morganminstrel

Well, here we are at the end of 2021, and I ended it well--at least insofar as reading goes! I'll talk a bit about the year's reading in general later, but let's get to the books/magazines!

1. The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Serial Killer by Dean Jobb. GENRE: History/Prose. FINISHED: December 3. REVIEW: Gosh, this was fun. Dr. Thomas Neill Cream was an infamous poisoner of the late 19th century, killing people in three countries. He was imprisoned in the US, but wound up being finally stopped in England. Jobb's prose is incredibly readable, and his tracing of Cream's story--and that of his pursuers--is compelling. Definitely recommended.

2. The Sexton Blake Library vol. 5: New Order, Mark Hodder, editor. GENRE: Pulp/Prose. FINISHED: December 7. REVIEW: And this wraps up the anthology reprint series, with three stories from 1960. These were fun, but definitely the last gasps of a publishing enterprise that stretched back to the previous century. You can see the "New Order" (as the attempted late 50s-early 60s revamp was called) trying various things; the James Bondish first story, the somewhat kitchen sink drama of the second, and the contemporary detective feel of the final. Ultimately, the revamp didn't work (it seems to have alienated more readers than it added), and it petered to a close in 1963, with attempts at revivals ever since. (In fact, there's an allusion to a new revival in the final pages of this book!) I definitely enjoyed these collections, and I'm hoping we'll see more of Blake and Tinker soon!

3. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction November/December 2021 by Various. GENRE: SFF/Prose. FINISHED: December 14. REVIEW: To be honest, I read almost all of this in November, with the exception of the novella in the issue. I just could not get into it, and I was about to leave on a trip, so I left it home. But now it's finished. Honestly, most of the issue was good, and even for the things I didn't like I can confirm that it's me, and not them.

4. The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison. GENRE: Fantasy/Prose. FINISHED: December 19. REVIEW: A sequel to The Goblin Emperor, I decided to grab this book before going on a trip, but didn't get to it until I'd gotten home. This book is about a minor (kinda?) character in the first novel as he goes about his business. Thara Celehar is a Witness for the Dead, kind of a cleric/detective, who can actually get impressions from the newly dead. In some ways, this is a murder mystery, but it's also so much more. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and am looking forward to the third in the series, also about Celehar, coming in 2022!

5. Sexton Blake: The Complete Waldo, vol.1 by Edwy Searles Brooks. GENRE: Pulp/Prose. FINISHED: December 25. REVIEW: Four stories, one from 1918 and three from 1919. Being intrigued by the one story of Waldo the Wonder-Man from one of the anthologies, I bought this as an ebook. What tremendous early 20th century fun! Waldo was the sole purview of Brooks, an incredibly prolific writer. This book also introduced me to detective Nelson Lee and his teen sidekick Nipper, two characters very similar to Blake and Tinker, but nowhere near as long lasting. Just a lot of fun--enough so that I've already bought volume 2!

6. Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse. GENRE: LGBTQIA/Comics. FINISHED: December 28. REVIEW: I hadn't read this in years, but I've been meaning to ever since Howard passed. I'm actually kind of glad I waited, both because I'm in the right place and because it feels more relevant than ever. This book...this book is a masterpiece. It's powerful, it's emotional (I cried. Several times.), it's well written, it's wonderfully drawn....If you haven't read it, you need to read it. Oh! I guess I should say that it's a coming of gay story involving the civil rights movement in a small town in the South during "Kennedy Time." But yeah, read it.

