Book #222 of 2018: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter #5) The Harry Potter books are well-known for getting darker and deeper as they go along, aging up in target audience along with their main characters, but the hero’s surly teenage angst in this novel actually bothered …
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Book #221 of 2018: The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (The Ripliad #1) The plot to this mid-century crime thriller is admittedly thin, but it’s an outstanding character study of the insecure and sociopathic Tom Ripley. His author Patricia Highsmith paints Ripley as almost pedestrian in his casual amorality and petty jealousies, and while …
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Book #220 of 2018: Love & War by Melissa de la Cruz (Alex & Eliza #2) This novel, which spans from Alexander Hamilton’s wedding through his time as a lawyer after the Revolutionary War, has taken fewer liberties with the historical record than its predecessor — other than delaying the births of the Hamilton children …
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Book #219 of 2018: Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan (Takeshi Kovacs #3) There’s great potential in the idea of downloading human consciousness into different bodies, but none of the books in this loose trilogy have really lived up to it. This last novel feels especially disappointing, with its vengeance-obsessed protagonist coming across more like …
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Book #218 of 2018: It Devours! by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor (Welcome to Night Vale #2) Even more so than the first Welcome to Night Vale novel, I can’t imagine this book appealing much to any readers who are not already fans of the original podcast. The plot is brand-new, but it relies heavily …
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Book #217 of 2018: The Girl with the Red Balloon by Katherine Locke (The Balloonmakers #1) I have a hard time investing in this novel’s central romance, which consists of two frequently blushing and stammering teens who basically fall for one another at first sight. I also sometimes want more from the prose, which doesn’t …
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Book #216 of 2018: Dread Nation by Justina Ireland (Dread Nation #1) This novel offers a great character voice and an intriguing world: a version of Reconstruction-era America in which the Civil War has ended prematurely due to a sudden zombie uprising. Unfortunately, the plot is fairly uneven, and the tone is all over the …
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Book #215 of 2018: The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch (Gentleman Bastard #3) I have such mixed feelings about this book and what it portends for the rest of its series. In part that’s because it’s trying to do three very different things, and I think it accomplishes them with varying degrees of success. …
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TV #48 of 2018: Marvel’s Daredevil, season 3 I have some issues with how all-knowing Kingpin becomes in the back half of this season, and I’m not sure Matt’s no-killing policy really holds up under scrutiny, but overall this is a triumphant return to form for Daredevil. Clear and compelling character arcs, complex villains, great …
Book #214 of 2018: Caliban’s War by James S. A. Corey (The Expanse #2) This second novel in the Expanse series has some of the same issues as the first — like exoticizing and sexualizing the characters who aren’t white men — and a very similar plot, right down to the girl kidnapped by a …
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