Book #125 of 2024: The Daughters’ War by Christopher Buehlman An excellent and appreciably queer new prequel to 2021’s The Blacktongue Priest, although the two stories are so standalone that they could probably be read in either order. Approaching them by release date, as I have, merely underscores the tragic nature of the present title: …
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Book #124 of 2024: Stone Speaks to Stone by Victoria Goddard A roughly-standalone prequel novella to author Victoria Goddard’s Greenwing & Dart series (which is itself just a smaller piece of her overarching Nine Worlds fantasy saga). I’ve chosen to read it after the first three G&D novels, which feels like the right choice, as …
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Book #123 of 2024: You’d Look Better as a Ghost by Joanna Wallace A heavy but hilarious dark comedy / noir mystery investigation / trenchant antihero character study, this tale of a suburban female serial killer has major early Dexter vibes in all the best ways (mixed with something like Where’d You Go, Bernadette, perhaps). …
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TV #37 of 2024: Star Trek: Prodigy, season 2 A thoroughly excellent time-travel adventure, and probably the best season-over-season improvement in all of Star Trek. The debut year of this animated program was endearing but clunky, with an unclear intended audience and a disappointing incorporation of its Delta Quadrant setting. However, the show improved as …
Book #122 of 2024: On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service by Anthony Fauci, M.D. Dr. Anthony Fauci may not have become a household name until the recent COVID-19 pandemic, but that experience capped off a long and distinguished career in patient care, scientific research, and public health policy. In this 2024 autobiography, the …
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Book #121 of 2024: The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King One of Stephen King’s regular preoccupations as a horror author seems to be the idea of a person getting stuck in confined circumstances just off the track from their ordinary life. This 1999 novel, in which a nine-year-old girl winds up separated …
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Book #120 of 2024: Doctor Who: Caged by Una McCormack A solid Doctor Who adventure, mostly notable for the entirely non-humanoid cast outside of the Fifteenth Doctor and his companion Ruby Sunday. That’s the sort of approach I love to see from the wider canon of this franchise, taking advantage of the freedom from visual …
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TV #36 of 2024: Orphan Black: Echoes, season 1 So far a pretty underwhelming sequel series. In fact, I’d say there are two wholly separate strands of criticism that can be launched at this new show: it is both a generic dull techno-conspiracy thriller with plot holes aplenty, and it is a poor fit for …
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Book #119 of 2024: While the Light Lasts and Other Stories by Agatha Christie Unless I’m mistaken, I have now reached the end of my long journey through author Agatha Christie’s considerable body of novels and short story collections. In fact, this particular anthology was actually published in 1997, substantially after her 1976 death, but …
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Book #118 of 2024: Brat by Gabriel Smith I suspect this isn’t what Charli XCX meant by brat summer, but the narrator of this 2024 Gen Z gothic horror novel — who shares a name, age, and occupation with its debut author Gabriel Smith — is certainly going through an experience. His father has just …
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