Book #23 of 2020: Star Wars: Dooku: Jedi Lost by Cavan Scott The treacherous Count Dooku feels like a bit of an afterthought in the Star Wars prequel movies, but I’m glad I took a chance on this recent full-cast audiobook fleshing out his backstory. It’s easy for franchise media tie-ins to come off as …
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Book #22 of 2020: Lalani of the Distant Sea by Erin Entrada Kelly I like the idea behind this wandering maritime adventure — think The Voyage of the Dawn Treader crossed with Disney’s Moana, roughly — but I feel like it would have been stronger if the point-of-view had stuck with the title heroine throughout …
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TV #1 of 2020: The Good Place, season 4 This heartfelt sitcom about trying to become a better person in the afterlife never quite surpassed its stellar first season, but it’s remained a surprisingly hilarious exploration of moral philosophy and a great showcase for the sort of tender character development creator Michael Schur perfected on …
Book #21 of 2020: Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor (Akata Witch #1) This middle-grade series debut has some terrific #ownvoices African-inspired fantasy worldbuilding, but it lags behind in matching that with any significant narrative development or character arcs. So much of the novel consists of either pure exposition about the setting or else the protagonist …
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Book #20 of 2020: Unquenchable Fire by Rachel Pollack This is a supremely odd book, and I’m honestly not sure whether I like it or not. The incomplete and elliptical reveals to its slipstream worldbuilding offer ambiguities that feel worth lingering over, but they also keep the reader at a certain distance from fully engaging …
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Book #19 of 2020: Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson As a fantasy and superhero buff, I have no issues with this novel’s premise of twins who erupt in flames when their emotions get out of control. And I accept the bond that develops between them and their new caretaker. But I just cannot …
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Book #18 of 2020: A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine (Teixcalaan #1) Overall a delightful piece of diplomatic-anthropological science-fiction, like the Imperial Radch trilogy mixed with The Traitor Baru Cormorant and just a dash of Altered Carbon. When her people’s ambassador to a conquering space empire suddenly dies, our protagonist is sent off to …
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Book #17 of 2020: Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow Ronan Farrow is one of the journalists who helped to finally build a public case against Harvey Weinstein’s serial predation of women in Hollywood, and I initially wasn’t sure that I needed to read his account of …
Book #16 of 2020: Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones (Chrestomanci #1) The start of a long-overdue reread to this fantasy series that I loved as a child, pre-Harry Potter. (And indeed, there are some definite similarities between Harry and this novel’s hero even beyond their distinct Britishness, from the wide-eyed entrance into a world …
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Book #15 of 2020: A Beginning at the End by Mike Chen True to its title, this post-apocalyptic novel opens after the point when many stories of its genre have finished: with humanity decimated by plague, but its societies generally through the transitional chaos and now beginning to rebuild. It’s also a time of fresh …
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