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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Movie #5 of 2026: Rocky (1976) The original Rocky film is one of those neat pieces of media where the on-screen plot aligns nicely with the behind-the-scenes story. Viewers get to see a poor boxer plucked from obscurity to fight the heavyweight champion in a nationally-televised bout, going further than anyone thought possible thanks to …
Book #16 of 2026: Privateers by Ben Bova This 1985 sci-fi novel is the debut volume that author Ben Bova wrote in what became his Grand Tour sequence, although it would subsequently be rendered non-canonical by real-life events influencing how the later books developed. The story here is set in the mid-twenty-first century, in which …
Book #15 of 2026: Doctor Who: The Highest Science by Gareth Roberts (Virgin New Adventures #11) Author Gareth Roberts hasn’t had any fiction published professionally for almost a decade, ever since falling down the same transphobic pipeline as J. K. Rowling. (I can’t say how much of that is by choice versus industry blacklist, though …
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Book #14 of 2026: Slow Gods by Claire North Here’s a space opera full of imaginative worldbuilding detail that still manages to feel empty without compelling characters to populate the setting. Both the narrator’s tone and the general plot remind me of the Animorphs spinoff The Ellimist Chronicles, in which an alien being survives the …
Book #13 of 2026: The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2025 edited by Nnedi Okorafor I got my hopes up during the introduction to this collection, in which series editor John Joseph Adams explains the selection methodology: he himself read several thousand short stories of genre fiction published throughout a single calendar year, aiming …
Overall rating: ★★★★☆ Previously on Film Franchise Fridays:
Movie #4 of 2026: The Matrix Resurrections (2021) Legacy sequels are all the rage lately, with Keanu Reeves even appearing in an unnecessary Bill & Ted venture the year before reprising his more famous role of Neo for this fourth Matrix film. The business reasons behind the trend are obvious, as studios seek to capitalize …
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Book #12 of 2026: Funny Story by Emily Henry This is my third Emily Henry romance, and while it hasn’t topped Book Lovers for me, I’m relieved it’s not as frustrating a read as Happy Place, either. I’ll split the difference and give this one 3.5 stars, rounded up. The romcom premise is irresistibly ludicrous: …
Book #11 of 2026: The Little Friend by Donna Tartt The critical consensus on author Donna Tartt’s second novel seems to be that it’s immersively drawn but plodding in plot, which I feel is basically accurate and yet rather beside the point. Which is to say, the story definitely shines best as a slice-of-life family …
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