11 years. 1300 book reviews. 170 movies. 100 seasons of TV shows.

That’s so ridiculous when you write it out. It’s kind of neat how something builds up if you just keep doing it over time.

In any case, I enjoy collecting stats on various things and sharing them out. Both as a way to look back and remember for myself and in the hope that someone else finds it interesting and/or shares anything new/interesting I haven’t seen!

Overall this year:

• Read 298 books
• Watch 17 seasons of TV
• Watched 11 movies
• Played 227 different (85 new) board games a total of 1313 times
• Played 37 games on steam (24 new) and made it to 100% Achievements on 101 of them

Table of Contents

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Luck is a fairy tale we use to make people feel better about the world being unfair as shit.

Man this book has come a ways since The City of Brass. At first we had a fairly straight forward portal fantasy: normal human girl goes through a portal (ish) to another world, discovers magic, and has adventures (again; ish). Then things escalate. Political intrigue. Old enemies. Revolution. War.

And now… Daevabad has fallen. Nahri and Ali are on the run, trying desperately first to survive and then… maybe, to come back and save the day. And perhaps learn all those dirty little secrets those (formerly) in power tried hard to hide all these years.

I do not believe ambitious men who say the only route to peace and prosperity lies in giving them more power—particularly when they do it with lands and people who are not theirs.

I love the characters. Especially Dara, but the whole Nahri and Ali journey was great to read. And I even foundmyself rooting for Muntadhir, which after the previous books… I did not expect). Manizheh… I think Ghassan was a better villain overall, and it’s interesting that she made it as far as she did, but so it goes.

And I still love the worldbuilding–even if I’m still after 3 books not 100% sure what is a subset of what and who is a when. But I suppose that’s the point. Reality is messy. But it’s a fascinating world and I’m sad to be leaving it.

Overall it’s a solid conclusion to a great series. I’d be happy to read more in this world, but I’m always glad to see a series actually get it’s own small end, rather than just fading out as many do.

Find your happiness, little thief. Steal it and do not ever let it go.

Onward!

[[Perdido Street Station|One in a city]], [[The Scar|one on a boat]]… and now one based around an entire civilization built around a ‘perpetual train’, putting down rails as it goes (and at times, tearing them up behind it).

Man China Miéville has some bonkers worldbuilding ideas.

I mean course you want a change, we want a change, but if a change ain’t godsdamn coming, then the next thing I wish is that I didn’t care.

Beyond that, we have a whole book about political oppression and xenophobia (the Iron Council is initially founded by the remade working on the train). It’s about the tension of a revolution that feels inevitable. We have a story about gender differences (in a world where sexual dimorphism is a huge deal for some species) and love and longing. And a story about future history. The messy way of how one ends up getting history books written about them.

“History…” Jacobs spoke with terse authority. Brought Ori to a hush. “Is all full. And dripping. With the corpses. Of them who trusted the incorruptible.”

It’s also interesting to see the fallout of the ‘Contruct Uprising’. A direct consequence of Perdido Street Station. And now instead, we have golems–which in this world can be made by animating any sorts of bits of innanimate matter and giving them life/instructions. It’s cool!

Unfortunately, I think this may be the weakest of the three. Despite how cool an idea a ‘perpetual train’ is, I think the story spends too much time on other people/places/things. It’s all building up, but when one of the things I love the most (and always start by describing) is left wanting? That’s a bit of a bummer. It’s still fascinating and there’s a bunch of it… but I wanted more!

Ghosts! Goblins! Murder! The FBI (in London)! The LONDON UNDERGROUND!

I do continue to really love the feel of these books. It feels like a British cop show with a combination of magical elements and the science of magic, which are all delightful things.

Characterwise, it’s mostly the same, although this time around, we get a lot more of Lesley stepping up to learn magic again, which is something I was hoping would happen. I’m looking forward to seeing how those two grow together.

“That was Seawoll,” she said. “Stephanopoulos is on her way down and you’re not to do anything stupid until she gets here.”

You burn down one central London tourist attraction, I thought, and they never let you forget it.

It’s also interesting seeing the bits of London as a city built on people from all manners, histories, and walks of life.

My mum translated this in her head to “witchfinder,” which was good because like most West Africans, she considered witchfinding a more respectable profession than policeman.

😄

Worldbuildingwise, I like seeing ever more of teh magical world of London. There really is a feel of ’this could be’ that urban fantasy doesn’t always get right. And I enjoy finding out that even the magical folks don’t know how a lot of what they do works, but our main character is not going to let that stand.

This is why magic is worse even than quantum physics. Because, while both spit in the eye of common sense, I’ve never yet had a Higgs bosun turn up and try to have a conversation with me.

It’s fun to see even more of the magical underground (literally). It’s neat to see how different authors play with old stories (and make up their own!)

“My dad was a fairy," said Zach. “And by that I don’t mean he dressed well and enjoyed musical theatre.”

One oddity: There are a ton of Lord of the Rings references throughout this book, some blatent and some more subtle. I was really fully expecting that to Chekhov's gun… but they were just references all along? That seems weird to me and I can’t quite my finger on why.

Overall, I loved it and am looking forward to the next one! Onward!

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Once there was a bunny. This bunny had a birthday party. It was the bestest birthday party ever. Because that was the day the bunny got a bazooka.

The bunny loved his bazooka. He blew up all sorts of things on the farm. He blew up the stable of Henrietta the Horse. He blew up the pen of Pugsly the Pig. He blew up the coop of Chuck the Chicken.

