Book #28 of 2018: Warp by Lev Grossman It turns out this short first novel by The Magicians author Lev Grossman went out of print for a reason, and the success of that later work doesn’t really justify this new edition. You can almost see the origins of Magicians hero Quentin Coldwater in its aimless …
Tag Archives: one star
Movie Review: Bad Santa 2 (2016)
Movie #24 of 2017: Bad Santa 2 (2016) It’s hard to really justify this movie’s existence. The first Bad Santa movie (2003) wasn’t exactly a modern classic, but it was a funny spin on the darkness that can underlie the holidays with a surprising amount of heart to it. This one is mostly just mean …
TV Review: House of Cards, season 5
TV #45 of 2017: House of Cards, season 5 We had watched all but the last two episodes of this season before the Kevin Spacey news broke, and we finally got around to finishing it up. Even if you set aside everything we now know about the star actor, this was a pretty awful season …
TV Review: Marvel’s Inhumans, season 1
TV #44 of 2017: Marvel’s Inhumans, season 1 Oh, my god. This show was so awful that it retroactively makes Iron Fist look pretty decent by comparison. We’re never given any reason to care about the characters or their situation, the villains have no clear motivation at all, and the plot basically spins its wheels …
Book Review: The Infinities by John Banville
Book #189 of 2017: The Infinities by John Banville This story of the Greek god Hermes narrating the events surrounding a modern patriarch’s deathbed is unbearably pretentious and unforgivably cruel to its characters. Add to that an utterly inconsequential plot and I just couldn’t wait to be through with it. ★☆☆☆☆
Book Review: Pyramid Schemes by Peter David
Book #164 of 2017: Pyramid Schemes by Peter David (Sir Apropos of Nothing #4) I loved the first Sir Apropos of Nothing book back in high school (although I have no idea how well it holds up now), but even back then I felt like the two sequels that immediately followed offered diminishing returns on …
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Book Review: Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow
Book #134 of 2017: Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow I liked Cory Doctorow’s earlier novel Little Brother, about teens using technology to nonviolently resist an overreaching surveillance state, but I couldn’t stand this one about illegal downloading and copyright violation. The characters are like those in an Ayn Rand novel, existing merely as cardboard mouthpieces …
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Movie Review: Suicide Squad (2016)
Movie #3 of 2017: Suicide Squad (2016) A complete mess, squandering some pretty good actors who make the most of the bad material they’re given. I’m not particularly invested in the DC Extended Universe in the first place, but this movie gave me absolutely no reason to rethink that decision. ★☆☆☆☆
Book Review: The Regulators by Richard Bachman
Book #62 of 2017: The Regulators by Richard Bachman This pseudonymous Stephen King novel has too many characters with not enough characterization, which makes it hard to keep track of them or even care when they kept getting gunned down. It doesn’t help that most of the characters share names – but not much else …
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Book Review: Messenger by Lois Lowry
Book #32 of 2017: Messenger by Lois Lowry (The Giver #3) The Giver series definitely offers diminishing returns as it goes along. This third book at least proves that the books are a single series by tying together the otherwise unconnected first and second novels, although once again there’s a new sort of magic that …
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