jaygabler's reviews
120 reviews

For Better or for Worse: The Complete Library, Vol. 2 by Lynn Johnston

funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I’ve been obsessed with this strip since I was Michael’s age.

For Better or for Worse: The Complete Library, Vol. 1 by Lynn Johnston

funny inspiring lighthearted fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Path of Vengeance by Cavan Scott

dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Wow, best Star Wars book ever? A contender, for sure. Phase I of The High Republic was enjoyable, but Phase II was incredible. Looking forward to seeing how it all comes together in Phase III!

You Can Trust Me by Wendy Heard

dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Thank you Random House for the free book.

Gorgeous grifters seducing billionaires? Just another day in Duluth!

…or, the premise of Wendy Heard’s delicious thriller about two wily women who get in over their heads with a suspiciously sympathetic tech bro.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Murder, Abandonment, and Sexual assault

Star Wars: The Living Force by John Jackson Miller

emotional inspiring reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Thanks Random House for the free book: an engaging novel coinciding with the 25th anniversary of The Phantom Menace — a story of the Episode I era Jedi Council doing battle with space pirates. Sabers up!

Agent Sonya: The Spy Next Door by Ben Macintyre

informative mysterious tense medium-paced

5.0

Thank you Crown Publishing for the free book. This biography of a WWII Soviet spy is fascinating for:
🕵🏻‍♀️ The human story of a woman caught up in the winds of war
🕵🏻‍♀️ The details of mid-century spycraft
🕵🏻‍♀️ The evocation of a world of shifting alliances and good intentions gone awry

What Have We Here? by Billy Dee Williams

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

An engrossing account of a legendary life and career. Playing Lando Calrissian has been only a small fraction of Billy Dee Williams’s accomplishment, but he movingly describes how Lando represents his vision of the kind of character he might have played in the major leading-man roles that, in a more just world, would have come his way. Star Wars fans will be hard-pressed to listen (or read) with dry eyes as Williams recounts watching the character come back to action onscreen in his 80s.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism

Those Beyond the Wall by Micaiah Johnson

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Thank you Random House for the free book. If there’s such a thing as a utopian dystopia, it’s the universe of Micaiah Johnson’s new novel, which imagines what it would take to bring about a more equitable society — as seen through the lens of a bleak world inspired by our own.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Racism and Violence

Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It by David M. Ewalt

informative lighthearted medium-paced

3.0

The cultural imprint of Dungeons & Dragons is so vast, it’s hard to believe there was a time when D&D seemed like a has-been. Circa the turn of the 21st century, it was far from clear that the game would ever regain anything like its pop culture footprint from the 1980s, when — as David M. Ewalt chronicles in Of Dice and Men — D&D co-creator Gary Gygax left Wisconsin and went Hollywood, pursuing ill-fated but not entirely implausible dreams of parlaying his tabletop celebrity into a multimedia empire.

Though Gygax died in 2008, the tide had already turned for D&D by the time the original edition of Ewalt’s book was published in 2013. The company Wizards of the Coast, which bought D&D in 1997, successfully steadied the rollercoaster trajectory the game had followed under Gygax’s company TSR; when Of Dice and Men was first published, Wizards was preparing to launch a new edition that would facilitate rulebook modularity so players could choose their own depth of complexity.

The book has now been reissued for the 1974 game’s 50th anniversary, expanded to track D&D’s remarkable ascent over the past decade. The growth of online networking and the crisis of the coronavirus pandemic, neither of which might have been obvious candidates to spur the growth of a traditional tabletop game, facilitated the rise of an avid multigenerational participant group — including young players attuned to the game’s appeal by media like the Netflix hit Stranger Things and streaming play sessions.

Given the game’s current ubiquity, if Ewalt was starting from scratch he might not feel the need to give quite so basic an orientation to the game’s central concept. Much of Dice and Men involves walking the reader (or listener) through sessions of D&D and other games, with narrative texts interpolated to convey the game characters’ perspectives.

While Ewalt covers the bases of the game’s invention and spread from its Upper Midwest cradle, Of Dice and Men is a work of gonzo journalism told from the perspective of a player who’s been embedded in D&D culture for decades.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Sexism

Where's the Giraffe? by Nosy Crow

lighthearted fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Maybe this is asking too much of a board book, but I could have used a few more animals.