TV #6 of 2026: 12 Monkeys, season 3 I still think this sci-fi series was more interesting back when its time-traveling protagonists were more straightforwardly trying to avert a plague and the subsequent dystopian future, rather than opposing an evil cult that’s nebulously aiming to somehow break the timeline itself. But with that caveat, this …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: The Time Traveler’s Passport edited by John Joseph Adams
Book #22 of 2026: The Time Traveler’s Passport edited by John Joseph Adams The assembled titles in this collection of time travel short fiction get nearly the full range of ratings from me, which is often true of such anthologies. But since there are only six stories here, I guess I might as well review …
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Movie Review: Rocky II (1979)
Movie #6 of 2026: Rocky II (1979) Rocky (1976) was a genuine cultural sensation that deservedly launched its writer and lead actor Sylvester Stallone into Hollywood stardom. Expectations would thus have been pretty high for this sequel, in which he returns to those roles while also picking up directing duties, but in my opinion, it …
Book Review: The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon
Book #21 of 2026: The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon As made famous in the Gordon Lightfoot ballad the following year, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald was a cargo ship that sank in Lake Superior in 1975, “when the gales of November came early.” The exact cause …
TV Review: Wonder Man, season 1
TV #5 of 2026: Wonder Man, season 1 This Marvel miniseries is a little shaggy in its storytelling — did we really need an entire episode devoted to the minor character Doorman, in a season with only eight installments in total? — but it pulls its various threads together enough to satisfy me in the …
Book Review: Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones
Book #20 of 2026: Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones This 1984 fantasy novel offers a weird and problematic little bildungsroman. Author Diana Wynne Jones excels as usual at the quotidian slice-of-life business and the unexpected intrusion of magic into the ordinary, but there are a few major hurdles that readers will need to …
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TV Review: Our Flag Means Death, season 1
TV #4 of 2026: Our Flag Means Death, season 1 These ten episodes improve as they go along, particularly once the writers lay down their cards and start embracing the queer themes directly. Though the series has gained notoriety as the gay pirate show, the only indication of that status early on is that a …
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Book Review: Long Chills & Case Dough: A Sanderson Curiosity by Brandon Sanderson
Book #19 of 2026: Long Chills & Case Dough: A Sanderson Curiosity by Brandon Sanderson [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with this author.] This short novella was written in the early 2000s and included as an extra gift to backers of author Brandon Sanderson’s massive Kickstarter campaign in 2023 (now subtitled as A Sanderson Curiosity, …
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Book Review: The Heir Apparent by Rebecca Armitage
Book #18 of 2026: The Heir Apparent by Rebecca Armitage Three-and-a-half stars, rounded up. I generally don’t like when a narrating protagonist keeps important things hidden from the reader for so long, but the character in this case is so well-rendered that it’s easy to be invested in her dilemmas regardless. She’s not a perfect …
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Book Review: Yellow Jessamine by Caitlin Starling
Book #17 of 2026: Yellow Jessamine by Caitlin Starling This horror-fantasy title has potential, but the novella format ultimately works against it by not offering enough room for adequate development of its ideas. An herbalist and shipping magnate in a blockaded city becomes aware of a strange new illness spreading through the population, rendering its …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 