Book #7 of 2025: Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao (Iron Widow #2) An excellent follow-up to author Xiran Jay Zhao’s smash hit Iron Widow, a YA feminist sci-fi reimagining of China’s 7th-century Empress Regent Wu Zetian. Although it doesn’t carry the same gleeful fury or as many giant mecha action sequences as the original …
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Book #6 of 2025: Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs The nicest thing I can say about this 2023 contemporary fantasy novel is that it is a vastly superior execution of certain similar ideas from Gareth Brown’s The Book of Doors, which was published the following year. I’m sure the resemblances are coincidental, but …
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TV #1 of 2025: Sex Education, season 1 Thankfully much stronger than the raunchy comedy I was half-expecting this series to be, although it certainly doesn’t shy away from its mature subject matter and offers some admittedly hilarious laughs along the way. The concept of a shy virgin with his own share of hangups channeling …
Book #5 of 2025: From Dust, a Flame by Rebecca Podos Three-and-a-half stars, rounded up. This novel is pretty YA, in a way that I think I’m finally starting to outgrow as I approach my late-thirties. There are lots of flowery poetic descriptions of how the teenage protagonist feels about her newly-discovered love interest, for …
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Book #4 of 2025: Jhegaala by Steven Brust (Vlad Taltos #11) There’s always been a noir element in the DNA of this fantasy sequence, but it’s rarely as overt as it is in this installment, which finds the ex-assassin Vladimir Taltos traveling in the East, far from the familiar Draegaran Empire. (For those reading his …
Book #3 of 2025: House of Odysseus by Claire North (The Songs of Penelope #2) Unfortunately not as gripping as the first book in the series, though just as committed to its feminist reclamation of Penelope’s traditional narrative. The problem here is that the previous volume already established her basic status quo keeping the suitors …
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Book #2 of 2025: The Saint of the Bookstore by Victoria Goddard A lovely midwinter interlude in the Greenwing & Dart series, taking place soon after #6 Plum Duff and following up on a certain momentous development from #4 Blackcurrant Fool. The protagonist is a new character, a sister from a religious order, who’s been …
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Book #1 of 2025: The Art of ReBoot by David Roberts and Gavin Blair Inspired by the recent ReBoot: ReWind documentary, I decided to check out this art book from 2007 (via InterLibrary Loan — I had an eBay alert set up for a little while, but I never saw any used copies going for …
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Book #188 of 2024: Deep Black by Miles Cameron (Arcana Imperii #2) A competent military sci-fi / space opera that unfortunately shies away from the interpersonal drama that I found so appealing in the first book of this series. Our protagonist is no longer new to the service, her lies about her past have come …
TV #53 of 2024: The Umbrella Academy, season 4 Even for a messy series that’s always coasted on vibes and fun personal interactions at the expense of any legible story elements, this farewell season is a bit of a rough time. The shortened episode count doesn’t help, nor does the fact that the writers have …
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