56/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
As with the rest in this series, a nice selection of funny, mysterious, charming stories.
Books
I read…a lot. Here’s where I ramble about books and printed media.
📚 The Nixie of the Mill-Pond and Other European Stories edited by Kel McDonald and Kate Ashwin
55/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The next in this anthology series. As this one is European stories, it was the first with stories I recognized. Once again, a good selection, with good artwork, and while overall a little lighter than the other two I’ve read so far, still has a few pleasant moments of darkness.
📚 The Night Marchers and Other Oceanian Tales edited by Kel McDonald, Kate Ashwin, and Sloane Leong
54/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
More short graphic adaptions of fables from around the world; this edition centering on Oceania (primarily Hawaii and the Philippines).
📚 The Woman in the Woods and Other North American Stories edited by Kel McDonald, Kate Ashwin, and Alina Pete
53/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
One of a series of six (eventually; five are published, the sixth is in production) anthologies of short comics based on indigenous cultures; this one is stories from North America. I enjoyed all the stories, with a good range of humor, heartfeltness, and darkness.
📚 Past Prologue by L.A. Graf
52/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
More time travel shenanigans to get everything wrapped up means more opportunity to get a little confused as to which version of each character is in which setting, but it works out in the end. And the final scene is actually a nice way to finish things off.
But once again, the back cover blurb is wrong, but has just enough relation to make me think that there were some major rewrites and the blurbs were written from the original pitch instead of the final work for some reason.
📚 Future Imperfect by L.A. Graf
51/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Part two of this trilogy involves a lot of time travel, or dimensional travel, or both, which occasionally makes it a bit difficult to keep track of who is where/when, but for the most part tracks decently.
The back cover blurb is somewhat closer to the plot of the book than with the first book in the series, but still has some notable differences. Maybe the blurbs were written much earlier in the planning process, before rewrites and editorial adjustments? The cover image also has no relation to the story.
📚 Present Tense by L.A. Graf
50/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Set directly after “The Naked Now”, the Enterprise decides to use their extra three days to do a low-stakes check on an away team on a boring planet. Suddenly, everything goes wrong! The first book in a trilogy, so nothing gets wrapped up here, but it’s the usual Trek adventures. Some extra points for having cave exploration scenes that were claustrophobic enough to wig me out a little.
Weirdly, the summary blurb on the back of the book (and thus, on this site) is entirely unrelated to the actual plot.
📚 The Howling Man by Charles Beaumont
48/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Overall not a bad collection of short stories, and I can see why the book got the high-profile list of authors to do introductions and provide their memories of Beaumont. However, many of the stories haven’t aged well; they may have been “dated but still worthwhile” when the collection was published in the late ’80s, but forty years further on, they’re just “dated and cringeworthy”. Don’t regret reading it, but definitely won’t be keeping it in my collection, either.
📚 Books of Blood Vol. 4-6 by Clive Barker
47/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Barker’s stories are as dark, twisted, and excellent as ever. This edition has several unfortunate typos and for some reason restarts the page numbering for each of the three included volumes, but those are separate considerations from the content.
