3.5/5 - A fun collection short stories exploring The Empire Strikes Back from the perspective of background characters and side stories. Not as fun as the first collection based on the first Star Wars movie, but still a good time. Too much time spent on Hoth and Bespin, but overall it was enjoyable.

I’m going to use this space to review the entirety of the Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Canon.

It’s pretty amazing that these novels and short stories from nearly a century and a half ago still hold up so well today. They were always entertaining, and they feel so much more timeless than the many sci-fi and pulp adventure novels that I’ve read from the same period.

The biggest letdown was the lack of recurring characters or any real overarching story or plot lines. “The Woman”, Irene Adler, and “The Professor”, James Moriarty, could have been phenomenal foils to bring back again and again, but they get dropped and brushed aside so unceremoniously. Besides Watson and Lestrade, there are almost no characters who show up more than once.

I’m so thankful for the expanded Sherlock canon that outlived Conan Doyle in the work of other authors, and screenplay writers, because the world of Sherlock Holmes has so much untapped potential.

That being said, these works are timeless classics worthy of their lofty place in the greater literary canon.

One final thought: it’s interesting to note that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle notoriously didn’t enjoy writing these stories. He went so far as to “kill off” Sherlock in one of his earlier stories before reviving the series due to the overwhelming popularity (and the financial potential). This is extremely similar to how Edgar Rice Burroughs felt about writing his massively popular Tarzan series a couple decades later. Both of these men spent most of their lives writing stories that they didn’t enjoy. Stories that would go on to capture the world’s imagination for more than a century in countless adaptations and retellings. There’s something sad and beautiful about that.

3.5/5 - It’s a good story and the art is really unique in the first two volumes before settling on something a little more generic for the 3rd part. I can’t help feeling like this story would work better in normal prose rather than in a graphic novel format. The action is a little tough to follow sometimes and there’s a lot of dialogue.

Come to find out, it was originally written as prose and will possibly be published in that format someday.

An awesome way to revisit the original. 40 short stories celebrating 40 years of Star Wars.

4.5/5 - Super interesting and in-depth look at the history of Marvel movies. They should have waited another few months. They missed a really good ending point with the release of the Marvels, the strikes, and the postponement of future MCU movies providing a clean ending/pivot point.

Easily one of the best “Hard Sci-fi” books I’ve read. I generally lean towards the other end of the sci-fi spectrum because I’m not a big brain science guy, but Andy Weir writes science in a way that makes the reader feel smarter than they are… and I need that

Edgar Rice Burroughs was the master of pulpy adventure tales. His Tarzan and John Carter of Mars stories are dated but still a lot of fun. This one? Not so much. It read more like a bad travelogue than an adventure tale. The author often spends pages describing the plants and animals of this strange new world, only to quickly skip over the action once it arrives. The entire climax of the story gets about one page. The epilogue hints at an exciting sequel, but I’m not sure I’m willing to give this world a second chance.

The protagonist, David, is so bland that I had trouble even remembering his name. Compared to Tarzan and John Carter he has very little personality. It kind of feels like ERB phoned this one in. I can’t believe this generated enough interest to lead to six sequels!

3.5/5 What happens when a shipload of WWII soldiers winds up in primitive parallel universe? I love the idea but the execution could have been better. Tons of promise and I’m interested to see where the story goes. I had lofty expectations after reading the Lost Regiment, a series that pulls off this same type of alternate history really well.

Holy cow, what an adventure! I gave the first book in the series a bit of a hard time for being a little slow and one dimensional, but book 2 fires out of the gates like a rocket and doesn’t slow down until the epilogue. The battles are fantastic and the stakes always feel desperate and heart-pounding.

The plot and characters are anything but one-dimensional this time around. We get a much better understanding of the bad guys and their motives, and we realize that not all of the good guys are “good” guys. There’s a ton of depth to the characters, their motives, and their often heart-wrenching decisions.

A book about WWII soldiers getting sucked into a parallel universe full of dinosaurs and giant lemurs has no right being this good, but holy cow, it’s really stinking good.

3.5/5 A really interesting and unique concept that ultimately feels a little more incomplete than it should. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by longer books recently, but there are so many threads here that feel unsatisfyingly loose. I already have the sequel ready to go, and I’m excited to see what’s next for the Bobs.