Book #309 of 2021: The Dark Design by Philip José Farmer (Riverworld #3) The longest, slowest, and most inscrutable Riverworld novel yet. Another decade has passed in this strange afterlife, although technology, politics, and culture don’t seem to have changed much in the meantime. The biggest recent development is that people are no longer resurrected …
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Book #307 of 2021: The Suspicion by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #24) If I’m being honest, this adventure is fairly inessential and a bit cartoonish, especially in its abrupt ending of Visser Three and his troops agreeing to just walk away from the ‘Andalite bandits’ in an exhausted temporary truce. But I kind of love …
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Book #301 of 2021: The Pretender by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #23) This Animorphs title feels built around a single scene near the end, when our current narrator sits down to hear a piece of news about his family that most readers likely already learned in The Andalite Chronicles, published the previous year. He is …
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Book #297 of 2021: The Fabulous Riverboat by Philip José Farmer (Riverworld #2) It’s two decades later in the Riverworld, that strange place where everyone from earth’s history woke up restored to their 25-year-old bodies, which have not gotten any older in the meantime. (The children have likewise stopped aging after catching up to the …
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Book #295 of 2021: The Hork-Bajir Chronicles by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs Chronicles #2) This prequel is the richest and most complex entry in the Animorphs franchise yet, even more so than The Andalite Chronicles, which I believe was the last time in this series reread that I ventured that claim. It’s also the earliest …
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Book #289 of 2021: The Solution by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #22) [Note — this review is more spoiler-heavy than usual! It was too hard to discuss this volume without getting into specifics.] A chilling end to the saga of David, the reluctant recruit who has gradually blossomed over the course of this trilogy into …
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Book #286 of 2021: To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip José Farmer (Riverworld #1) This Hugo-winning tale from 1971 pitches an intriguing scenario: all humanoids who have ever lived on the earth — including neanderthals from the distant past and an alien who was visiting the planet in 2008 — are resurrected in the …
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Book #283 of 2021: The Threat by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #21) So it turns out, most of what I’d remembered from this story arc about the new kid David joining the Animorphs actually takes place in the next / final book of that unofficial trilogy. Luckily, this middle volume is a lot stronger than …
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Book #277 of 2021: The Discovery by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #20) Well, I’ve been wanting the Animorphs series to grow more serialized, and it’s hard to beat the introduction of a new member, for the first time since Ax’s arrival in #4 The Message. (That would ordinarily be a bit of a spoiler, as …
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Book #276 of 2021: The Gap Into Ruin: This Day All Gods Die by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Gap Cycle #5) I still don’t altogether love this 90s space opera, which has a lot of scenes of people just standing around talking, even in this climactic finale. Don’t get me wrong: the dialogue here is …
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