Book #24 of 2025: The Weaver of the Middle Desert by Victoria Goddard (The Sisters Avramapul #3) Another delightful Arabian-tinged fairy tale involving the three young heroines, who by now are seasoned adventurers (though Sardeet and Pali have still yet to join up with the notorious Red Company that will someday spread their fame across …
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Book #23 of 2025: The Hurricane Wars by Thea Guanzon (The Hurricane Wars #1) This romantasy debut improves as it goes along, to the point that I’ll grudgingly round my rating up to a mid-grade three stars for the book at large. That beginning is pretty rough, though! I don’t mind a nice enemies-to-lovers arc, …
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Book #22 of 2025: The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera One of the more distinctive fantasy novels I’ve ever read, and apparently loosely based on the life / legend of the Buddha’s son Rāhula (literally Fetter, the name of the protagonist here, so named because he represented a worldly connection the mystic knew …
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Book #21 of 2025: Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Omnibus by Robin Furth, Peter David, Richard Isanove, Sean Phillips, Luke Ross, Michael Lark, Laurence Campbell, and Alex Maleev This bound edition contains volumes 31-60 of Marvel’s comic book adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series, originally published from 2010 through 2013 under …
TV #7 of 2025: Farscape, season 3 Cast shakeups are hard. Some TV series take such overhauls in their stride, like Doctor Who‘s revolving door of companions and regenerations, while others can weather the occasional new arrival or departure by leaning into the mission at the core of the premise and how the ensemble pursuing …
Book #20 of 2025: Pull to Open: 1962-1963: The Inside Story of How the BBC Created and Launched Doctor Who by Paul Hayes A probably definitive overview of the creation of what would eventually become the BBC’s flagship science-fiction program Doctor Who, well before it had secured that reputation by longevity and popular acclaim. Although …
TV #6 of 2025: Sex Education, season 3 I do love when a season of television has a distinct, contained storyline bracketing it. In conversation with someone else who’s seen the program, you could succinctly refer to this year of Sex Education as the one where Hope takes over Moordale, in a way that you …
Book #19 of 2025: Did You Hear About Kitty Karr? by Crystal Smith Paul I’m convinced there’s a stronger story buried somewhere in this authorial debut — the tale of a Black woman whose biracial daughter passes as white to eventually become a big Hollywood film star — but unfortunately, the version presented on the …
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Book #18 of 2025: Doomsday by John Peel (2099 #1) A neat teen sci-fi thriller that I can just vaguely remember reading in my youth. Since the series was written in 1999 and set a century later, I thought it would be entertaining to revisit now that we’re a quarter of the way there, to …
Book #17 of 2025: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir A simply excellent piece of science-fiction. I enjoyed the majority of this novel immensely, only to be blown away all over again by how the ending elevated it further. That’s an easy five stars, in my opinion. The story takes its time in revealing the …
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