Book #9 of 2024: Book of Names by John Peel (Diadem #1) A solid launch to a fun middle-grade fantasy series about a trio of kids drawn from separate worlds into a magical mystery linking them together. The worst thing about this first title is that it burns through so many of its ideas so …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: Endless Night by Agatha Christie
Book #8 of 2024: Endless Night by Agatha Christie This is not a mystery novel, although there’s a major death fairly late in the text and a subsequent twist that causes the reader to reevaluate what we’ve heard / understood about the story before that point. It could perhaps be seen as what would happen …
Continue reading “Book Review: Endless Night by Agatha Christie”
Book Review: Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi edited by Tom Hoeler
Book #7 of 2024: Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi edited by Tom Hoeler Another batch of 40 stories to celebrate the 40th anniversary of a Star Wars movie, this one centered around the background characters and/or events of Episode VI, Return of the Jedi. Some of these entries …
TV Review: Fargo, season 5
TV #3 of 2024: Fargo, season 5 I like sporadic elements of this season of Fargo. The gas station shoot-out in episode one is a remarkably tense action sequence, and Jon Hamm and Juno Temple are both acting up a storm with those accents. As ever for this anthology series, the midwestern pleasantries masking dark …
Book Review: The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White
Book #6 of 2024: The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White Another brutal story from author Andrew Joseph White, although just slightly less viscerally upsetting than his previous novel Hell Followed With Us. (The trans hero of this book is subjected to misgendering, institutionalization / conversion therapy, domestic abuse, and sexual assault dating …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White”
TV Review: Star Trek: Lower Decks, season 2
TV #2 of 2024: Star Trek: Lower Decks, season 2 I’m still not fully vibing with this cartoon’s irreverent tone, but it’s improved enough in this sophomore season that I’m willing to bump my rating up a notch from last time. My biggest issue in the program’s first year was the way the narrative seemed …
Continue reading “TV Review: Star Trek: Lower Decks, season 2”
TV Review: Echo, season 1
TV #1 of 2024: Echo, season 1 I’m torn in my reaction to this premiere ‘Marvel Spotlight’ production — a designation meant to indicate a series that, while canonical to the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe, should stand on its own for any audience and focus on smaller-scale personal stakes that don’t majorly affect any ongoing …
Book Review: The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet by Jeff Goodell
Book #5 of 2024: The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet by Jeff Goodell A harrowing look at the impact of climate change on human and non-human existence, really contextualizing how innocuous-sounding figures like a few degrees of global average temperature increase are in fact catastrophic for us. Author …
Book Review: Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse edited by John Joseph Adams
Book #4 of 2024: Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse edited by John Joseph Adams This 2008 anthology collects 22 short stories about life after various apocalyptic scenarios, all but one of which had been previously published elsewhere (although Stephen King’s plague journal “The End of the Whole Mess” was the only entry I’d read before). …
Continue reading “Book Review: Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse edited by John Joseph Adams”
Book Review: Orion and King Arthur by Ben Bova
Book #3 of 2024: Orion and King Arthur by Ben Bova (Orion #6) This is a pretty good rendition of the classic Arthurian legend, especially in its emotional build-up to the king’s fated tragic end. (I like the initial wrinkle of him meeting Beowulf in his younger days, too.) It’s a little stranger as an …
Continue reading “Book Review: Orion and King Arthur by Ben Bova”
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 