Category: Reviews

Movie, TV, and book reviews

The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon [Review]

The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon by Moira Greyland Castalia House, 2018 The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon is the book that grew out of the 2014 revelation that fantasy and science fiction and fantasy author Marion Zimmer Bradley abused her own children and knowingly protected and facilitated her husband Walter …

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The Casual Gamer: Shelf Sort Games

Since I’ve critted books, movies, and shared worlds, why not games? I don’t mean immersive ones like Halo or Dragon Age. These require far too much investment for me. I prefer casual games, the kind players can download on their phone or iPad, try out, and delete if they don’t like them. Casually… just like …

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It Came from the Closet [Review]

It Came from the Closet – Queer Reflections on Horror Edited by Joe Vallese The Feminist Press, 2022 Time to squeeze in one more book review for October! It Came from the Closet is a collection of essays by LGBTQ writers about their favorite horror movie and why they like it. That it scares them …

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Y/N [Reading Challenge 2024]

Y/N by Esther Li Penguin Random House, 2024 [ #23  Out of the park on first at-bat: A debut ] Update on Authors Watercooler Reading Challenge 2024. I wasn’t getting anywhere with my paranormal pick, The Death of the Necromancer by Martha Welles. Who, unknown to me when I picked it in January, also wrote the …

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The Convoluted World of Ruwenda

Technically its name is “The World of the Three Moons” but the country the series revolves around is called Ruwenda, so I’m going call the world Ruwenda as well, similar to how “Narnia” refers to both Narnia the country and Narnia the greater world around it. The purpose of this post is to give some …

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Golden Trillium [Review]

Golden Trillium by Andre Norton Bantam Books, 1993 Golden Trillium is the third book in the Trillium series of fantasy novels, which debuted, with much fanfare, in 1990 with Black Trillium. Since that’s over 30 years ago, I’ll recap the project here. Three respected female writers of classic SFF, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Andre Norton, and …

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Wonderful Tonight [Review]

Wonderful Tonight by Patti Boyd and Penny Junor Three Rivers Press, 2007 I’ve got a soft spot for rock and roll biographies. I must have consumed 50+ over the years, including those of bands. It’s not so much understanding the musicianship that attracts me as getting to know the real people behind the songs that …

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The Product
[Reading Challenge 2024]

The Product by Marina Fontaine Conservatarian Press, 2022 [ #23  After the fall: A post-apocalyptic or dystopic book. ] This book kept popping up in my Kindle feed, so I chose it for the “Dystopia” category of this year’s challenge. It occurred to me when writing this review that “Russian Dystopia” is perhaps a subset, …

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Summer of Narnia 2024 Fanfic Reviews, July [Review]

It’s time for another group review of Narnia fanfics! Featured artwork: Jill and the Lion. This is the scene from the first chapter of The Silver Chair where Jill, abandoned by Eustace on Aslan’s Mountain, has to decide whether or not to drink from a stream guarded by a dangerous lion who talks to her. …

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All Aboard! Images from the Golden Age of Rail Travel [Review]

All Aboard! Images from the Golden Age of Rail Travel by Lynn Johnson & Michael O’Leary Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1999 If you were a graphic artist in the 1980s and 1990s Chronicle Books of San Francisco was your crack, publishing tons of art, art history, design and architecture books every. All were beautifully designed …

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