Book #47 of 2016: The Rook by Daniel O’Malley (The Checquy Files #1) The Rook begins like a Jason Bourne story, with its main character surrounded by assailants she has apparently killed but with no memory of anything before that moment. In execution, it’s more like Octavia Butler’s excellent vampire novel Fledgling, since our amnesiac …
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Book Review: Needful Things by Stephen King
Book #46 of 2016: Needful Things by Stephen King Needful Things is better than The Tommyknockers, but not as good as ‘Salem’s Lot – two other Stephen King novels that share its same basic story structure of a supernatural presence slowly corrupting and effectively destroying a small town. The fact that Needful Things is set …
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Movie Review: The Martian (2015)
Movie #12 of 2016: The Martian (2015) This was my second time watching this movie, but my first time since reading the book it was based on. (I normally like to read a book before I see its movie adaptation, but the waiting list at my library for this one was super-long, and I really …
Book Review: The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi
Book #45 of 2016: The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi (Jean le Flambeur #1) I sympathize with speculative fiction writers who don’t want to explain things about their universe that would be obvious to its characters, but there still need to be some clues for readers to pick up on. The Quantum Thief throws you …
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Book Review: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Book #44 of 2016: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke This is at least the third time that I’ve read this book, but the last time was more than five years ago (which is why I wanted to do another reread before I watched the recent BBC miniseries adaptation). It remains an astonishing …
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Book Review: Calamity by Brandon Sanderson
Book #43 of 2016: Calamity by Brandon Sanderson (The Reckoners #3) This conclusion to Brandon Sanderson’s trilogy about post-apocalyptic superpowers doesn’t quite stick the landing. For one thing, the villain set up at the end of book 2 turns out to be far less formidable than the foes David and the other Reckoners have faced …
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TV Review: Archer, season 7
TV #33 of 2016: Archer, season 7 Given its ratings, this may be the last season of Archer, and if so, it’s ending on kind of a weird note. But this season was still pretty funny, and I enjoyed the show’s latest attempt at rebooting itself, this time casting its characters (who originally were spies …
Movie Review: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Movie #11 of 2016: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) This is at least the third time I’ve seen this film, and the initial thoughts I jotted down in 2015 still stand: “This is such a good movie on every level, from character to worldbuilding to plot to sheer pulse-pounding spectacle. I still have the film …
TV Review: Arrow, season 4
TV #32 of 2016: Arrow, season 4 Damien Dahrk was absolutely the sort of magnetic, scenery-chewing villain that Arrow needed after last season’s tired Ra’s al Ghul arc. But with the exception of Dahrk, this season still struggled to hit the heights of Arrow’s first two years. It would make sense for the next season …
Book Review: The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater
Book #42 of 2016: The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven Cycle #4) The Raven Cycle is a series that defies narrative conventions of the fantasy genre in a lot of ways. There’s no big bad for the series; this final book’s villain was introduced at the end of the previous novel and is …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 