Book #338 of 2021: Terciel and Elinor by Garth Nix (The Old Kingdom #6) It’s always a pleasure to return to the Old Kingdom, that snowy landscape of necromancy and Charter Magic where the hereditary line of Abhorsens wield their seven enchanted bells to put the dead back to rest. Nevertheless, author Garth Nix has …
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Book #337 of 2021: The Sickness by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #29) I’m not ordinarily a fan of unrelated subplots coincidentally happening at the same time, and so I rolled my eyes a bit at the start of this novel, when two crises crash down upon the Animorphs at once. At a school dance — …
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Book #336 of 2021: The Matzah Ball by Jean Meltzer Let me start with what I like about this title, as that will be a shorter list. It is #ownvoices for both Judaism and chronic fatigue, and while I can’t speak to the authentic portrayal of the latter, seeing the former means an awful lot …
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Book #335 of 2021: The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto by Charles M. Blow This 2021 title is split between analysis and an ensuing call to action, and although I’m more struck by the former element — a comparison of racism in the U.S. North and South — I should acknowledge that I …
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Book #334 of 2021: Five Total Strangers by Natalie D. Richards Parts of this road-trip thriller are certainly effective, but I think it’s ultimately trying to do too much. The initial premise: when an oncoming blizzard grounds all flights on Christmas Eve, stranding the protagonist at the airport ahead of her canceled connection, she accepts …
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Book #333 of 2021: Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell I have a mixed reaction to this anthropological sci-fi gay romance. The cultural worldbuilding is neat, especially in its treatment of gender as performed / communicated primarily via jewelry, where the particular style denotes its wearer as either male, female, or nonbinary with no apparent biological …
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Book #332 of 2021: A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow (Fractured Fables #1) This delightful novella is one of the more original fairy tale retellings that I’ve seen, pitching its version of Sleeping Beauty as a young woman from our world, suffering from a debilitating illness predicted to kill her within a year, who …
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TV #84 of 2021: Star Wars Resistance, season 2 This batch of episodes is a marked improvement over the first, with main character Kazuda far less irritating now that he’s no longer juggling his poorly-disguised espionage missions with equally inept racing and mechanic work. I think that’s due partly to personal growth and partly just …
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Book #331 of 2021: The Experiment by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #28) “In the annals of stupid, screwed-up, pointless missions that was the stupidest, most pointless of them all,” says Marco at the end of this title, and it’s hard to really argue with him. 32 books into my decades-later reread of this series (including …
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Book #330 of 2021: The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie (Miss Marple #3) A weaker offering from author Agatha Christie. The premise here is that some anonymous person is sending nasty ‘poison pen’ letters to everyone in a small English village, accusing them of adultery and similar sins. (Our narrator, an outsider temporarily renting a …
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