Books

Book Review: Shards of Honor

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Shards of Honor is the book that kicks off the long-running Vorkosigan series, though this book serves more of a “How I Met Your Mother” story – only in a case where the fact that our two leads will get together is a foregone conclusion strictly because I’m reading this now after there have been a slew of sequels based around their son, Miles. So the question then becomes, “How does this book hold up when you know that there’s only one destination it can arrive at?”

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Books

Book Review: Iron Widow

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When Iron Widow came up on the list of the list of rejected Hugo Award nominees in the controversy over the Chengdu Worldcon, I figured that I should bump the book further up my reading list (it was already there, it was just further in). Then it became a Sword & Laser book club pick, and I made sure to get ahold of a copy from the library – and I was not disappointed by this book at all, and I’m eagerly looking forward to the sequel.

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News

Anime Review: Sand Land

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For decades, the gateway to the works of Akira Toriyama in the US has been Dragon Ball Z – the point where Toriyama’s opus shifted gears from gag manga with fighting to shonen fight manga. In 2024, the year in which he sadly passed, we got an anime adaptation of another work, one which I think serves as a better jumping on point to Toriyama as an artist – Sand Land.

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Video games

Video Game Review: Halo Infinite

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The Halo series, from the jump, is a series that is known for creating the illusion of large open spaces for the player to explore, especially through the various levels of the game that combine large driving sequences with areas where the player has to get out and plunge into various Forerunner or Covenant facilities. So, by all rights, Halo Infinite just going full Open World game should be the right call, right? Right?

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film

Film Review: Twin Peaks – Fire Walk With Me (+ The Missing Pieces)

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When Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me came out, it was critically panned. Not unsurprising when a critical darling, an auteur who had been nominated for an Academy Award would dare to make his next film after daring to work in *shudder* television decides to make a movie that is tied in with that TV series. It lost money, it was roasted by critics and by David Lynch’s peers, burning him out on the Twin Peaks franchise entirely.

The sentiment of that critical establishment is not one I share – I’m a Trekker. I grew up watching the original series films, along with the movies for Next Generation – and appreciate the depths of both the series and the films, along with some of the ancillary works. Consequently, I would not dismiss a film tie-in to a TV series – so I came into Fire Walk With Me, and the edited-together Deleted Scenes of The Missing Pieces with an open mind, and was not disappointed.

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