Book #35 of 2025: Terec and the Wall by Victoria Goddard (Terec of Lund #2) To recap: the imperial valet Conju, a minor character in author Victoria Goddard’s best-known work The Hands of the Emperor, recounts in that novel the unknown fate of his lost love Terec, who fled civilization as a young man with …
Continue reading “Book Review: Terec and the Wall by Victoria Goddard”
Book #34 of 2025: This Book Kills by Ravena Guron I was expecting this novel — in which a student’s classmate is murdered in the same way as the victim in a story she wrote — to be a YA thriller, so it was a pleasant surprise to find it’s more of a traditional whodunnit …
Continue reading “Book Review: This Book Kills by Ravena Guron”
TV #11 of 2025: Babylon 5, season 3 Babylon 5 is so very nearly frustratingly close to being a good show. There are times when it manages to kick into that higher gear, such as this season when the rising authoritarianism on earth forces the station crew to openly break away from their homeworld and …
Book #33 of 2025: Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling Dr. Tamsin Rivers is losing her mind. She’s not sleeping well, she’s exhibiting odd memory lapses, and she’s going long periods without remembering to eat or leave the house. She’s also studying a strange House of Leaves phenomenon where her basement seems to …
Continue reading “Book Review: Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling”
Book #32 of 2025: Blood Over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang This standalone fantasy novel is a total delight, and also probably represents the biggest improvement I’ve ever seen an author display from their debut, which for M. L. Wang was the somewhat forgettable YA title Theonite: Planet Adyn. Her talents have grown considerably …
Continue reading “Book Review: Blood Over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang”
TV #10 of 2025: The Bear, season 1 I’ve never worked in a restaurant kitchen before, but the first year of this FX drama* is so evocative in conveying the chaos and stress of one that I can practically feel my body tightening up with every episode. (“But you’re enjoying it?” my wife asks in …
Book #31 of 2025: Doctor Who: Timewyrm: Genesys by John Peel (Virgin New Adventures #1) When Classic Doctor Who was canceled after its 26th season in 1989 — not that it was called Classic at the time — there was no expectation that the series would ever pick back up again on-screen. Virgin Publishing, running …
Continue reading “Book Review: Doctor Who: Timewyrm: Genesys by John Peel”
TV #9 of 2025: Classic Doctor Who, season 17 This is a strange year of Doctor Who! Less ambitious than the overarching Guardians / Key to Time stuff from the previous run, but that’s not such a bad thing given how poorly all that was executed. Unfortunately in its place we’ve got some definite clunkers …
Book #30 of 2025: Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson (Ernest Cunningham #1) A decent murder mystery of the snowed-in-with-a-rising-body-count subgenre. Unfortunately, as that description suggests, this is not the most original storyline, and I’ve personally found its efforts to stand out a little hokey. The narrator is very meta with …
Continue reading “Book Review: Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson”
Movie #2 of 2025: Saturday Night Live 50th Anniversary Special (2025) The ongoing fiftieth season of Saturday Night Live hasn’t seemed like much of an occasion thus far, so I’m glad that this three-hour anniversary special exists to help fill that gap. It’s jam-packed with former cast members and celebrity hosts, and it takes the …
Continue reading “Movie Review: Saturday Night Live 50th Anniversary Special (2025)”
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more