratings, this may be the last season of Archer, and if so, it’s ending on kind of a weird note. But this season was still pretty funny, and I enjoyed the show’s latest attempt at rebooting itself, this time casting its characters (who originally were spies …
Movie #11 of 2016: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) This is at least the third time I’ve seen this film, and the initial thoughts I jotted down in 2015 still stand: “This is such a good movie on every level, from character to worldbuilding to plot to sheer pulse-pounding spectacle. I still have the film …
TV #32 of 2016: Arrow, season 4 Damien Dahrk was absolutely the sort of magnetic, scenery-chewing villain that Arrow needed after last season’s tired Ra’s al Ghul arc. But with the exception of Dahrk, this season still struggled to hit the heights of Arrow’s first two years. It would make sense for the next season …
Book #42 of 2016: The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven Cycle #4) The Raven Cycle is a series that defies narrative conventions of the fantasy genre in a lot of ways. There’s no big bad for the series; this final book’s villain was introduced at the end of the previous novel and is …
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TV #31 of 2016: New Girl, season 5 Year-old spoiler alert, but last season of New Girl ended with two characters getting engaged, and this season tracked the length of that engagement, ending with their wedding in the season finale. So that was fun to watch, as someone who’s getting married soon myself, since it’s …
Book #41 of 2016: Morning Star by Pierce Brown (Red Rising #3) A thrilling end to a spectacular trilogy. I do think this book was a minor step down from the first two Red Rising volumes, which had more cohesive plot structures than this one. Morning Star sometimes felt more like a sequence of discrete …
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Book #40 of 2016: Evil Genius by Catherine Jinks (Genius #1) This book got better around the halfway mark when the main character finally developed a conscience, but I still didn’t really love it. There were a lot of elements in this book that suggested a heightened comic-booky reality, but it never felt like the …
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TV #30 of 2016: The Flash, season 2 Zoom wasn’t quite as compelling a villain as last season’s Reverse Flash, partly because his master plan never really made much sense. But this season still delivered a lot of fun with its new multiverse setting, so on the whole I’d call it a success. I’m not …
TV #29 of 2016: DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, season 1 I hate to say it, but this latest Arrow spinoff was a complete and utter trainwreck. I kept watching for the shared continuity with the Arrowverse (and, okay, for Caity Lotz and Wentworth Miller), but I’m not sure if I can put up with another …
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