TV #9 of 2025: Classic Doctor Who, season 17 This is a strange year of Doctor Who! Less ambitious than the overarching Guardians / Key to Time stuff from the previous run, but that’s not such a bad thing given how poorly all that was executed. Unfortunately in its place we’ve got some definite clunkers …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
Book #30 of 2025: Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson (Ernest Cunningham #1) A decent murder mystery of the snowed-in-with-a-rising-body-count subgenre. Unfortunately, as that description suggests, this is not the most original storyline, and I’ve personally found its efforts to stand out a little hokey. The narrator is very meta with …
Continue reading “Book Review: Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson”
Movie Review: Saturday Night Live 50th Anniversary Special (2025)
Movie #2 of 2025: Saturday Night Live 50th Anniversary Special (2025) The ongoing fiftieth season of Saturday Night Live hasn’t seemed like much of an occasion thus far, so I’m glad that this three-hour anniversary special exists to help fill that gap. It’s jam-packed with former cast members and celebrity hosts, and it takes the …
Continue reading “Movie Review: Saturday Night Live 50th Anniversary Special (2025)”
Book Review: Amari and the Despicable Wonders by B. B. Alston
Book #29 of 2025: Amari and the Despicable Wonders by B. B. Alston (Supernatural Investigations #3) A significant step down for a previously-charming middle-grade fantasy series. I gave the first two novels four stars apiece for their freshness and overall fun, but this one feels like a generic and less entertaining Percy Jackson ripoff. You …
Continue reading “Book Review: Amari and the Despicable Wonders by B. B. Alston”
Book Review: Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland
Book #28 of 2025: Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland A raunchy yet oddly sexless pirate fantasy comedy. Which is to say that the characters in this story are all obsessed with sex and talk about it incessantly in the vulgarest of terms, but nothing more graphic than makeouts or a naked arm …
Continue reading “Book Review: Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland”
Book Review: An Academy for Liars by Alexis Henderson
Book #27 of 2025: An Academy for Liars by Alexis Henderson The opening sequence to this horror-fantasy novel is appropriately chilling: our protagonist, standing between two mirrors in the bathroom, notices a distant figure in the receding reflections that isn’t behaving like the others. In fact, it’s slowly walking towards her, weaving through all the …
Continue reading “Book Review: An Academy for Liars by Alexis Henderson”
TV Review: Sex Education, season 4
TV #8 of 2025: Sex Education, season 4 This is an odd final season of a show that probably didn’t need one. It surprisingly carries through on the threat from the previous year to close down Moordale Secondary, which means that this one takes place in an entirely different school, with some of the familiar …
Book Review: Tiassa by Steven Brust
Book #26 of 2025: Tiassa by Steven Brust (Vlad Taltos #13) I don’t know that I would call this volume a novel like the others in its series have been. Instead it’s more like a triptych of loosely-connected smaller stories, none of which are developed at enough length to really satisfy. Part of the issue …
Book Review: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Book #25 of 2025: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke I first read this fantasy novel soon after its initial 2004 publication, and have found myself drawn back to its wonders at least once a decade since. It is a dense and intricate creation: 782 pages in my hardcover edition, detailing an alternate …
Continue reading “Book Review: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke”
Book Review: The Weaver of the Middle Desert by Victoria Goddard
Book #24 of 2025: The Weaver of the Middle Desert by Victoria Goddard (The Sisters Avramapul #3) Another delightful Arabian-tinged fairy tale involving the three young heroines, who by now are seasoned adventurers (though Sardeet and Pali have still yet to join up with the notorious Red Company that will someday spread their fame across …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Weaver of the Middle Desert by Victoria Goddard”
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 