Book #117 of 2024: Shape-Shifter by Chris Archer (Mindwarp #5) A fun twist for this middle-grade 90s sci-fi series. For four books now, we’ve been hearing backstory about how Todd Aldridge mysteriously vanished on his thirteenth birthday, and watching as a succession of his classmates have both gained access to special powers and quickly had …
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Book #116 of 2024: Mirrored Heavens by Rebecca Roanhorse (Between Earth and Sky #3) A satisfyingly epic conclusion to this queer and Mesoamerican-flavored fantasy trilogy. As expected, it doesn’t quite hit the heights of the first volume, while cementing the middle book as a fairly forgettable bridge towards this more eventful finale. But everything wraps …
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Book #115 of 2024: Taltos by Steven Brust (Vlad Taltos #4) We’ve once again jumped around in the timeline for this fourth Vlad Taltos installment, though as usual, the context clues make it pretty easy to place the adventure in its proper spot within the protagonist’s personal lifespan. In this case, it’s his earliest outing …
Book #114 of 2024: James by Percival Everett Mark Twain’s 1885 novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an admittedly flawed work: progressively antiracist for its time, with its young white southern protagonist helping a Black man escape from slavery and generally coming to believe in the abolitionist cause more broadly, but with a tendency to …
TV #35 of 2024: Seinfeld, season 8 The penultimate year of this 90s sitcom is the first one without the involvement of co-creator Larry David, and the difference is rather immediately felt. Structurally, the show stops using a clip of Jerry’s standup act to launch each episode — reportedly the actor-producer was now too busy …
Book #113 of 2024: Whiskeyjack by Victoria Goddard (Greenwing & Dart #3) Another noticeable step forward for this Regency-pastiche fantasy series, though still not quite strong enough to clear the three-star rating tier for me. (I thought it might for a while, but the lengthy scene where Jemis applies esoteric Kabbalistic cryptography to decipher a …
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Book #112 of 2024: One Way Back by Christine Blasey Ford Author Christine Blasey Ford doesn’t spend much time in this new memoir belaboring the sexual assault she experienced as a teenager at the hands of future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. As she notes, the whole world watched her testimony at his confirmation hearing …
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Book #111 of 2024: Translation State by Ann Leckie Like her previous novel Provenance, this latest sci-fi story from author Ann Leckie technically stands on its own, yet is set in the same continuity as her earlier Imperial Radch trilogy, which provides a fair degree of important background context on the various species, technologies, and …
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Book #110 of 2024: A Whisper in the Walls by Scott Reintgen (Waxways #2) This second novel in the Waxways YA fantasy trilogy has quintessential middle volume problems, laying foundations for the conclusion ahead at the expense of the immediate story at hand. It also represents a significant step down in quality from its predecessor, …
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TV #34 of 2024: Classic Doctor Who, season 13 Tom Baker’s second year as the Doctor — Elisabeth Sladen’s third as his intrepid feminist reporter friend Sarah Jane Smith — is a pretty good one, although it finds the series still shaking off the final vestiges of his predecessor’s era. This season gives us the …
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