TV #8 of 2022: Star Trek: Voyager, season 3 Overall, this third year of Star Trek’s Lost in Space riff displays the same weaknesses as before. Few of its episodes are terribly awful — and I’d even grant that none are as bad as some of the clunkers from season 2 — but they still …
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Book Review: The Mutation by K. A. Applegate
Book #22 of 2022: The Mutation by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #36) Another somewhat-middling Animorphs adventure, this time by one-off ghostwriter Erica Bobone. The initial premise is fine: the Yeerks are apparently still searching for the sunken Pemalite craft from #27 The Exposed, and have built an advanced heavy-duty submarine that the heroes decide they …
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Book Review: Evershore by Brandon Sanderson and Janci Patterson
Book #21 of 2022: Evershore by Brandon Sanderson and Janci Patterson (Skyward Flight #3) [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with the first author.] This final (?) Skyward novella feels like the most perfunctory of the lot, the entry whose events would be easiest to summarize in a sentence or two for any readers who skip …
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TV Review: The Book of Boba Fett, season 1
TV #7 of 2022: The Book of Boba Fett, season 1 This spinoff title coasts by on the lingering coolness of a live-action Star Wars show and the fun of revisiting the aftermath of Jabba the Hutt’s death from Return of the Jedi, but it’s a substantial step down in quality from its parent series …
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Book Review: The Boy Who Lost His Birthday: A Memoir of Loss, Survival, and Triumph by Laszlo Berkowits with Robert W. Kenny
Book #20 of 2022: The Boy Who Lost His Birthday: A Memoir of Loss, Survival, and Triumph by Laszlo Berkowits with Robert W. Kenny [Disclaimer: Although I did not meet him until 2016 and never knew him especially well, I am a member of the temple where Laszlo Berkowits served as Rabbi Emeritus until his …
Book Review: How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Book #19 of 2022: How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu This is less a novel than a sequence of tangentially-related chapter-length stories, and although individual moments either tug at the heartstrings or pose some intriguing sci-fi concepts, I’m pretty lukewarm on the project as a whole. It’s a book about a …
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Book Review: Skin of the Sea by Natasha Bowen
Book #18 of 2022: Skin of the Sea by Natasha Bowen (Skin of the Sea #1) I love that this YA historical fantasy novel features Black mermaids and other elements drawn from #ownvoices West African folklore, a simple fact of representation that I know is going to matter deeply to a lot of readers. I …
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Book Review: Suicide Run: Three Harry Bosch Stories by Michael Connelly
Book #17 of 2022: Suicide Run: Three Harry Bosch Stories by Michael Connelly A very quick read, containing just three short stories about detective Harry Bosch. (Another collection of three, Angle of Investigation, was released the following month; I have no idea why the publisher didn’t treat them as one single volume.) Of these, I …
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Book Review: Visser by K. A. Applegate
Book #16 of 2022: Visser by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs Chronicles #3) The Chronicles have been a consistently strong corner of the Animorphs franchise — perhaps surprisingly so, given how little they feature of our familiar teenage animal-morphing freedom fighters. In this third volume, for example, the spotlight lands on Visser One, the Yeerk commander …
Book Review: Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire
Book #15 of 2022: Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children #7) I might be over this series, which initially wowed me in its considerations of children who depart from dangerous yet fulfilling fantasy worlds only to discover a mundane life that no longer understands them. There’s great pathos in that concept …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 