Book #52 of 2024: Nemesis by Agatha Christie (Miss Marple #12) This 1971 title was the last Miss Marple novel that author Agatha Christie ever wrote, although Sleeping Murder, published posthumously in 1976, was the final entry in the series to be released. It functions as a fairly direct sequel to #9 A Caribbean Mystery, …
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Book Review: Book of Oceans by John Peel
Book #51 of 2024: Book of Oceans by John Peel (Diadem: Worlds of Magic #8) Unfortunately the weakest Diadem title yet. This next sequel finds Pixel’s new girlfriend Jenna still squabbling with Helaine, despite six months having passed since they left their homeworld’s rigid class system behind them at the end of the previous volume. …
Book Review: Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra
Book #50 of 2024: Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra This 2024 thriller reads like vintage Stephen King — I’m thinking specifically of books like Cujo or Misery or Gerald’s Game — for placing a protagonist in a simple untenable situation and watching them frantically scramble for a way to escape. In such a work, the space …
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TV Review: Star Trek: Picard, season 2
TV #11 of 2024: Star Trek: Picard, season 2 Not great, but a noticeable step up from the blandly underwritten chaos of this modern Star Trek show’s first season. Picard’s old superpowered tormentor Q is as maddeningly inscrutable as ever, but bringing him into play as the new big bad for the year is a …
Book Review: The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff
Book #49 of 2024: The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff A brutal piece of historical fiction about an abused servant girl in colonial Virginia who flees that famine-struck settlement into the nearby woods. Author Lauren Groff’s prose is as wickedly sharp as ever, and she pulls no punches in describing both the natural and human …
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TV Review: Seinfeld, season 5
TV #10 of 2024: Seinfeld, season 5 This season of Seinfeld doesn’t have a major arc like the meta show-within-a-show factor of the previous year, but it’s nevertheless a strong run of episodes made distinctive by the development of George moving back in with his parents, which allows for new kinds of story premises and …
Book Review: Terec and the Wild by Victoria Goddard
Book #48 of 2024: Terec and the Wild by Victoria Goddard For most people within the boundaries of Astandalas, the magic that flows out of their ruler to knit the empire together is either unnoticed or experienced like a gentle balm. A select few with their own strong powers chafe against it, however, and for …
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Book Review: The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson
Book #47 of 2024: The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with this author.] I’ve read most of author Brandon Sanderson’s published writing, and this Hugo Award-winning fantasy novella from 2012 remains my absolute favorite, a title I’ve returned to and reread on multiple occasions (both as a standalone feature and …
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Book Review: Doctor Who: The Giggle by James Goss
Book #46 of 2024: Doctor Who: The Giggle by James Goss This. THIS is what I’ve been hoping for from these recent Doctor Who novelizations, a winking adaptation that elevates its source material into something even madder and ever more brilliant. Don’t get me wrong: this James Goss novel obviously owes its existence to the …
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Book Review: Book of War by John Peel
Book #45 of 2024: Book of War by John Peel (Diadem: Worlds of Magic #7) The Diadem series had its ups and downs, but when it ended its initial six-book run with Scholastic in 1998, there weren’t really any major lingering plot threads that made its continuation seem likely or at all necessary from a …
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