Series Review – October Daye Books 8-12

In for a penny, in for a pound. I reread an October Daye book and posted old reviews for the first seven books, and I’ve ended up rereading the series and figured I would fill out the rest.  Obviously once you get to book 8 of a series, the only people reading are the hard core fans, so assume that you should go back and read the earlier books before getting to these ones, and that later reviews might contain spoilers for earlier books.  Thanks to The Unkindest Tide being overdue, this completes the current run of novels, and just leaves the short fiction to review…

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Play Review – PUFFS: The Play by Matt Cox

PUFFS is clearly made by someone who loves Harry Potter, but is not blind to its faults.  Ever since it appeared on the scene, fans have been obsessed with which house they would fit in (Brave, Smart, Snake), but it was fairly clear that not all houses were created equal. Puffs answers the question, what is it like to be in the other, other, other house at Hogwarts, in the most humorous way possible… 

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Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2019 -Graphic Story

This is a pretty self explanatory category typically composed of graphic novels and trade paperbacks.  The big story of 2019 is how stagnant the selection is; half of the Graphic Story slate has been locked in since 2017, in the form of Saga (six time nominee), Monstress (two time winner), and Paper Girls. Fortunately two of the repeats (Monstress and Saga) were my top picks of last year, so it is hard to begrudge them their perennial status.

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Review – Temeraire Series by Naomi Novik

The first book is in this series is pretty close to the platonic ideal of Napoleonic ships and Dragons. As the series continues however, Novik sets her sights on bigger things, and does something laudable that many fantasy authors never do – thinks through the consequences of her premise. Over the course of the next five novels, she examines the extension of the franchise, slavery, colonialism, mercantilism, and the conflict between honor and duty, through the prism of a world where power is shifted by the existence of Dragon’s weighing 10’s of tons.

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