2022 fantasy, second of its trilogy. Princess Gemma continues to try to work out what the Mortans are up to.
2009 science fiction, dir. J. J. Abrams, Chris Pine. Zachary Quinto: IMDb / allmovie. A franchise reboot, but yet another civilisation-scale threat.
2022 American Regency-ish romance, part of a loosely linked series. Juno Bell and the future Duke of Dammerton knew each other as children, but he had his duty, and then she had her life as a scandalous artist. But fate keeps throwing them together.
2014 drama, dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu, Michael Keaton, Zach Galifianakis; IMDb / allmovie. Back in the day, Riggan Thompson played the hero in the Birdman films; now he's putting on a Broadway play in a bid to be taken seriously for his art.
1989 detective fiction, ninth of James's novels of Inspector (now Commander) Adam Dalgliesh. Dalgliesh goes to an obscure headland in Norfolk to decide whether he wants to keep his deceased aunt's house; inevitably, he gets drawn into murder.
I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved decoding a sequence and merging lists. (Note that this closes for public solutions today.)
2022 Victorian romance. Evelyn Maltravers has a Grand Plan: she'll wow fashionable London with her riding, then find a wealthy husband to pay for bringing out her sisters. But to do that she will need the right riding habit, and Ahmad Malik the tailor is her man for that…
Back to the boardgame café.
2022 SF/fantasy novel in the Innkeeper series. In what seems like an obvious trap for Dina and Sean, Sean's mentor is kidnapped and taken to a planet that's almost certainly fatal to get to. Someone else can provide safe transport, but there's a price…
2013 science fiction, dir. Alfonso Cuarón, Sandra Bullock, George Clooney; IMDb / allmovie. Kessler syndrome is not your friend.
2010 mystery/thriller, fifth in its series. Georgiana Rannoch, 34th in line to the throne, finds herself in Nice with a mission to recover the Queen's "borrowed" snuffbox.
1983 fantasy, first of a tetralogy. Alanna wants to be a knight and have adventures; her twin brother Thom wants to be trained in magic. So they swap roles, and Alanna disguises herself as a boy.
I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved searching through arrays. (Note that this is closes today.)
This Meetup-based boardgames group continues to meet in the Britannia.
2018 SF, sixth of its series. Everyone was expecting the newly-seceded Republic to attack the Proctecorate, but it's been eighteen months without any movement…
1975 mystery, twelfth in the series about Superintendent Henry Tibbett. The ambassador to the US from newly-independent Tampica has an Unsuitable Wife; when she gets horribly drunk at a diplomatic reception, then kills herself, nobody is terribly surprised. But that may not be quite what happened…
2013 romantic drama, dir. Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy; IMDb / allmovie. Another nine years later, Jesse and Celine are raising their children, but have they turned into their own unhappy parents?
2014 military SF, tenth of this ongoing series. A variety of missions, well outside the scope of anything official, brings Daniel and crew to a planet in rebellion.
1964 murder mystery. Two years ago, Colin Lockie was ambushed on the road, and a worthless painting stolen. Now his childhood friend has spotted it for sale in an auction-house at the other end of the country. vt The Decayed Gentlewoman.
I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved letter sorting and an array calculation. (Note that this closes today.)
The 1 Player Guild is a group of solo game players, communicating through BoardGameGeek. This was the seventh get-together for the UK contingent, back together in person.
With images; cc-by-sa on everything.
1996 SF. Reva is an assassin with a strange power: she can jump between similar timelines, so that chance is always on her side. She'll need more than that to survive her latest entanglements, though.
2004 romantic drama, dir. Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy; IMDb / allmovie. Nine years later, Jesse and Celine meet again.
2014 crime anthology, stories set in Belfast.
1954 historical fiction for young people. Marcus Flavius Aquila, centurion of auxiliaries, is crippled in his first battle; that ends up freeing him for an even more perilous mission, to find out what happened when the Ninth Legion, with its First Cohort under the command of his father, marched north and never came back.
2022 fantasy. Thara Celehar continues to witness for the dead. But as with any agent of the law, there are people who don't want him doing his job.
I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved lots of combinatorial searches. (Note that this closes today.)
2014 fantasy. Rhea the miller's daughter was expecting that she'd get married some day… but why has Lord Crevan made an offer for her at all, never mind right now?
2019 science fiction, eighth in the Diving Universe series. A crew of Fleet misfits is sent on a suicide mission to find out what's happening in one of the stockpiles of abandoned ships.
2023 modern fantasy novella, continuation of the Kate Daniels series. Kate, her husband Lennart and their son Conlan just want to live in peace for a bit. Of course that isn't going to happen.
Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube. Opinions are thoroughly personal. Calibration: I want a trailer to tell me what's different about this film; the marketers want it to tell me why it's like all the others…)