Book #82 of 2020: As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes with Joe Layden A light but sweet look back at the production of the 1980s cult classic The Princess Bride through the eyes of its leading man. This is definitely one of those books that’s helped …
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Book Review: The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin
Book #81 of 2020: The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin (Great Cities #1) I don’t know if this is intentional or not, but author N. K. Jemisin’s foray into urban fantasy reads rather like a 1990s throwback, with its tale of five New Yorkers who become powerful avatars of their respective boroughs harkening …
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Book Review: The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez
Book #80 of 2020: The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez This sci-fi story changes shape rather dramatically at several points, and the ending veers a bit too far into the abstract and surreal for my tastes. But gosh — there’s just so much I adore in the novel that makes up for all that. This …
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TV Review: Russian Doll, season 1
TV #10 of 2020: Russian Doll, season 1 This story about a woman repeatedly dying in a decaying time loop — Happy Death Day meets The Langoliers, roughly — takes a little while to grow on me, and I’m still not convinced its internal logic quite checks out. But the characters are endearing, and I’ve …
Book Review: The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
Book #79 of 2020: The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel As in her earlier Station Eleven, author Emily St. John Mandel has a real talent for crafting lifelike protagonists whose personal struggles are deeply compelling to watch unfold. Here, however, I feel as though those threads are too often truncated individually, and too …
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Book Review: War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi
Book #78 of 2020: War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi (War Girls #1) This #ownvoices sci-fi novel is an amazingly brutal piece of Afrofuturism, sort of like Black Panther by way of Mad Max: Fury Road. Inspired by the Nigerian Civil War (as experienced by author Tochi Onyebuchi’s mother), it tracks two teenage sisters who end …
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TV Review: Better Call Saul, season 4
TV #9 of 2020: Better Call Saul, season 4 My original review from 2018: “I’ve mentioned this before, but one reason that I prefer Better Call Saul to its parent show is that Walter White has always struck me as being evil right from the start – Breaking Bad could be exciting and horrifying, but …
Book Review: Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights? by Lemony Snicket
Book #77 of 2020: Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights? by Lemony Snicket (All the Wrong Questions #4) I’ve been somewhat lukewarm on this prequel series, but it goes out on a suitably climactic high note, with most of the action confined to the tight spaces of a speeding train. Lemony Snicket …
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Book Review: Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland
Book #76 of 2020: Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland (Dread Nation #2) This Reconstruction-era zombie sequel is enough of an improvement over the debut that I’m happy to bump my rating up to four stars. Overall the various elements are maybe still pulling in too many different directions, but a nebulous plot works better here …
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Book Review: And I Darken by Kiersten White
Book #75 of 2020: And I Darken by Kiersten White (The Conqueror’s Saga, #1) I like the idea of this YA alternative history about the young life of a female Vlad the Impaler, but the plot throughout this first volume hasn’t gripped me just yet. Although Lada and her brother are captives of the Ottoman …
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