7. Far Sector by N. K. Jemisin and Jamal Campbell, with Deron Bennett. GENRE: Superheroes/comics. FINISHED: December 30. REVIEW: I read this series as it came out, but I was convinced it would read better as a collection--and I was absolutely correct. It holds together a lot better and I enjoyed it a lot more. It's a wonderfully intricate story, as befitting Jemisin, with really interesting worldbuilding, but...but I had the same issue with it as I did the first time. The basis of this society is a biochemical virus that removes/supresses all emotion, right? But I saw people being emotional all over the book, all the while being told that they weren't. There's a lot about people going through the motions, but I saw fear, exasperation, a lot of anger, joy, happiness, sadness, etc., all from these supposedly emotionless people. And, given that the lack of emotion is the crux of the plot....it bugged me. I understand it's difficult to portray someone with no emotions as a relatable character, but, unlike Vulcans, this is a place where it is actually biochemically supressed, rather than repressed. Look, I like this book an awful lot, I love Jo Mullein as a character. (In fact, rereading this, I feel like her being in the main GL book is a bit wrong, though I'm liking her there too.) But I still think it's ultimately fundamentally flawed. So, a cautious recommendation.

Like I said, I think I ended things on a very good note! I'll save my overview for a separate post, since this is already pretty long. But I will reveal that I'm going to keep on tracking reading through 2022! (Or, at least, that's the plan.) In fact, reading for 2022 has already begun--watch this space!

Ok, now this is more like it. I wound up finishing the difficult book I spent a lot of September reading, and then was able to get back to it. It's been definitely true that going back to work full time in person has had a significant effect on how much I read, but I'm still pretty happy to track it all!

1. The Nature of Middle Earth by J.R.R. Tolkien/Carl Hostetter, editor. GENRE: Fantasy/Prose. FINISHED: October 7. REVIEW: The last book of Tolkien's Middle Earth notes, this is also one of the few not edited by the late Christopher Tolkien. My big note? FOR SERIOUS NERDS ONLY. This was a difficult read. A rewarding one, sure, but not one I'm sure I can recommend if you're not a serious Tolkien fan. The first section, mainly about the lives of Elves, involved so many math calculations of Valinor Time vs. Middle Earth Time vs. Elvish aging rates...My head definitely spun. Still it's all interesting stuff, fascinating to see where Tolkien's mind was in the last 20 or so years of his life. (Some of the papers date from as late as 1972!) And hey, apparently Aragorn couldn't have had a beard! Who knew?

2. Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds by R.B. Lemberg. GENRE: Fantasy/Prose. FINISHED: October 13. REVIEW: Ok, technically this is a novelette, published in the online magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies. (http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/grandmother-nai-leylits-cloth-of-winds/) But it was so incredibly good, I'm going to mention it here. It's pretty much a prologue to Lemberg's novel, The Four Profound Weaves, and it's just as amazing, just as beautiful, just as full of wonder, and just as stab-you-through-the-heart painful as the novel. Highest recommendation. Seriously.

3. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction September/October 2021 by Various. GENRE: SFF/Prose. FINISHED: October 15. REVIEW: Ok, this issue was excellent. Not only is the ridiculous "industry" column gone, but much of the content would make some morose young canines very unhappy. Lots of queer and queer-adjacent stories, as well as some more general stuff (like one of Matt Hughes' authorized Vance pastiches). Just a very good issue!

4. Game Wizards: the Epic Battle for Dungeons & Dragons by Jon Peterson. GENRE: RPG History/Prose. FINISHED: October 20. REVIEW: Ok, first of all, this is not a history of the development of D&D. What it is is a history of TSR and the game industry, from just before the original publication of the game to Gary Gygax's ouster in 1985. This book is fantastic. Incredibly readable, even for those not immersed in gaming history. It's certainly not a Gygax pangeac, nor an Arneson tribute. Honestly, it's fair and balanced history, and probably will be the definitive history of this period. (Like the author's "Playing at the World" is the definitive history of game development and design.) Very recommended.

5. Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary Wolf. GENRE: Mystery/Prose. FINISHED: October 25. REVIEW: Technically, this is a reread, but of a book I haven't read since 1988, when I bought it. It was really interesting reading it now; I'd remembered it being very different than the movie (for one thing it focuses on comic strips, not cartoons), but I hadn't remembered all the racism (barely) metaphors throughout. To be honest, parts of that made me a bit uncomfortable--Detective Eddie Valiant is very much a racist--there's no question 'toons stand in for minorities. (There's even a mention of "yellow 'toons being brought in to build the railroads" and "red toons catering the first Thanksgiving" is pretty egregious.) And, of course, the book is very much set when it was written, in the late '70s (it was published in 1981), which removed the "mythic 40s" distancing of the film. All of that being said, it's a mostly engaging mystery, a great hardboiled pastiche, with a very ridiculous solution. I don't know if I can fully recommend it for today's readers though.

6. Double Indemnity by James M. Cain. GENRE: Mystery/Prose. FINISHED: October 27. REVIEW: Another reread, while I waited for more new stuff to come in. I mean, this book is review-proof. It's absolutely fantastic, intricately plotted, wonderfully written. The movie is brilliant, and the book is better than the movie. What else can I say?

And that's it for October! Oddly, no spooky stuff on the list, which I hadn't thought about until now. Onward to November!

I think this is the month my level of reading was really affected by being back at work on an over part-time basis. Next month, I tentatively go back to full-time the end of this month, so I fully expect the amount of reading I do to decrease as my free time does. But that's a tale for another time. Here we go with this month!

1. The Kingdom of Gods by N.K. Jemisin. GENRE: Fantasy/Prose. FINISHED: August 5. REVIEW: Wow. This, the last book in the Inheritance Trilogy, is...not what one might have expected. It's the first book in the series not narrated by a woman, it's the first book narrated by, essentially, a god. And it is...it's amazing. It's just so good. I literally cried reading the last chapter and the coda. These books are seriously so good. Maybe not as complex as the Broken Earth books, but Jemisin's work is so strong, her characters are so real, I can't wait to read more of her work. (There's a "new"--in 2014--novella at the end of the big omnibus volume, so I'm not quite done with this world yet!)

2. The Awakened Kingdom by N.K. Jemisin. GENRE: Fantasy/Prose. FINISHED: August 5. REVIEW: The extra novella in the big Inheritance Trilogy omnibus, this was 110 (approx) pages of delight. The story of the first godling born after the events of the last novel--about 300 years after--I really enjoyed this. I do hope Jemisin eventually writes more in this universe!

3. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction July/August 2021 by Various. GENRE: SFF/Prose. FINISHED August 17. REVIEW: This was a much better issue than the last, although I didn't care for all of the stories...at least there were stories I really liked and one I really didn't. The issue also had more than a bit of a queer feel, which I found really interesting. The only thing I can truly say I absolutely dislike about the new regime at FSF is the addition of a new column called "By the Numbers" which is an absolute waste of space more designed for Locus (on a bad day) or a writing magazine. But, thank goodness, it only takes up 4 pages!

4. The Sexton Blake Library vol. 4: On the Home Front, Mark Hodder, editor. GENRE: Pulp/Prose. FINISHED: August 26. REVIEW: Stories from 1941 and 1945. These longer stories were taken from the original Sexton Blake Library, a magazine, rather than the story papers of the shorter works. The first is an espionage story where Blake and friends foil a German plot to smuggle out airplane plans. The second story is a plain old detective story, and is, I think, indicative of Blake's decline in popularity in the latter half of the 40s and the 50s. It's not at all a bad story, although I did figure out who the murderer was fairly early, but there were a lot of other writers at the time doing it better. Still, it was all fun, and I will be fascinated to see what the next volume--the 1960s revival--is like!

5. Shades in Shadow by N.K. Jemisin. GENRE: Fantasy/Prose. FINISHED: August 27. REVIEW: My first e-book of the year (first in many years), this is a collection of 3 short stories set in the world of Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy--specifically, story one is set about 1000 years before the first book, story three before the third, and story two before and immediately after the third. Unsurprisingly, I loved it. It is definitely important to read the original three books first, but this is a great addition to the world and the story.

