Book #34 of 2023: Sabriel by Garth Nix (The Old Kingdom #1) A thoroughly excellent modern fantasy classic, published in 1995 but just as enjoyable now upon my umpteenth reread. (I can’t remember when I first encountered it, but I do recall thinking in amazement that it was like a written version of the Diablo …
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Book Review: Ordeal by Innocence by Agatha Christie
Book #33 of 2023: Ordeal by Innocence by Agatha Christie A rather silly beginning, in which we learn that the stranger who could have corroborated an accused murderer’s alibi was hit by a truck, developed a case of short-term amnesia, and promptly departed for a two-year polar expedition, thus missing the publicity about the trial …
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Book Review: Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn
Book #32 of 2023: Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn A frustratingly three-star read. The premise is fine, but it’s one I’ve seen too many times before: an assassin’s employers for some reason decide they’ve become expendable, try unsuccessfully to kill them off, and then find themselves on the receiving end of the …
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Book Review: A Sliver of Darkness by C. J. Tudor
Book #31 of 2023: A Sliver of Darkness by C. J. Tudor This is a pretty consistently solid collection of horror (or horror-adjacent) short stories, many revolving around some type of dystopian apocalypse and its aftermath. Oftentimes I find such ensembles to vary dramatically in quality across their contents, but here I think I’d give …
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Movie Review: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
Movie #3 of 2023: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) It looks like I’m out of step with the critical consensus on this one, based on the early reviews, but whatever: I really liked the latest piece in Marvel’s increasingly complex cinematic universe! Maybe I’m just riding the high of being back in a movie …
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Book Review: The Afterward by E. K. Johnston
Book #30 of 2023: The Afterward by E. K. Johnston I like the idea of following up with a band of adventurers after they’ve completed their quest to save the world, and all the more so that our focus is on a pair of young women who became romantically entwined on that adventure but are …
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Book Review: Carter & Lovecraft by Jonathan L. Howard
Book #29 of 2023: Carter & Lovecraft by Jonathan L. Howard (Carter & Lovecraft #1) The vibes of this fantasy noir, in which a private investigator learns that H. P. Lovecraft actually experienced some of the cosmic horrors he wrote about and gets caught up in a plot with the writer’s descendant, are top-notch. As …
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Book Review: The Halloween Moon by Joseph Fink
Book #28 of 2023: The Halloween Moon by Joseph Fink Two-and-a-half stars rounded up, in recognition of the fact that I’m not in the target audience for this middle-grade horror/fantasy novel, despite how I often enjoy that genre regardless, or how much I love author Joseph Fink’s unrelated Welcome to Night Vale podcast and books. …
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TV Review: Six Feet Under, season 1
TV #7 of 2023: Six Feet Under, season 1 So far, I’m pretty ambivalent about this early aughts HBO drama about a family who own and run an independent funeral home. A lot of the personal arcs and relationships are interesting, especially given how the show starts (fittingly enough) with a loss that reconfigures the …
Book Review: Exiles by Jane Harper
Book #27 of 2023: Exiles by Jane Harper (Aaron Falk #3) This is the third and apparently final novel to feature Australian detective Aaron Falk, but oddly, I think I would have liked it better if it had been a standalone story about somebody else. By bringing back a police protagonist who’s already solved murders …
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