TV #47 of 2024: The Umbrella Academy, season 3 As a series, The Umbrella Academy has benefited from the time it’s had to develop its main characters, who are interestingly dysfunctional and comfortably grown into their respective superpowers at this point. But the plot around them is a mess, simultaneously dragging on and seeming to …
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Book #172 of 2024: Meltdown by Chris Archer (Mindwarp #10) A weird end to a chaotic series, and probably the first one that really earns the “Mindwarp” title. These books have always been like a middle-grade sci-fi sampler project, and so it’s only fitting that the final volume introduces its younger readers to another few …
Book #171 of 2024: The Overstory by Richard Powers The language in this 2019 Pulitzer Prize winner is undeniably lovely at times, but as a whole, I’m afraid it’s rather bounced off of me. The structure and length is one issue: this is a very long book, and it spends almost its entire first third …
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TV #46 of 2024: Classic Doctor Who, season 15 This is the halfway mark of Tom Baker’s record seven seasons as the Fourth Doctor, and despite his ongoing popularity in that role, it’s also unfortunately where the shine starts to come off. Behind the scenes, Graham Williams replaced Philip Hinchcliffe as producer, and the series …
Book #170 of 2024: Issola by Steven Brust (Vlad Taltos #9) The back half of this novel is rather good, representing an important step forward for former assassin and current fugitive Vlad Taltos, who’s come out of hiding to help a few friends who’ve been kidnapped by some sort of demigods. It also hinges on …
Book #169 of 2024: Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon I saw this book pitched as the Gilmore girls investigating a murder, and that’s honestly a pretty decent shorthand for the character dynamics at play: a small-town fifteen-year-old who discovers the body and is initially considered a suspect, the single mom who had her as …
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Book #168 of 2024: Clary Sage by Victoria Goddard Morrowlea University is an important part of the backstory of author Victoria Goddard’s Greenwing & Dart series, which begins soon after its protagonist Jemis Greenwing graduates and returns home from there. As we learn as those stories unfold, the institution is alone among its peers in …
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Book #167 of 2024: The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop I knew vaguely that actress Kelly Bishop — most iconic to my generation as the matriarch Emily on the show Gilmore Girls — had been one of the original cast members of the Broadway musical A Chorus Line when she was younger. What I …
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Book #166 of 2024: Voyage of the Damned by Frances White I’ve heard this book described as a fantasy-genre version of an Agatha Christie story like And Then There Were None, but I think The Hunger Games might be an even more apt comparison for the steadily-rising body count. While the identity of the murderer(s) …
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Book #165 of 2024: Grief in the Fourth Dimension by Jennifer Yu Two recently deceased teenagers, who attended the same high school but didn’t really know one another there, now find themselves sharing a room together in the afterlife. The space is an empty void they can populate by wishing for furnishings, but the main …
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