“I have the bestest bazooka ever,” the bunny said. Then the farm friends proceeded to beat him senseless and steal his bazooka. It was the happiest day of his life.

The end.

Epilogue: Pugsly the Pig, now without a pen, was quite annoyed. When none of the others were looking, he stole the bazooka. He tied a bandana on his head and swore vengeance for what had been done to him.

“From this day on,” he whispered, raising the bazooka, “I shall be known as Hambo.

Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians introduced us to the world, now in Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener’s Bones we actually get to live in it! A bit. Sort of.

(Hushlanders, it might be noted, aren’t very imaginative with their idioms. Personally, I say, “Out of the frying pan and into the deadly pit filled with sharks who are wielding chainsaws with killer kittens stapled to them.” However, that one’s having a rough time catching on.)

Essentially, the entire book is an adventure where Alcatraz and co (Bastille, but also newcomers Australia¹ and Kaz) are on a mission to mention a recently missing Grandpa Smedry. One thing leads to another, they end up in the Library of Alexandria–which got totally Tardis’ed–and discover all sorts of spooky ghosts, ancient scrolls, hidden messages, … and more.

Not all librarians are evil cultists. Some librarians are instead vengeful undead who want to suck your soul.

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I actually picked up this book the day I voted in the election. A three hour line at the local library where you’ve run out of podcasts will do that to you. 😄 Mostly, the cover looked neat, so I figured I’d give it a chance. Which makes this only the second physical (non-children’s) book I’ve read in probably a decade.

For better or (and) for worse, the book is billed as ‘if Shirley Jackson wrote The Shining’, which… this is not. It does have a family moved out deep into the wilderness, away from the city they’ve always loved, thrown into land where somehow you can get … feet of unexpected snow? And a tree that may or may not be talking to you?

Mostly, I think it feels not quite finished. There are some decently creepy scenes in the book, but it never quite ramped up for me. The hallucinations the family goes through are certainly disconcerting but, barring one, they don’t really seem to be all that dangerous. I did like that it was never entirely clear what was hallucination and what was real though, that was a nice touch. Then, by the time things really start falling apart, we have sudden violence/death that doesn’t really land and an ending that wrapped up all too suddenly.

I will say that I did enjoy the descriptions of the mountain wilderness and their new home. I would have liked to explore that more. It felt wild, which I appreciated.

Anyways, being only the second physical book I’ve read in a long while and a hardcover at that, it really did have a nice tactile feel to it and I was enjoying the book enough to read it all the way through, so I’ve certainly come across worse.

Onward!

Rivers of London got the introduction out of the way, so now it’s time for Moon Over Soho to really build out the world.

I really love seeing Grant exploring the magic of the world. He’s doing science to magic. I do enjoy books that do that. (Plus, it’s funny!)

I had jokingly developed my own scale for vestigia based on the amount of noise Toby made when he interacted with any residual magic. I called it a yap, one yap being enough vestigia to be apparent even when I wasn’t looking for it.

The yap would be an SI unit, of course, and thus the standard background ambience of a Central London pub was 0.2 of a yap (0.2Y) or 200 milliyaps (200mY).

Also, more worldbuilding about what the ‘Rivers’ are (fae? or at least fae adjacent). More talk about vampires. And of course… What’s the deal with Nightingale?

“What’s the biggest thing you’ve zapped with a fireball?’ I asked.
‘That would be a tiger,‘said Nightingale.
‘Well don’t tell Greenpeace,’ I said. ‘They’re an endagered species.’
‘Not that sort of tiger,’ said Nightingale. ‘A Panzer-kampfwagen sechs Ausf E.’
I stared at him. ‘You knocked out a Tiger tank with a fireball?’
‘Actually I knocked out two,’ said Nightingale. ‘I have to admit that the first one took three shots, one to disable the tracks, one through the driver’s eye slot and one down the commander’s hatch - brewed up rather nicely.”

Plus, we get piles more London, this time around digging into the musical/jazz scenes. I managed to go through the first book entirely expecting Grant’s parents to be out of the picture (that’s just the way urban fantasy always seems to go), so it’s fascinating to see them on page and actually playing interesting roles in the story!

My Dad says that being a Londoner has nothing to do with where you’re born. He says that there are people who get off a jumbo jet at Heathrow, go through immigration waving any kind of passport, hop on the tube and by the time the train’s pulled into Piccadilly Circus they’ve become a Londoner.

Weirdest change of this series: Grant falls quickly and deeply in ~love~ lust with someone (from a case!) and there are a number of decently explicit on screen sex scenes. I didn’t necessary see that one coming.

Also plotwise, I was … surprised by the ending. Not in who the big bad ended up being, more more what happened after that. It felt sudden and perhaps unearned, like we’d reached the end of the book and had to warp things up. I’m curious if we’ll get any fallout of that in future books, but I don’t really expect to.

I did really like the scenes with Leslie though (from the first book), especially–and counter to my first point–her ending. That… now that has some interesting potential for the series.

Okay, after Sitting in a Tree, back to our regularly scheduled Spider-Gwen!

lol.

And then of course, as these things do everything escalated. Harry/Lizard. Venom. Mr. Murderhands.

All the chaos!

The main Spider-Gwen storyline was getting a bit weak there, but I’m glad to see this as a return to form. I’m really curious what happens next here.

Onward!

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The ongoing developments of Spider-Gwen and this universe’s Matt Murdoch.

I’m intrigued!

And then we get an annual made of a bunch of random stories. Cute enough. But… I want the main storyline.

The All New Wolverine body swap was a lot of fun though.

Onward!

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