viewRed Sonja: Consumed by Gail Simone (2024)
Helming Robert E. Howard's Red Sonja, author Gail Simone demonstrates a bard's touch for the Sword & Sorcery genre.
Simone celebrates the character's excesses and writes her lively action sequences, on the battlefield and in the bedroom. At times, overburdened by side quests, but the epic boss battles thrill with clear emotional stakes.
Chapters opening with historical documents, folklore, and societal analysis ground the narrative in a larger world but in inventive ways.
The Falcon's “Blood Man” is a devastating character study of violent male fragility. His POV chapters are like reading the manifesto of a real-world incel terrorist.
Read it.
#BookReview #SwordAndSorcery #RedSonja #GailSimone #Drabble #100WordReview #Bookstodon
viewThe Blacktongue Thief – Christopher Buehlman (2021)
Branded deadbeat by his thieves guild, rare of coin, but still a romantic optimist (when he's feeling lucky), protagonist Kinch Na Shannack colorfully narrates us along his macabre adventures.
What unfolds is a rollicking low fantasy adventure—more taverns and flophouses than courtly castles. Kinch picks up a motley crew, including a red wine-obsessed knight who stores giant fighting birds in her tattoos, a paraplegic witch who enchants recently deceased torsos to walk, and an assassin cat.
Magic systems and world-building are inventive but subtle, opting to start small and grow.
Ever the trickster, Kinch is a riot. Read it.
#Bookstodon #BookReview #Fantasy #Drabble #TheBlacktongueThief #CultureDrabble #ChristopherBuehlman
viewWho Is She? Goddess Energy Father/Daughter Records (2023)
Hailing from the enchanted lands of Seattle, Who Is She? is a supergroup of Indie Rockers from bands I don’t know. What I do know is that this platter is a cauldron-brewed mix of jangle pop, sing-songy vocals, and lo-fi production.
What separates this from typical retro la-la-las is sassy, funny lyrics, with songs about witchiness overload, a defense of Anne Hathaway, nostalgia for Movie Pass, and an ode to Marianne Williamson.
The record doesn’t even clock in at 30 minutes. Do you dig labels like Teen Beat, hyper-aware cultural references, and build altars to the divine feminine? Stream it.
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viewAbout Schmidt, Alexander Payne (2002)
This movie hits differently at 52 than at 32.
In 2002, it was a dull Election follow-up; in hindsight, it matches his Nebraska with its suburban inner-sprawl dread. A bleak movie that sends time running short pings to midlife doldrums. Birth, school, work, death-level dread.
Nicholson gives one of his last great performances, injecting a sneering everyman menace into scenes. Hope Davis at her mousy best, with June Squibb, Dermot Mulroney, Kathy Bates, and Dr. Johnny Fever layering the slow-motion cringe with despair.
Pre-smartphone. Schmidt driving to Rush Limbaugh on AM radio? Quaint.
Need motivation to get going? Watch it.
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viewThe Lemonheads Love Chant, Fire Records (2025)
58 Second Song opens The Lemonheads' first album of new material in nearly twenty years. It's three minutes and twenty-two seconds. Typical.
Love Chant is as shambling, warm, and weird as their one consistent but mercurial member, Evan Dando. I'm a lifetime member of the Dando Apologists Club, so I'm already lost, but this is a fun, fuzzy batch of '90s Guitar Rock.
The back half of the record swings more than the first, and begins soaring when Juliana Hatfield and Erin Rae harmonize their way into the chorus of Cell Phone Blues.
Reminiscent of the Lovey album. Stream it.
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viewThe Eternaut, Netflix (2025)
Prepare for a dark, dystopian acid trip of a show, mashing up sci-fi allegories and wink-wink nods to a universe of science fiction stories. Based on the Argentinian comic El Eternauta, which debuted in 1957, it was deemed so subversive by the Argentine military leadership that the author, Héctor Germán Oesterheld, and four of his daughters “disappeared.”
The series updates the plot to modern times. The anti-authoritarian rhetoric with a scrappy resistance is as relevant now as it was throughout the twentieth century.
Covertly, also a celebration of middle-aged wisdom and long friendships, adding to the emotional weight. Binge it.
#100WordReviews #Drabble #TVReview #TheEternaut #SciFi #Netflix
viewNeko Case – The Harder I Fight the More I Love You: A Memoir (2025)
Most will start this expecting Neko's tales of Rock & Roll, only to read a memoir about poverty, family pain, and generational trauma. Case presents a stark look at growing up poor and neglected in North America.
There are some music business bits, but they feel like addenda to her rich story. Music helped save her, but it's only part of her narrative. Her quest to find her Slavic heritage resonated with me, from horse-riding women warriors to lady wrestlers to The Muffs.
Her writing crackles with verve. She dashes off analogies, deploying wordplay with a songwriter's touch. Listen to it.
#100WordReviews #Drabble #BookReview #Memoir #NekoCase #NewBooks2025 #Bookstodon
viewPavements, Alex Ross Perry (2024)
An inventive and funny movie about a band. Parts documentary, narrative, and musical. The alchemy of farce, myth, and sentimentality is authentic to Pavement; even the parody is believable.
I searched my Human Intelligence for a comp, and the best I could find was Nathan Fielder. Both use absurdity to find truth.
I cried watching. Was it nostalgia and middle age? Was it watching with my teen daughter? Was it ignoring societal suffocation to revel in the community of the film’s third act? Was it the lyrics divorced from 90s cynicism by musical theater? Who knows, I did. Watch It.
#100WordReviews #Drabble #MovieReview #Pavement #Documentary
viewAlex Johnson – Brooklyn Motto (2025)
My fave thing about this crime novel's self-discovery ride? How funny it is. Madcap, smart-aleck, wry-wit humor keeps you invested in protagonist Nico and his predicament. Chuckles and snorts aside, it's a damn fine gumshoe yarn that tweaks expectations, updates archetypes, and features an evolved masculinity that detoxifies the genre.
Johnson's knowledge of place shines. South Brooklyn, East Village, Sunnyside, Williamsburg. Even if you don't know O'Connors from the Blue and Gold, you sense the interiors of these bars.
Like Jim Gavin, Johnson delivers scathing observations on life's absurdities while churning through clever, fast-moving plot.
Fun, poignant, memorable. Read it.
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viewRyan Davis & the Roadhouse Band, New Threats From the Soul 2025 Sophomore Lounge Records
A 100-word review of a new album by a singer-songwriter who packs in 100 words into a verse? Let's go. NTFTS is a dense soup of hickster literary tradition, echoes of Giant Sand, and easter egg cultural ephemera references.
Davis spins musical yarns that unravel and recombine with rustic-cosmic magical realism. Every listen reveals new sounds, turns o'phrase, and fuzzes out those deeper thoughts that have me screaming and begging for revolution from a barstool.
Only real heads will follow the Faulkner-esque Mutilation Springs/Falls song duology, so hang in there, recent converts to the 11-minute story-song.
Listen to it.
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