Artificial Condition continues my internal war with how I feel about The Murderbot Diaries. Despite it being more technobabble than almost anything else, the story remains intriguing and engaging off the back of the main conceit: what if a rogue AI designed to kill wanted to be left alone to watch television?
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget is inescapably a nostalgia grab of a movie, relying on people like me and our fond memories of the original film. If it weren’t for that history, I’m not sure it would’ve been that big of a deal for there to be a new kid’s movie about chickens attempting to escape being eaten.
The Trees Grew Because I Bled There is horrific and evocative. A well-earned compliment that applies not only to the title but to every story in this horror anthology. Though, I almost hesitate to use the word “horror” to describe this work.
The Giggle marks the end of Doctor Who’s trilogy of specials, and, like each one, I enjoyed it a lot and found a core issue. This one is perhaps the most flattering flaw on paper, though, even if I consider Wild Blue Yonder to be the stronger episode overall. Simply put, The Giggle is too short—way, way too short.
Limetown is a podcast that follows a young woman attempting to discover the truth about the disappearance of the people of Limetown. She has a particular drive to do so because one of her family members was there in Limetown, and his body was never found.
If Doctor Who: Wild Blue Yonder had been a novelization, it would be in my top ten favorite Doctor Who stories across any season, with any Doctor. Full stop. I love it when Doctor Who leans into horror and the weirder side of the universe.
Doctor Who: The Star Beast marks the return of so many things. The return of Russell T. Davies as showrunner. The return of David Tennant as the 14th Doctor. And a continuation of Catherine Tate’s Donna Noble story that had originally ended in a tragic mindwipe after she helped save the universe.
I’d not read anything by T. Kingfisher before this novel, but given the grace of the prose, The Hollow Places will not be the last. She’s shown her sureness within both this subgenre and in the art of simply telling a good story.
Starting worst and going toward best, this is a shorter but much more spoiler-heavy breakdown of these six spooky tales.
The Call of the Flame initially worried me that it would be a repeat of my usual concerns with Epic Fantasy. In my very recent review of The Legacy Saga, I talked about how stories in this genre can lack strong inciting incidents or story hooks because it’s too busy with worldbuilding. And several times, The Call of the Flame almost fell right into the same trap but miraculously continued to pull back and keep things understandable.
Before listening to The Storage Papers, I never thought a podcast could scare me as much as The Magnus Archives. That the mind-melting, the dark-is-dangerous thrill it gave me was the peak of horror storytelling.
The Legacy Saga taught me an interesting lesson about tropes, genre conventions, and storytelling methods that I simply cannot enjoy. In the grand scheme, there’s nothing terribly wrong with The Legacy Saga, no glaring sin, but it was a slog to listen to for any amount of time. The minor issues stack up quickly, and what could’ve been a fun experience turned into a malaise.
