Movie #14 of 2017: The Dark Tower (2017) This movie was pretty fun – not great, but far better than the Rotten Tomatoes rating would suggest. Very cool to see things like gunslingers and North Central Positronics on the big screen after so many years. For fans of the Dark Tower novels, it was largely …
Tag Archives: fantasy
Book Review: The Gunslinger by Stephen King
Book #163 of 2017: The Gunslinger by Stephen King (The Dark Tower #1) It’s probably been a good decade or more since I last read this book, and I was surprised to find it better than I had remembered. I still stand by my usual advice for the Dark Tower series, which is that you …
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Book Review: Runemarks by Joanne M. Harris
Book #156 of 2017: Runemarks by Joanne M. Harris (Loki #3) This is a fun fantasy adventure story, drawing on Norse mythology but set several centuries after Ragnarok when the gods have largely passed into legend. Still, young Maddy Smith dreams of them, and she seems to have inherited some measure of their magic. Of …
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Book Review: The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
Book #139 of 2017: The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden (Winternight Trilogy #1) There’s a beautiful atmosphere to this book that really makes you feel like you’re caught up in a snowy Russian fairy tale. I found I cared more about that sense of rich Slavic folklore than I did about the characters …
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Book Review: Every Other Day by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Book #138 of 2017: Every Other Day by Jennifer Lynn Barnes Every Other Day is the story of a teenage girl with Buffy-like powers, but only on alternating days. (In between, she’s as human as the next high schooler.) That’s a fun hook, but the story beats were fairly predictable and I had a hard …
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Book Review: A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson
Book #137 of 2017: A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson There are some truly lovely moments throughout this book, and its interracial gay love story is a real breath of fresh air for the fantasy genre. But the disjointed chronology didn’t work for me, and I felt like there were so many missing …
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Book Review: Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb
Book #132 of 2017: Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb (Farseer #1) This fantasy novel was a staple of my high school shelves, the start of a favorite series that I would read over and over again. I was a little worried that it wouldn’t live up to my memories when I revisited it now, but …
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Book Review: Mister Monday by Garth Nix
Book #130 of 2017: Mister Monday by Garth Nix (The Keys to the Kingdom #1) This somewhat generic tween fantasy adventure is sort of like a cross between Neverwhere and So You Want to Be a Wizard, featuring a young boy who learns he’s heir to a magical power and must travel through a twisted …
Book Review: The Invasion of the Tearling by Erika Johansen
Book 128 of 2017: The Invasion of the Tearling by Erika Johansen (The Queen of the Tearling #2) It’s still a little uneven, but this second book in the Tearling trilogy is a definite improvement over the forgettable first volume. The magic is still over-powered and under-explained, and Kelsea’s character beats don’t always feel like …
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Book Review: Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger
Book #121 of 2017: Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger (Finishing School #1) A lightweight little YA steampunk fantasy novel about a finishing school for teen girl spies. A good summer read, it was fun but not particularly deep. I believe it’s also in the same setting as some of author Gail Carriger’s other works, …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 