6. Carnal Hours by Max Allan Collins. GENRE: Mystery/Prose. FINISHED: August 31. REVIEW: (Quick note: This is the 50th item on my reading list for this year! I just thought that was neat.) It's July 1943, and still-recovering ex-GI Nate Heller is talked into flying to the Bahamas and doing a job for one Sir Harry Oakes, investigating Oakes' son-in-law, the Count de Marigny for a huge fee. Then Sir Harry is murdered and Heller is caught in the middle....Another great ride, using one of the great real life unsolved mysteries. And this one I was completely unfamiliar with, so I didn't have any idea where it was going! I'm still really enjoying these books. I'm sure there will be more to come on my list!

That's it for this month. But hey, what about you? Have you been reading anything interesting lately?

June reading!

1. Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me by Harvey Pekar and JT Waldman, with Joyce Brabner. GENRE: History/Comics. FINISHED: June 1. REVIEW: This is actually a reread, but one I haven't read since 2012. It's Pekar's last book, and it's really good. A broad look at Jewish history, with Muslim and a bit of Christian history thrown in, and a capsule look at Israeli/Palestinian history, it also chronicles Pekar's (and Waldman, who actually lived there) disillusionment with Israel, from a youth steeped in Zionism through a questioning young adulthood, to an older man who doesn't like the idea of Jews as oppressors of others. It's a really good book, and makes me really miss Harvey.

2. The Four Profound Weaves by R.B. Lemberg. GENRE: SF/Prose. FINISHED: June 5. REVIEW: This book was recommended to me by my cousin-in-law, Tamara Falicov, and I'm so grateful to her. It's an extraordinary and beautiful book, and it affected me deeply, in ways...that might be hard to explain to a cis person. I honestly don't know how a cishet person would react, if it'd be different than my reaction. The world, the Birdverse, is beautiful and unique, though I can certainly see LeGuin's influence--a good thing! I think it's not only important that the main voices we see the world through are both trans, but that they are old; both are in their 60s. And, although I'm not yet 50, I can see myself in them, I think. But...I don't want to describe too much about the book, because I'm afraid of pulling threads that'll unravel the strings that make this weave so beautiful. Read it. Seriously.

3. Dead Famous by Ben Elton. GENRE: Mystery/Prose. FINISHED: June 9. REVIEW: Another reread, I bought this book in England in 2002. I knew Elton from his TV work (The Young Ones, Blackadder), so I was intrigued to read a novel by him. It's honestly a very good mystery (I do wish I hadn't remembered who the murderer was by about 40 pages into this reread), but the satire is very heavy-handed. Still, definitely worth reading again!

4. Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch: a novel by Rivka Galchen. GENRE: Historical Fiction/Prose. FINISHED: I bought this book entirely on the strength of a newspaper review. It's the story of Katharina Kepler, mother of Astronomer Johannes Kepler, who was accused of being a witch in the late 16th century. This is quite a good book, but...it left me feeling completely neutral. I'm not sure I really liked it, but I'm also sure I didn't not like it. I'm not sure whether I can wholeheartedly recommend it, but I suppose it was worth reading!

5. The Best of Assigned Male by Sophie LaBelle. GENRE: Kids LGBTQIA+/Comics. FINISHED: June 15. REVIEW: Yes! It's a full fledged, professionally published collection of Sophie's wonderful comic strip! It's actually a pretty comprehensive collection of all the stuff she's self-published, plus more. These strips mean a heck of a lot to me, and some of them came out at a very significant time for me. The book is good for kids, adults, and whoever! Get it at your fine bookstore today!

