Book #9 of 2025: Doctor Who: The Adventures Before by Mark Griffiths, Steve Cole, Janet Fielding, Gary Russell, Beth Axford, Janelle McCurdy, E. L. Norry, and Ingrid Oliver This short story collection has a fun concept that’s mostly executed rather well, depicting new prequel events for eight Doctor Who episodes: The Daleks (First Doctor, 1963-1964), …
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Book Review: The Gods Below by Andrea Stewart
Book #8 of 2025: The Gods Below by Andrea Stewart (The Hollow Covenant #1) I appreciate the distinctive premise of this epic fantasy novel, which is set in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by two different magical afflictions: the initial curse that made everything a wasteland and another that followed later and is now gradually spreading, …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Gods Below by Andrea Stewart”
TV Review: Classic Doctor Who, season 16
TV #3 of 2025: Classic Doctor Who, season 16 Ambitious in concept but significantly less impressive in execution, unfortunately. This 1978-1979 season of Doctor Who introduces two major elements: the incoming companion Romana played (for now) by Mary Tamm, and a larger plot arc focused on a powerful artifact called the Key to Time. The …
TV Review: Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, season 1
TV #2 of 2025: Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, season 1 Call it popcorn entertainment if you want, but this show absolutely nails its Star Wars children’s adventure vibe. The franchise has never really done anything like this before, give or take the old Ewok movies, but the mashup of the traditional science-fiction trappings with the …
Continue reading “TV Review: Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, season 1”
Book Review: Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao
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 …
Continue reading “Book Review: Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao”
Book Review: Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs
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 …
Continue reading “Book Review: Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs”
TV Review: Sex Education, season 1
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 Review: From Dust, a Flame by Rebecca Podos
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 …
Continue reading “Book Review: From Dust, a Flame by Rebecca Podos”
Book Review: Jhegaala by Steven Brust
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 Review: House of Odysseus by Claire North
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 …
Continue reading “Book Review: House of Odysseus by Claire North”
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 