Book #58 of 2021: The Removed by Brandon Hobson This is a very fractured narrative, theoretically exploring the pain of a Native American family whose son was shot and killed by the police, but with a distance of 15 years from that event and minimal overt connections across the four protagonist POVs, which stymies the …
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Book #57 of 2021: Noumenon by Marina J. Lostetter (Noumenon #1) I’ve enjoyed much of this novel’s middle sections, but the beginning is boilerplate sci-fi, and I’m not quite satisfied by the rather abrupt and open ending. It’s the story of an interstellar fleet launched to investigate a strange object detected in deep space, a …
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Book #56 of 2021: Trunk Music by Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch #5) Like the other titles in its series, this is a reasonably solid procedural crime thriller — albeit a little heavy on coincidences, such as the protagonist encountering an old flame / new potential suspect while pursuing a lead in a different city or …
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TV #21 of 2021: Community, season 2 A big step up from an already-great first year, albeit not quite the flawless season I thought I remembered and wish it could be. The characters and serialized plotlines are each more complex, and Pierce’s turn as an overt villain in particular is a superb escalation which feeds …
Book #55 of 2021: Star Wars: The High Republic: Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule This debut title in the new High Republic project leaves a lot to be desired. In theory, the novel is functioning to introduce an earlier era when no other canonical Star Wars stories have yet been set, as well …
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Book #54 of 2021: Amari and the Night Brothers by B. B. Alston (Supernatural Investigations #1) Harry Potter comparisons can be a tad reductive and overdone, but that really is the vibe of this middle-grade adventure from debut author B. B. Alston, with a tween hero’s introduction to a hidden society of strange creatures and …
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Book #53 of 2021: A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes Everybody seems to be comparing this book to Madeline Miller’s Circe, and the similarities are admittedly striking between the two feminist retellings of Greek myth. But I think this title asks more of its readers in terms of bringing prior knowledge of the old stories …
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Book #52 of 2021: A Man Rides Through by Stephen R. Donaldson (Mordant’s Need #2) This 1987 sequel is a significant step up in pacing and action from its already-great predecessor, but it exhibits the same disappointing levels of sexism, torture, and rape, which are not always treated with the care that such sensitive topics …
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TV #20 of 2021: Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 7 With very few exceptions, this final span of TNG plays like a program that has essentially run out of fresh ideas. There’s no real shame in that — the series already had over 150 episodes under its belt ahead of this last run, not …
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Book #51 of 2021: The Listerdale Mystery by Agatha Christie A fine collection of short stories, although perhaps a bit too similar to one another overall. Despite the title, these are not mysteries in author Agatha Christie’s usual sense; there are no investigations or clues that a clever reader can race to put together before …
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