6. The Sexton Blake Library vol. 3: Allies Mark Hodder, editor. GENRE: Pulp/Prose. FINISHED: June 22. REVIEW: I needed some light reading, and Sexton Blake was just the ticket. These stories come from (in order) 1925, 1931, and 1919. The first story, guest starring "Granite" Grant, a British secret service agent, was tremendously exciting until the end, where it just...petered out. A victim of pagecount in the Union Jack storypaper, I'd guess. The second, with American Ruff Handon and journalist Derek "Splash" Page, was certainly a corker. The last story was, in some ways, the most intriguing for me, as it started Mademoiselle Yvonne Cartier, a foe/friend of Blake's who is just as intelligent and just as intriguing as he is. My appetite is whetted for more stories from all three (especially Yvonne), so I might have to find some somewhere!

7. Neon Mirage by Max Allan Collins. GENRE: Mystery/Prose. FINISHED: June 27. REVIEW: Post-War America, 1946. Nate Heller is older, more successful, and he's managed to mostly avoid Mob-related scrapes for the past few years. That's about to change as he gets involved with an assassination in Chicago, and then with Ben "Bugsy" Siegel in LA and Siegel's new dream paradise....Las Vegas. This book was great, and the prose is snappy and readable. I enjoyed the heck out of it...and yeah, I guess I'm all-in for this very long (and still continuing) series!

And that's it for this month. Not bad! Halfway through, and this has been a very satisfying year of reading so far! Looking forward to the next six months....

And here's April's reading! Not quite as much as March, but lots of good stuff!

1. Superboy: A Celebration of 75 years, Various. GENRE/MEDIUM: Superhero/Comics. FINISHED: Apr 2. REVIEW: The interesting thing about this collection is I have maybe a bit more than half of the stories in either other reprints or in the original comics, but seeing them collected here together was a lot of fun. It's stories of Clark, Connor, and Jonathan Kent, as well as the Superboy of Earth-Prime (both the DC Comics Presents issue--yay!--and an issue of Infinite Crisis--sigh), and I enjoyed the heck out of it. (And yes, a few of the 70s LSH stories were part of my big reread last year.)

2. The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman. GENRE/MEDIUM: Poetry/Prose. FINISHED: Apr 9. REVIEW: Yes, I got the little book of the Inaugural Poem. It does lose a little somehting in not hearing Gorman read it, but it's still an honestly great and inspiring work. I absolutely love her aliteration as well as her changing up rhyming schemes. It's just...a really good poem.

3. The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity by Jon Peterson. GENRE/MEDIUM: RPG History/Prose. FINISHED: Apr 11. REVIEW: This book is SO GOOD. It's a worthy companion to Peterson's larger history, "Playing at the World," but, unlike that book, this is focused on the period between (about) 1971 and 1981, from just before D&D's creation/publication to it's ear;y 80s popularization. The book is about the development of both role-playing as a concept, and role-playing games as a genre, dealing both with their emergence from, and connection to wargaming and their link to SF fandom's history as well. Peterson has access to a huge number of fanzines and prozines from the time, and his coverage is excellent. My only critisicm is that the book could have used a better copy editor; as I got further in, I noticed more and more tiny errors, words dropped or added in sentences. In one egregious case, the name "Ralph" was subsituted for the earlier cited "Randy"! Even taking that into account, this book is an absolute necessity if you're interested in TTRPGs, in theory and practice.

4. True Crime by Max Allan Collins. GENRE/MEDIUM: Mystery/Prose. FINISHED: Apr 15. REVIEW: Yep, I bought the second Nate Heller book, and I enjoyed it immensely, though maybe not as much as the first one. This book is essentially two connected halves. The first half, I loved, loved, loved. The second half felt so suspenseful to me to be, at times, almost too much! (Nate is essentially undercover with very dangerous people.) I still really enjoyed it, but not as much as the first part. That said, I loved the setting of 1934 Chicago, I loved seeing the historical figures and seeing Nate wind his way through it all. Will I get the third book? Chances point to yes!

5. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Mar/Apr 2021 by Various. GENRE/MEDIUM: SFF/Prose. FINISHED: Apr 21. REVIEW: A good issue, though at least one of the stories had me very unsatisfied/unhappy. It's the first issue for new editor Sheree Renée Thomas, who contributed a Letter to the Editor at the beginning. Most of these tend to be a statement of editorial intent, but this was more an odd stream of consciousness thing that ended with the message (essentially) that she'd continue doing what the magazine had been doing already. Not exactly a clarion call from a new editor. (As for the story I had issues with, it presented ideas and then did nothing with them. It felt like something that would have been published, as is, 15 years ago. The rest of the issue was excellent with some fine stories though!)

6. Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice, 1967-1975 by Richard Thompson. GENRE/MEDIUM: Memoir/Prose. FINISHED: Apr 23. REVIEW: Richard Thompson's memoir, covering the Fairport days, the early years with Linda, and his conversion to Sufi Islam. But there's so much more. Richard was very much in the right place at the right time--late 60s London. He encountered a lot of people (he even had an invite to Paul McCartney's birthday party in 1968--which he didn't attend due to social anxiety), and played gigs with all kinds of bands. (Including the infamous Fairport/Led Zep unplanned jam session, the tapes for which allegedly are in either Joe Boyd's or Island Record's archives.) It was a fun book, and he didn't shy away from the hard subjects--the 1968 car accident that killed 2 people, for example. Richard has said he doesn't plan to write anymore, since the wounds are still a bit raw (he does, briefly, discuss his and Linda's problems, but very briefly), but I'm hopeful for another volume someday.

That's it for this month! A good variety, I think. Questions? Comments? Anyone want a mint?

Here we are with my reading from Month 2 of 2021! As before, no periodical comics included. So, here we go!

1. The Scarf, Sophie LaBelle. GENRE/MEDIUM: Kids LGBTQIA+/Comics. FINISHED: Feb 12. REVIEW: A new LaBelle story is always something to be happy about, and when I got my copy in the mail (It took a long time to get here, thanks, Covid), I couldn't wait to read it. It's a short story that takes place right at the beginning of the Assigned Male Comics timeline, showing Ciel's (then "Alessandro") first meeting with Stephie. Basically, a prequel to Nail Polish, and it's wonderful. I love these kids.

2. My Life in Transition, Julia Kaye. GENRE/MEDIUM: Slice of life (LGBTQIA+)/comics. FINISHED: Feb 17. REVIEW: It arrived and was read in one day. Well, in about an hour period. This was a sequel to Julia's first collection, "Super Late Bloomer," which was wonderful and came out about the same time I did. It was really important to me, so I was obviously gonna get her new book ASAP. (It came out on Feb 16th!) This book isn't about the beginning of transition, it's about continuing life as a trans woman. 6 months in the life of Julia Kaye, specifically. She did a strip a day for those 6 months (she missed a day or so in there), and it's her life, day by day, no illusions, from January to June, 2019. Breakups, love, dealing with dysphoria, having a lot of euphoria, dating, friendships, everything. And an afterward that made me cry, unabashedly. (I cried a little a few times during the book, honestly.) Some of it I didn't identify with as directly, as Julia and I are at very different stages of life, but I could easily identify with the underlying feelings. (And there was quite a bit I definitely felt in my soul. I have no idea how this will hit cis people, but if you're trans, pick it (and the first book!) up as soon as you can!

3. Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine January/February 2021, Various. GENRE/MEDIUM: Mystery/Prose. FINISHED: Feb 18. REVIEW: The first issue of the mag's 80th year of publication (!), it was also the annual Sherlock Holmes issue, so it had several Holmes pastiches, a good essay about Conan Doyle, and even a poem, all of which were enjoyable! There was also an unpublished Cornell Woolrich story, which was a lot of fun. Other than that, there was the usual mix of stuff I liked, stuff I didn't, and one story I absolutely hated. As usual, it's great value for money, and I'm glad I have a subscription!

