Book #180 of 2024: Ithaca by Claire North (The Songs of Penelope #1) An extraordinarily effective Greek mythology retelling, centering on the character Penelope and the wider kingdom around her while her husband Odysseus is still lost at sea following the victory at Troy. (He’s been gone for 17 years, placing this novel roughly three …
Category Archives: Uncategorized
TV Review: What We Do in the Shadows, season 6
TV #50 of 2024: What We Do in the Shadows, season 6 A strong and funny sendoff to the gory vampire mockumentary, although not one that necessarily gives everyone in the ensemble a shared chance to shine. Nandor and Guillermo are as usual the (un)beating heart of the matter, and this farewell season is a …
Continue reading “TV Review: What We Do in the Shadows, season 6”
Book Review: Traveller’s Joy by Victoria Goddard
Book #179 of 2024: Traveller’s Joy by Victoria Goddard A short but sweet prequel / interlude in the madcap lives of Jemis and Hal from author Victoria Goddard’s Greenwing & Dart series, and one that I think would stand fairly well on its own for newcomers — although as ever, recognizing the web of sprawling …
Continue reading “Book Review: Traveller’s Joy by Victoria Goddard”
Book Review: The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern by Lynda Cohen Loigman
Book #178 of 2024: The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern by Lynda Cohen Loigman This historical fiction novel unfolds across two alternating timelines, set six decades apart. In the 1920s, teenager Augusta “Goldie” Stern works in her father’s Brooklyn pharmacy, growing close with his delivery boy Irving and learning some of her great-aunt’s homeopathic medicine …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern by Lynda Cohen Loigman”
Book Review: Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder by William Hope Hodgson
Book #177 of 2024: Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder by William Hope Hodgson This 1913 short story collection consists of six entries initially published in various British magazines a few years prior, all concerning the titular occult detective, Thomas Carnacki. His methods are somewhat like those of Sherlock Holmes, but his domain is the supernatural and especially …
Continue reading “Book Review: Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder by William Hope Hodgson”
TV Review: Babylon 5, season 2
TV #49 of 2024: Babylon 5, season 2 This science-fiction series has been steadily improving and growing darker in tone, but I’m still not ready in this second season to bump my critical rating up out of the midrange three-star tier. At its best, I’m really interested in the larger serialized story that the show …
Book Review: Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson
Book #176 of 2024: Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson (The Stormlight Archive #5) [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with this author.] Another 1300-page epic fantasy tome that very nearly justifies its massive length. (I listened to the audiobook on 2.5x speed, which still took literally 24 hours to complete.) The extended climax of this …
Continue reading “Book Review: Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson”
TV Review: The Lincoln Lawyer, season 3
TV #48 of 2024: The Lincoln Lawyer, season 3 Somewhere between three and four stars for me as a viewer, but I’ll round up due to my enjoying this TV outing more than the novel it’s based on, Michael Connelly’s fifth Lincoln Lawyer story The Gods of Guilt. (That means the Netflix series has now …
Book Review: Doctor Who: Eden Rebellion by Abi Falase
Book #175 of 2024: Doctor Who: Eden Rebellion by Abi Falase In my opinion this is the best of the three original Fifteenth Doctor novels released this year (i.e. not counting the episode novelizations), for the simple reason that author Abi Falase does a better job than the other writers at capturing the distinctive happy-go-lucky …
Continue reading “Book Review: Doctor Who: Eden Rebellion by Abi Falase”
Book Review: Artifact Space by Miles Cameron
Book #174 of 2024: Artifact Space by Miles Cameron (Arcana Imperii #1) This 2021 space opera debut exhibits one of my favorite sort of plot structures, which is to drill down into the minutiae of daily life in a strange environment while major storylines play out slowly in the background, surfacing occasionally but only really …
Continue reading “Book Review: Artifact Space by Miles Cameron”
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 