January:
Short Fiction:  Seanan McGuire's My Last Name, Velveteen vs. the Retroactive Continuity & Velveteen Presents Jacqueline Claus vs. the Lost & Found; Stephen Leigh's the Atonement Tango

New Read:  Eric Flint/Griffen Barber's 1636: Mission to the Mughals
Chuck Wendig's Star Wars: Aftermath
Yuya Sato's Dendera: Old ladies vs. enviroment.  And a ( Read more... )

April
Short Fiction: Marie Brennan's "From the Editorial Page of the Falchester Weekly Review", Glenn Hirshberg's "Freedom is Space for the Spirit", Tara Isabella Burton's "the Destroyer" & Genevieve Valentine's "La Beaute Sans Vertu".

New Reads:
Brandon Sanderson's Calamity and the Bands of Mourning.  The first finishes up his supers' trilogy and ( Read more... )

An entertaining if formulaic bit of super-hero adventuring.  Paul Rudd is sardoniclly amusing, Evangalline Lilly is is gruff and annoyed since this would be a Wasp movie if it weren't for an over-protective father.  Corey Stoll is a bit bland as the evil science corporate ass.  But he's more than balanced by Michael Pena's sidekick character.  And ( Read more... )

Positives: Opening fight sequence.  Snarkiness off the scale of the Sarcasamater.  Wakanda.  Infinity Stones.  "I have a bow and arrow.  None of this makes sense ( Read more... )

The general storyline is a fairly typical super team start-up.  It's a very well done and fun one with a more diverse cast than usual.  But still not much new here.  It's the robot Baymax and his purpose as a health provider and how that intersects with the grief of the lead character where the movie stands out.  That and the lush and vibrant ( Read more... )

Only three free-range short pieces for September.  The GOON Squad Summer Special 2014 by Jonathan L. Howard is several short shorts showcasing brief interludes for the main characters of his "GOON Squad" series.  Kendare Blake's When Gods & Vampires Roamed Miami has a retired goddess being mistaken for a vampire by would-be child-of-the-night.  And ( Read more... )

Short Fiction: Ray Wood's In the Sight of Akresa is a fairly depressing story about denying your true self and letting your lies damn those you care about.  Then issues four thru six of John L. Howard's supers series Goon Squad.  And finally Hero of Five Points by Alan Gratz is an entertaining bit of "Gangs of New York" steampunk style that serves ( Read more... )

Looking over the non-collected short fiction to start, beginning with N.K. Jemisin's Playing Nice With God's Bowling Ball which is about a police investigation of some super-science gone wrong involving young kids.  Steve White's the Last Secret of Mary Bowser is a sort of side story to what I think is his normal time travel war series.  I think.  ( Read more... )

Really procrastinating on these now. *sigh*  Anyways, lets start with the free-range short fiction.  Seanan McGuire's IM is part of her "InCyrptid" series.  Sadly it feels more like a pro or post-logue than a full story. Her latest "Velveteen" story, Velveteen vs.Santa Claus, is a much stronger piece.  Even if it makes you want to punch Santa in ( Read more... )

Short story wise for back in May we had the Litany of the Earth by Ruthanna Emyrs a CoC mythos story on faith from the perspective of the near human.  The Steel Soldiers' Gambit by Ian Thomas Haley, part of reading the remainder of his "Just Cause" supers series, where a robot bluffs a mentalist at a poker game.  And then a tale of artistry, ( Read more... )