Book #91 of 2020: Spellhacker by M. K. England I like this novel’s conceit of magic as a tightly-controlled natural resource that criminals are hired to siphon off from the government pipeline, and I definitely appreciate author M. K. England’s commitment to representing diversity of race and gender in this setting. Among other inclusive elements, …
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Book #90 of 2020: Conrad’s Fate by Diana Wynne Jones (Chrestomanci #5) This fifth Chrestomanci volume — in both publication and author’s suggested reading order; actually the second chronologically — has a great set-up, but it throws out too many intriguing complications that aren’t given the development they’d need to land with any proper impact. …
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TV #11 of 2020: Brooklyn Nine-Nine, season 7 Another solid run of this police workplace comedy (sitcop?), reliably delivering jokes but not really knocking it out of the park anymore. Brooklyn Nine-Nine has an unfortunate tendency to shy away from follow-through on any big narrative moves, and sure enough, this batch of episodes swiftly reverts …
Book #89 of 2020: The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson I admire the ambition of this novel to build up an alternate world history across six centuries — in which the Black Death kills off almost all of Europe, and China and a Muslim empire become the dominant geopolitical powers instead …
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Book #88 of 2020: The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers (Zamonia #1) I absolutely adore this wild and whimsical adventure novel, detailing the tall-tale nautical escapades of a talking blue bear. (Life inside a stable tornado! The famous dueling liars of Atlantis! Impressment on the biggest ship in the world! Microscopic mini-pirates!) …
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Book #87 of 2020: Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife by Bart D. Ehrman An interesting topic, delivered in a somewhat dry and academic tone. The general thesis of the work is that modern Christianity’s conceptions of the hereafter are not exactly what would have been believed throughout history, and we can trace …
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Book #86 of 2020: Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee (The Machineries of Empire #1) The technology in this setting is interesting — powered by dogmatic acceptance of mathematical principles throughout an area of space, and weakened by anyone there entertaining alternate heretical theories — but readers face a pretty steep learning curve before that …
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Book #85 of 2020: The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix The tone of this novel in which a group of 90s housewives take on an undead interloper in their suburb community could so easily trip over into camp, but author Grady Hendrix avoids that by rooting the narrative in a …
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Book #84 of 2020: Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond by Sonia Shah This popular science title from 2016 offers an engaging and informative explanation of disease outbreaks, focused primarily on the biology of the pathogens that carry them. Author Sonia Shah has literally given TED Talks on the subject, and it …
Book #83 of 2020: Assassin’s Fate by Robin Hobb (The Fitz and the Fool #3) The closing chapters of this 2017 fantasy novel form a meaningful sendoff to the hero and world first introduced in 1995’s Assassin’s Apprentice. Overall, however, the book is far too slow and exposition-heavy — and because the larger Realm of …
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