TV #1 of 2022: Scandal, season 4 This series remains compulsively watchable in the ludicrous audacity of its various developments, and it occasionally gives us some powerful character arcs, like the one this year of a shattered First Lady Mellie Grant picking herself back up after personal tragedy. Mostly, though? It’s a whole lot of …
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Book Review: The Prophecy by K. A. Applegate
Book #4 of 2022: The Prophecy by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #34) Another strong Animorphs adventure ghostwritten by Melinda Metz, who likewise penned the previous Cassie volume, #29 The Sickness. (Alas, it appears to be her final contribution to the series.) Surprisingly enough, this one is also a direct sequel to The Hork-Bajir Chronicles, revisiting …
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Book Review: The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros
Book #3 of 2022: The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros I am predisposed to appreciate #ownvoices Jewish fantasy, but even within that slowly blossoming genre, this new historical fiction novel about a gay teen haunted by the dybbuk of his murdered best friend should stand out. The immersive details bring to life the World’s Fair …
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Book Review: Tristan Strong Keeps Punching by Kwame Mbalia
Book #2 of 2022: Tristan Strong Keeps Punching by Kwame Mbalia (Tristan Strong #3) Certain scenes in this final Tristan Strong novel are terrific, but overall I would say that the middle-grade #ownvoices fantasy trilogy has never managed to recapture the magic of its first volume for me. As engaging as it remains to see …
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Book Review: The Nobleman’s Guide to Scandal and Shipwrecks by Mackenzi Lee
Book #1 of 2022: The Nobleman’s Guide to Scandal and Shipwrecks by Mackenzi Lee (Montague Siblings #3) Although it maintains the feel-good / hopepunk ethos and the commitment to marginalized historical voices of its predecessors, this final Montague Siblings novel never quite gets its hooks into me to the same extent. We’ve jumped forward a …
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Movie Review: Doctor Who: Eve of the Daleks (2022)
Movie #2 of 2022: Doctor Who: Eve of the Daleks (2022) This standalone adventure is Doctor Who at its absolute best. The premise of a steadily-shortening time loop, while not totally original, is still fairly distinctive, and is executed here with great aplomb, alternating humor with tense terror via the ticking clock of the countdown. …
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Movie Review: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
Movie #1 of 2022: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) A fun Marvel movie with a mostly Asian cast, built around setpiece homages to a variety of martial arts films of the past, from Jackie Chan’s work to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to Mortal Kombat of all things. It’s sad that the …
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Book Review: Reave the Just and Other Tales by Stephen R. Donaldson
Book #375 of 2021: Reave the Just and Other Tales by Stephen R. Donaldson This reread is the final book I’ll finish in 2021, and since that’s a bit of an occasion and author Stephen R. Donaldson is one of my favorites, I decided to review each of the stories in the collection individually. As …
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Book Review: Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott
Book #374 of 2021: Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott This pseudonymous (and therefore non-mystery) Agatha Christie novel from 1944 is my favorite thing I’ve read from her yet, under either byline. It’s a deceptively simple tale on its face: a middle-aged Englishwoman, delayed as the only passenger at a desert waystation whilst returning …
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Book Review: The Illusion by K. A. Applegate
Book #373 of 2021: The Illusion by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #33) Remember that Scholastic Book Fair series from the 90s with all the wacky covers of kids turning into animals? Haha, anyway, this is the volume where one of those middle-schoolers gets captured and violently tortured in excruciating detail for a good portion of …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 