2015, A Year in Reading: Best Books of the Year

I read 44 books in 2015, about the same as last year and still not where I'd like to be (I'm still working on what might yet be number 45, but I doubt I'll make it in the three hours and change I have left).  About a third of the books I read were science fiction, a much higher proportion than usual due to Hugo reading and some other writing projects I'm working on.  Though I've found some great

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

A few weeks ago, someone on my twitter feed joked that soon, we'd be inundated with a million reviews and thinkpieces about The Force Awakens all starting the same way--with a recitation of the author's personal connection to Star Wars, how they first encountered the movies, what their emotional reaction to the prequels was, and what place the franchise holds in their heart.  This threw me,

Show Me a Hero: Thoughts on Jessica Jones

2015 has been an interesting year for Marvel Studios and the MCU.  The ever-expanding franchise's movie wing struggled this year, closing out the otherwise excellent Phase II with the overstuffed Avengers: Age of Ultron and the underbaked Ant-Man, two very different movies whose single shared trait is how definitively they demonstrate that Marvel isn't interested in--is, in fact, terrified of-

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

When coming so late to a novel that has been as rapturously received as Ann Leckie's debut (it is the winner of--deep breath, now--the Hugo, Nebula, Clarke, BSFA, Locus, and Kitschie awards, was nominated for the Philip K. Dick award, and noted in the Tiptree award honor roll) there's a temptation to focus one's critical thoughts on the obvious question: why this book?  What is it about Ancillary