Queen of Candesce
{4.5/5} “Eventually she moved over to the window and picked up a particular doll. Its tunic was ripped where the secret policemen had cut it open looking for hidden notes… So that’s what he’d been doing. Albard had rubbed its eyebrows off against the stone. Then, in meticulous tiny lines and curls, he had repainted […]
Sun of Suns
{4.5/5} “The shells of cloud that enveloped the center of Virga sometimes parted, revealing the sun of suns, Candesce. Daylight would suddenly flash out to fill the entire volume of winter. Each time, Hayden had stood on the air, amazed at the brilliance of it — at the sheer size of an ancient, untended fusion […]
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
{4.5/5} “I’m running a camouflage lesson at noon. If you can find me.” Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, released in 2023 Ginger and Rocky have a girl named Molly. They are protective of her and don’t want her to leave the island. Of course, Molly is curious about the world outside the island, and […]
Cage of Souls
{4.5/5} “Will you even remember, yourself? No, your minds contract so that nothing but that awful city is in it. You will forget that there are other ways of living. Even Stefan here, who writes brave words about how to save the world, never dreamed of living outside Shadrapar. If the city can be saved, […]
The Creator
{4.5/5} “‘What do you want, sweetie?’ ‘For robots to be free.’ ‘Oh. We don’t have that in the fridge. How about ice cream?’” The Creator, released in 2023 AI detonated a nuclear bomb and killed a million people, so now it’s outlawed in the West. Joshua is living in a community in New Asia with […]
Past Imperative
{4.5/5} “If a man is prophesied to die in battle and you poison him first at his dinner table, then you have invalidated the entire prophecy, you see? … If any one statement is clearly discredited, then the future described is no longer valid and none of the rest of the prophecy applies anymore. If […]
Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part 1
{5/5} “‘If I tell you to run, you run.’ ‘Run? This is getting exciting.’” Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, released in 2023 A Russian sub sinks when the AI on board goes rogue. Ethan Hunt gets word that Ilsa Faust is about to be killed by mercenaries, and the US would like a […]
Futurama (season 7)
{4.5/5} “Well, I never liked going to Omicron Persei 8 anyway. If we want to breathe sulfuric acid and get our heads torn off by giant lizards, we can always go to Gary, Indiana.” Futurama season 7, aired in 2012-13 Bender has a baby robot but doesn’t think he wants to be a farther, until […]
Legends & Lattes
{4.5/5} “She ducked under the lintel and entered, and there was a momentary drop in the conversational volume, but Thune was pretty cosmopolitan, and orcs weren’t unknown, just a little unusual. The noise picked right back up. She took a deep breath and tried to relax her face into a non-threatening expression, something she’d been […]
DaCapo Choir’s “My Spirit Sang All Day”
I attended the DaCapo Chamber Choir’s concert “My Spirit Sang All Day.” DaCapo is celebrating its 25th anniversary and aside from the one premiere all of the other pieces are ones they’ve sung before. As such, this was a very satisfying concert for me as I knew a bunch of the pieces. The Whitacre was […]