Book #179 of 2017: Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler (Patternist #1) Anyanwu is an African shapeshifter who has survived for centuries by healing all physical damage and keeping her body young. She thinks there’s no other person remotely like herself until she meets Doro, a man millennia past his own natural lifespan but whose …
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Book #178 of 2017: Emperor Mage by Tamora Pierce (The Immortals #3) This third novel in Tamora Pierce’s Immortals quartet is the first one that I’ve felt approached the quality of the other books I’ve read in her wider Tortall series. The main character is still absurdly overpowered – she’s already able to magically communicate …
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TV #36 of 2017: The Grinder, season 1 I have such a soft spot for this silly little show about an actor convinced he can practice law at his brother’s firm just because he used to play a lawyer on TV. It’s just so rich in character-driven humor and meta-commentary on TV show plots, and …
TV #35 of 2017: Game of Thrones, season 7 All in all, this is probably one of the weakest seasons of Game of Thrones. As cool as it is to see long-anticipated developments finally happening – and it really is cool, don’t get me wrong – it’s a little disappointing how many characters have developed …
Book #177 of 2017: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon In the late 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt rejected a government proposal to establish a settlement for Jewish refugees within America’s Alaskan Territory. The U.S. instead largely blocked Jewish immigration, and ultimately over six million European Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Author Michael Chabon …
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TV #34 of 2017: Marvel’s The Defenders, season 1 Plotwise, this show is basically just another season of Daredevil. Yes, he’s teaming up with some superfriends, but the main character arc is Matt’s, and the most important returning characters / concepts come primarily from his show (with Iron Fist as a distant second). There are …
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TV #33 of 2017: Marvel’s Jessica Jones, season 1 My wife and I watched/rewatched this season respectively before binge-watching the new Defenders season with friends. It remains a really great examination of male privilege and rape culture, using the heightened storytelling language of superpowers to explore those issues. Like the best of the fantasy genre, …
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TV #32 of 2017: Master of None, season 2 On balance, I think this season was about on par with the first one, which I really liked. Some things were even stronger here, such as that standout Thanksgiving episode about Denise, but the love story in this season never really hooked me. I think Francesca …
TV #31 of 2017: Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 2 Well, this is a step up from the rough edges of season 1, but it’s still a little uneven. As with the original series (and just, serialized fiction in general), TNG seems to be strongest when it focuses on character work and recurring worldbuilding, …
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TV #30 of 2017: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, season 3 It’s weird to say that this season felt less ambitious in its storytelling, since we got fairly major new developments like Kimmy going to college, but somehow it does seem like everyone’s character development has sort of stalled at this point. The show is still reliably …
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