TV #36 of 2024: Orphan Black: Echoes, season 1 So far a pretty underwhelming sequel series. In fact, I’d say there are two wholly separate strands of criticism that can be launched at this new show: it is both a generic dull techno-conspiracy thriller with plot holes aplenty, and it is a poor fit for …
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Book #119 of 2024: While the Light Lasts and Other Stories by Agatha Christie Unless I’m mistaken, I have now reached the end of my long journey through author Agatha Christie’s considerable body of novels and short story collections. In fact, this particular anthology was actually published in 1997, substantially after her 1976 death, but …
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Book #118 of 2024: Brat by Gabriel Smith I suspect this isn’t what Charli XCX meant by brat summer, but the narrator of this 2024 Gen Z gothic horror novel — who shares a name, age, and occupation with its debut author Gabriel Smith — is certainly going through an experience. His father has just …
Book #117 of 2024: Shape-Shifter by Chris Archer (Mindwarp #5) A fun twist for this middle-grade 90s sci-fi series. For four books now, we’ve been hearing backstory about how Todd Aldridge mysteriously vanished on his thirteenth birthday, and watching as a succession of his classmates have both gained access to special powers and quickly had …
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Book #116 of 2024: Mirrored Heavens by Rebecca Roanhorse (Between Earth and Sky #3) A satisfyingly epic conclusion to this queer and Mesoamerican-flavored fantasy trilogy. As expected, it doesn’t quite hit the heights of the first volume, while cementing the middle book as a fairly forgettable bridge towards this more eventful finale. But everything wraps …
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Book #115 of 2024: Taltos by Steven Brust (Vlad Taltos #4) We’ve once again jumped around in the timeline for this fourth Vlad Taltos installment, though as usual, the context clues make it pretty easy to place the adventure in its proper spot within the protagonist’s personal lifespan. In this case, it’s his earliest outing …
Book #114 of 2024: James by Percival Everett Mark Twain’s 1885 novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an admittedly flawed work: progressively antiracist for its time, with its young white southern protagonist helping a Black man escape from slavery and generally coming to believe in the abolitionist cause more broadly, but with a tendency to …
TV #35 of 2024: Seinfeld, season 8 The penultimate year of this 90s sitcom is the first one without the involvement of co-creator Larry David, and the difference is rather immediately felt. Structurally, the show stops using a clip of Jerry’s standup act to launch each episode — reportedly the actor-producer was now too busy …
Book #113 of 2024: Whiskeyjack by Victoria Goddard (Greenwing & Dart #3) Another noticeable step forward for this Regency-pastiche fantasy series, though still not quite strong enough to clear the three-star rating tier for me. (I thought it might for a while, but the lengthy scene where Jemis applies esoteric Kabbalistic cryptography to decipher a …
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Book #112 of 2024: One Way Back by Christine Blasey Ford Author Christine Blasey Ford doesn’t spend much time in this new memoir belaboring the sexual assault she experienced as a teenager at the hands of future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. As she notes, the whole world watched her testimony at his confirmation hearing …
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