Book #95 of 2023: The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman (Blacktongue #1) This 2021 fantasy debut has all the gore of the grimdark subgenre, but it skillfully avoids the cynical nihilism that I’d consider typical of such properties. Instead, the tone here is more akin to The Lies of Locke Lamora — archly comic and …
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TV #38 of 2023: Secret Invasion, season 1 This latest Marvel series, set in the modern-day but picking up plot threads from the 90s-set Captain Marvel movie, is a tediously dramatic and joyless affair (with Olivia Coleman’s cheerfully ruthless British intelligence commander providing the rare bright spot). It starts with a bold premise: the shapeshifting …
TV #37 of 2023: Star Trek: Discovery, season 1 This 2017 launch is the first of the ‘new Trek’ shows, bringing the sci-fi franchise back to the small screen for the first time in more than a decade since Enterprise ended. It’s a somewhat mixed result, but largely a rollicking experience, with a very propulsive …
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Book #94 of 2023: Flux by Jinwoo Chong This sci-fi novel gets stronger as it goes along, yet it’s still weirder and more confusing than it needs to be. The full premise isn’t nailed down until fairly late in the text, but generally speaking, it’s the story of a queer Asian American whose amoral employers …
Book #93 of 2023: The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher I only learned after finishing this 2019 horror novel that it’s a loose sequel to Arthur Machen’s 1904 story “The White People,” and I wonder if some of my frustrations might have been mitigated by that additional context. As is, this later work has a …
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TV #36 of 2023: The Shield, season 7 The penultimate sixth season of this police drama was its weakest in my opinion, and this final year takes a little while to shake itself back into gear. Early on, there’s a continued focus on the macguffin of a blackmail box (or as I kept mishearing it, …
TV #35 of 2023: Gilmore Girls, season 6 Another season that’s entertaining on the surface, especially with the built-in viewer investment in these characters, but frustrating in terms of underlying logic and plot structure. Certain choices feel like they’re being imposed externally by the writers, rather than arising naturally from the individual personalities on screen, …
Book #92 of 2023: Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood by Maureen Ryan A scathing account of the abuse that runs rampant in the TV and film industry, drawing on hundreds of interviews across more than a decade of author Maureen Ryan’s investigative journalism career. Some sources have gone …
Book #91 of 2023: Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with this author.] The latest Kickstarter novel from author Brandon Sanderson falls somewhere between the last two in quality for me. I don’t think it’s as strong a story as Tress of the Emerald Sea — nor that …
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Book #90 of 2023: Goldenhand by Garth Nix (The Old Kingdom #5) My original review of this novel from shortly after its publication in 2016: “A triumphant return to the Old Kingdom, finally resolving the fate of the lost Abhorsen, Clariel. (Note: Clariel’s early life is described in the prequel novel which bears her name, …
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