4. Sovereign, April Daniels. GENRE/MEDIUM: Superhero/Prose. FINISHED: Feb 20. REVIEW: Omigosh. And I thought I loved the first book! This one simply continues Danny Tozer's amazing story, six months after the events of Dreadnought. And it filled me with emotions. Joy. Fear, Love. Worry. EVERYTHING. I'm glad I didn't wait to read this, and I'm so sad that April hasn't put out the third and final book in the series yet. (She was pretty heavily harrassed a couple years ago, and I have no idea how she is now; hope she's ok!). Anyway, yes, read these books. They are amazing.

5. Gothic Tales of Haunted Futures, S.M. Beiko (editor). GENRE/MEDIUM: Gothic/Comics. FINISHED: Feb 21. REVIEW: I kickstarted this book a number of years ago (2019?), and it got held up by publisher issues. I got it in November 2020, and finally read it today. A follow-up to "Gothic Tales of Haunted Love," I'll admit I found the former a bit more enjoyable. The remit for this one is Gothic tales in a SFish setting, with an especial emphasis on marginalized people, especially LGBTQIA+ folks. (As a kickstarter backer of the first book, I was invited to pitch for this, but couldn't get it together in time.) It definitely does what it says it would; I just found the stories to be of more variable quality this time. That said, there are some incredible gems here (especially the first and last stories), so I'd recommend buying both volumes, if you like comics and/or Gothic stories with a more inclusive feel!

During February I also read most of Star Trek Adventures, a TTRPG by Modiphius Games. I didn't wind up finishing it (read all I needed to to play in a game), so it's not officially on the list, but it did take up quite a bit of time, so....REVIEW: It's good. Really good. The bulk of the book is actually Trek background/in-universe history, ending just before the Dominion War, but it can be played in three "eras:" Enterprise, TOS, and TNG. The system is really elegant, for both players and the GM, and the whole thing feels like Star Trek. It's very versatile and lets you play the kind of Trek game you want. Highly recommended!

And that's it for this month! (Technically, I read another book during it, but I didn't finish it until March 1, so....live in suspense!) Anyone have any questions, comments, whatever, feel free!

Jaw. Drop.

That's it. That's the review.


No, only joking. ( Spoilers now )

DOCTOR WHO WILL RETURN WITH REVOLUTION OF THE DALEKS! (Presumably at New Year's!)

WOW.

Ok, yes, I'm a week late in watching/writing about this. Time just got away from me, as it often does. But, now that I've seen it, all I can say is WOW. This was...this was a great story. Period. And from a first time Doctor Who writer too, which is even more impressive. And it's a proper pseudo-historical; unlike many others over the past few years, it works tremendously well.

Seriously, I'm not sure I can say anything bad about this one. I suppose, just in case, I should do a ( spoiler cut )

NEXT EPISODE (which aired in the UK a few hours ago): A Cyberwar to end all Cyberwars...can the Doctor salvage anything? It's "Ascension of the Cybermen" by Chris Chibnall. Who knows, I may watch it later tonight!

That was really fun.

That's my four word review right there!

This definitely continues the strength we saw last week, with the large canvas feel of "Spyfall" too. It's a fun, scary, cool globetrotting adventure that gives everyone things to do...and it didn't let me down in the end.

Right. ( Spoilers! )

NEXT SUNDAY: To be honest, I have no idea what this is about, but didn't the teaser look interesting? It's "Can You Hear Me?" by award winning playwright and Doctor Who newcomer Charlene James and Chris Chibnall. (That guy again???)

Well, I wanted better than the last episode, and I certainly got that. This was a fun psuedohistorial romp, but it somehow left me...unsatisfied a bit. And I'm not sure why, because, as I said, it was perfectly good. I honestly kind of wonder if it's the running time; everything felt slightly underdeveloped, as if the ideas needed more time to percolate. That being said, it was definitely a fun episode.

( let's talk spoilers )

NEXT SUNDAY: Ho No Bro Co? It's "Fugitive of the Judoon" by Vinay Patel (yay!) and Chris Chibnall. (Very interesting title...not "fugitive from", but "of." Hmmmmm....)