Book #54 of 2023: The Killing God by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Great God’s War #3) If book 1 of this fantasy trilogy offered an allegorical fable, and the sequel delivered a stream of complicating intrigues amid some thankfully deepened worldbuilding, this closing volume brings everything together for an action-packed finale as the threatened war …
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TV #15 of 2023: Six Feet Under, season 3 This HBO drama about a family who run an independent funeral home has been steadily growing on me, but even in this third season I still don’t think the series is consistently strong enough to deserve a rating higher than three-out-of-five stars. The first episode of …
Book #53 of 2023: The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with this author.] This is the second of author Brandon Sanderson’s four “Secret Project” novels, which he wrote over the pandemic lockdowns of 2020-2021 in the time he’d normally spend traveling and making public appearances …
Book #52 of 2023: League of Liars by Astrid Scholte (The League of Liars #1) I was intrigued by the notion of a YA fantasy legal thriller, but the result here is severely underwhelming at every turn. Take the minimal worldbuilding, for starters. This is nominally set on a different plane than ours, with magic …
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Book #51 of 2023: The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi Based on the lush prose, the flowery title, and the other pieces I’ve read by author Roshani Chokshi, I was expecting this novel to fit squarely in the fantasy genre, but to my surprise, it’s relatively rooted in reality instead. Although …
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TV #14 of 2023: Star Wars: The Bad Batch, season 2 The first year of this Clone Wars spinoff was a surprisingly propulsive affair, but this sophomore season struggles to recapture and maintain that sense of momentum. It’s still a solid delivery of weekly Star Wars thrills — although I question the decision to have …
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Book #50 of 2023: Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl Everyone in this 2006 debut novel is either deeply pretentious and misanthropic or else a fringe figure patronizingly pitied by those who are. They’re regularly sexist and racist, too! I actually tried reading this once before, five years ago, and put it down …
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TV #13 of 2023: Gilmore Girls, season 3 This year is probably peak Gilmore Girls for me, although it’s overall a show that’s remained consistently strong across its tenure. (I’m already looking forward to defending the less popular final original season and subsequent Netflix revival miniseries when I get to my reviews of those.) Rory’s …
Book #49 of 2023: Portrait of a Wide Seas Islander by Victoria Goddard I like this midquel novella to author Victoria Goddard’s excellent fantasy tome The Hands of the Emperor, but I think I’m not totally impressed by it, especially after the previous short spinoff work for this series Petty Treasons seemed to up the …
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Book #48 of 2023: We Had to Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets On the one hand, this translated novella offers a blisteringly grim look into the work of content moderators for social media platforms like Facebook: the employees paid to review posts that other users have flagged, to remove any material they confirm as …
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