Book #164 of 2022: Greywaren by Maggie Stiefvater (The Dreamer Trilogy #3) I’ve been steadily losing patience with this Raven Cycle spinoff from the start of the second volume on, and unfortunately, nothing in this final novel (which appears to close out the entire franchise, at least for now) does anything to reverse that trend. …
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TV #51 of 2022: Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi, season 1 I don’t quite see the point of this latest Star Wars anthology series — and I’m not sure that Disney does either, given their decision to drop the entire first season in the middle of the ongoing Andor release schedule. Theoretically I think …
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Book #163 of 2022: Amari and the Great Game by B. B. Alston (Supernatural Investigations #2) It remains hard to avoid Harry Potter comparisons in discussing this middle-grade fantasy series, but this second volume is just as engaging as the first and continues to put an original spin on some common genre tropes shared between …
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Book #162 of 2022: Road of Bones by Christopher Golden [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with this author.] The atmosphere of this horror novel draws a reader in immediately, well before any hint of the supernatural appears. Set in the far north of Siberia, one of the coldest places on earth that’s nevertheless inhabited, it …
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Book #161 of 2022: A Mirror Mended by Alix E. Harrow (Fractured Fables #2) I enjoyed A Spindle Splintered for its fresh take on fairy tales (by means of a terminally-ill young queer woman from our world discovering she’s an iteration of the Sleeping Beauty trope and then traveling throughout the multiverse rescuing some of …
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Book #160 of 2022: Fair Warning by Michael Connelly (Jack McEvoy #3) This 2020 novel is the third title to center on reporter Jack McEvoy, an otherwise peripheral figure in author Michael Connelly’s broad Harry Bosch / Mickey Haller franchise. He’s always an interesting change of pace from those more frequent protagonists, and I pictured …
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Book #159 of 2022: The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson (Wax and Wayne #1 / Mistborn #4) [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with this author.] Brandon Sanderson’s original Mistborn trilogy from 2006 to 2008 fits squarely in the genre of high fantasy, presenting a sword-and-sorcery world in which gifted individuals can push and pull …
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Book #158 of 2022: The Silvered Serpents by Roshani Chokshi (The Gilded Wolves #2) Given the fairly direct character parallels, this sequel continues to read like Six of Crows fanfiction with the serial numbers barely scratched off. (If author Roshani Chokshi hasn’t read that bestselling YA fantasy series about a teenage heist gang whose members …
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Movie #18 of 2022: Doctor Who: The Power of the Doctor (2022) The beginning of this latest Who special is a bit chaotic, and the whole thing moves so quickly that I feel as though we’re missing a few steps of necessary premise-setting exposition, like why the Daleks have agreed to ally themselves with the …
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Book #157 of 2022: The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon (The Roots of Chaos #1) The middle of this fantasy novel is pretty good! But the beginning is terribly slow — I actually quit the ebook at 33% when I tried reading it a few years ago, and was only able to …
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