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Books

Seeds of Dissolution by William C. Tracy Book Review

Happy Pride Month! For many countries around the world (namely Western ones), June is Pride month—a month of recognition, and in the recent decades a celebration, of the rights and equality of all members of the LGBTQ+ community. It is no revelation that to many, literature is a form of escape from reality. And in the case of the LGBTQ+ community, it has similarly been turned to as a source of validation. Literature featuring homosexual characters is not as new as some may think, with evidence of same-sex relationships being hinted at, or even described, in as early as the…

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Reviews

Game of Thrones: Final Season Review

Foreshadowing Isn’t Character Development (And Here’s Why) WARNING: There are major spoilers for Game of Thrones, Seasons 1 through 8 including the series finale, below. Read at your own risk. Seriously, stop reading now if you aren’t up to date on the show. Let me start by saying that Game of Thrones has been a show that I have fiercely loved since the very beginning. Though I must admit that the first five or six episodes were overwhelming for a newcomer, it was precisely the moment that Eddard Stark got his head chopped off (RIP Ned) that I was in…

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Reflections

A.I. in Sci-Fi

Book Review: Lexi Author: Heidi J. Hewett       Rating: 4/5      ASIN: B07KT8TDXY I have always wanted to branch out into reading more sci-fi books. It’s a genre that, for some reason, has never been at the top of my list, but one that has always intrigued me – and Heidi J. Hewett’s Lexi was a great, albeit new age, introduction into this world. The book centres on a robotics engineer named John Michael Kirkpatrick, whose father is famous in the robotics world. John Michael and his team have perfected a female robot called LX8000, who is “built to mimic humans”. However,…

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TV Shows

‘Comeback’ Television

Cobra Kai Season 1 When I first saw the trailer for Cobra Kai, distributed by YouTube Premium, my first reaction was shock. It’s been 34 years since the first Karate Kid film, an 80s classic both in style and content. It’s one of those classics that you can offhandedly reference, and almost everyone will understand what you’re referencing (particularly the name Mr. Miyagi, and the phrase “wax on wax off”). I was interested to see how this would go – and interested to see that television series are actively picking up on narratives from the past and canonizing it, even…

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Books

“If Beale Street Could Talk” by James Baldwin: Mini-Review

The hype of African-American author James Baldwin has been rejuvenated in recent years, particularly as his 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk was adapted into a movie of the same name in 2019. Dealing with the young love between Tish and Fonny that must learn to survive in spite of the racist politics that keeps them apart, the novel feels very relevant to the current Black Lives Matter politics in the United States. Set in Harlem, NY in the early 1970s, Tish and Fonny have grown up together and have developed an intimate relationship between them. However, before they…

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Reviews

The New Age of Superheroes

The Umbrella Academy TV Review Many of you have probably watched, or are planning to watch, the new addition to Netflix: The Umbrella Academy. The sci-fi superhero show is based on a graphic novel created by Gerard Way, who is best known as the former front man of My Chemical Romance, and artist Gabriel Bá. Right off the bat, I could tell that this show was quirky, goth-y, and slightly surrealist, which aptly fits with the Gerard Way circa MCR brand. The Umbrella Academy revolves around a group of children who were all born on the same day to women…

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