Book #22 of 2024: Doctor Who: The Star Beast by Gary Russell Novelizations are a bit of an odd genre in terms of their target audience, especially in this day and age when the original piece of media that’s being adapted is generally accessible to all. (Decades ago, buying or renting a movie / show …
Continue reading “Book Review: Doctor Who: The Star Beast by Gary Russell”
Book #21 of 2024: Book of Magic by John Peel (Diadem #3) Somewhat surprisingly, this third Diadem novel wraps up the major plot arc that’s been driving the action thus far, and from what I can recall, things are pretty episodic from here on out. One wonders if the series was originally planned as a …
Book #20 of 2024: Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward Author Jesmyn Ward’s usual lyrical prose is on fine display in this latest novel, and it wouldn’t surprise me if other readers enjoy the surrounding work more than I have. It’s certainly a brutal read, depicting a young enslaved woman in the antebellum south who …
Continue reading “Book Review: Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward”
TV #6 of 2024: Classic Doctor Who, season 10 Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor still has another year to go before he regenerates into Tom Baker, but this penultimate run feels like a farewell tour for his era in so many ways. The final story, The Green Death, culminates in the exit of costar Katy Manning …
Book #19 of 2024: By the Pricking of My Thumbs by Agatha Christie (Tommy and Tuppence #4) The year is 1968, and Tommy and Tuppence Beresford are no longer the “young adventurers” that they were originally dubbed in their 1922 debut. While not quite old enough to land in Ms. Marple‘s cohort — Tommy even …
Continue reading “Book Review: By the Pricking of My Thumbs by Agatha Christie”
TV #5 of 2024: Star Trek: Prodigy, season 1 This animated program gets better as its first year goes on, but I remain confused about who exactly the target audience is supposed to be. On the one hand: the tone is fairly YA, the majority of the main characters are young teens (or the alien …
Book #18 of 2024: The Eternal Return of Clara Hart by Louise Finch This isn’t my first time-loop story — or even the first YA book I’ve read where a teenager keeps reliving the same party where a classmate gets killed, and in the process gradually realizes that their clique of popular friends are actually …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Eternal Return of Clara Hart by Louise Finch”
TV #4 of 2024: Seinfeld, season 4 I’ve been fairly lukewarm on this sitcom up till now, so I’m happy to find that this 1992-1993 season is much more my speed. The previous year gets the ball rolling with a little bit of light continuity from week to week, but this run leans fully into …
Book #17 of 2024: The Tower at the Edge of the World by Victoria Goddard This 2014 story was one of the first titles published in author Victoria Goddard’s massive Nine Worlds fantasy setting, and is also one of its earliest to take place chronologically. It’s relatively short at 62 pages in paperback — it …
Continue reading “Book Review: The Tower at the Edge of the World by Victoria Goddard”
Book #16 of 2024: Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia E. Butler This collection of short stories (originally published in 1995, then revised in 2005 with two additional entries) was the last work of author Octavia E. Butler’s fiction that I hadn’t yet read, so it’s been a bittersweet experience for me this week to …
Continue reading “Book Review: Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia E. Butler”
The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more