Book #44 of 2024: Dark Heir by C. S. Pacat (Dark Rise #2) I loved the twist at the end of the first Dark Rise novel, but felt like the majority of the book leading up to it was too slow-paced and generic for my tastes (shadowy riders chasing a young farmboy from his home …
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Book Review: The Forest Demands Its Due by Kosoko Jackson
Book #43 of 2024: The Forest Demands Its Due by Kosoko Jackson I was initially drawn in by the protagonist of this work, a troubled gay Black teen struggling to settle into his new Vermont boarding school when the forest just outside its grounds keeps whispering at him. Unfortunately, the novel that follows doesn’t really …
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Book Review: Aurelius (to be called) Magnus by Victoria Goddard
Book #42 of 2024: Aurelius (to be called) Magnus by Victoria Goddard From what I’ve read so far, the majority of author Victoria Goddard’s Nine Worlds saga takes place in and around the time of Artorin Damara, the hundredth and final Emperor of Astandalas. This prequel novella, by contrast, is set many centuries prior, and …
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Book Review: Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie
Book #41 of 2024: Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie Author Agatha Christie’s 80th book, published on the occasion of her 80th birthday in 1970, is one of only four of her novels that have never been adapted for television or film. I’ve already read two of the others, Death Comes as the End and …
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Book Review: Alien Terror by Chris Archer
Book #40 of 2024: Alien Terror by Chris Archer (Mindwarp #1) Another old middle-grade reread for me. As a series launcher, this title has potential, although it remains mostly setup for the future at this point. When wimpy kid Ethan turns 13, he gains super-strength and expert fighting skills during times of stress, but is …
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Book Review: Book of Nightmares by John Peel
Book #39 of 2024: Book of Nightmares by John Peel (Diadem #6) This was the last of the original six Diadem books published by Scholastic from 1997 to 1998, after which the middle-grade fantasy series would lie dormant for almost a decade until getting revived under another publisher. Presumably that’s also why it’s the first …
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Book Review: Among the Bros: A Fraternity Crime Story by Max Marshall
Book #38 of 2024: Among the Bros: A Fraternity Crime Story by Max Marshall One part ethnographic history of the modern American college fraternity scene; one part true-crime reporting of a million-dollar benzodiazepine ring that operated within that ecosystem at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. To lay out my biases, I was active …
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Book Review: West Heart Kill by Dann McDorman
Book #37 of 2024: West Heart Kill by Dann McDorman I always feel a little bad about giving a book my lowest rating, but this pretentious postmodern whodunnit irked me for most of the way through and then ended even worse than it began. The basic premise is pretty standard for the genre: a detective …
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TV Review: Star Trek: Discovery, season 4
TV #9 of 2024: Star Trek: Discovery, season 4 While this latest season of Star Trek: Discovery may not be quite as bad as its dire second year, which burned through an astonishing degree of terrible impulses, it’s decidedly more creatively bereft. We’re still in the future timeline (where it appears the show will be …
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Book Review: The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found by Frank Bruni
Book #36 of 2024: The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found by Frank Bruni A regrettably disjointed memoir. At its best, author Frank Bruni manages to convey a little of what it’s been like for him to go effectively blind in one eye overnight and learn he has a rare disorder that could …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 