Stuff I've Read & Watched in January

01.02.2026

My theme of the month seems to be sci-fi and fantasy about some sort of apocalypse, which I am sure says nothing about the state of the world or my mind at the moment.

Books

N.K. Jemisin - The Obelisk Gate (2016) & The Stone Sky (2017)
★★★★☆ & ★★★★⯪

These books are at their heart about a mother and a daughter at the end of a horrible world, and they are really, really good.
Review

These are book two and three in N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy (the first one, The Fifth Season, I read in December and rated five stars). This trilogy takes place in the Stillness: a continent whose society is fully organized around preparing for frequent extreme environmental disasters caused by (relatively) fast geological change.

The Fifth Season lets us know in the prologue: "This is the way the world ends. For the last time." An extremely powerful orogene - a magic user who can sense and manipulate the Earth's potential and kinetic energy - rips open a fault line along the equator, spanning the entire width of the continent; the resulting eruptions release enough ash for a thousand-year long winter. At the same time, Essun - an orogene living in hiding in a small village - comes home to see that her husband has murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter for the crime of being born an orogene. This is a story about the end of the world, but it is mostly a story about other things: Motherhood, exploitation, dehumanization, grief.

All three of these books won the Hugo and it's not hard to see why: They are really, really good. Jemisin's prose is beautiful (and makes beautiful use of second-person narration!). The world building is grounded and yet different from anything else I've read in recent fantasy; the world is deep and complex. However, I think Jemisin's true strength lies in her character work: Essun and her daughter are the heart of these novels and deep and wonderfully layered, as is their relationship to each other. Alabaster - a secondary character - and Essun have my favorite relationship in anything in a long, long time. (Unfortunately, some of the other side characters lack depth, which especially shows in the later books.)

The Obelisk Gate suffers a little bit from middle-book syndrom in the sense that it spents a lot of time setting things up and explaining lore; The Stone Sky is much better about this and is only not a five-star book because one plotline in it (The War) is convoluted and confusing. The heart of these novels are, to me, Essun and her daughter, and the way this story is resolved is beautiful. A strong recommendation for anyone who likes fantasy!

Ursula K. Le Guin - The Word for World is Forest (1972)
★★★★☆

In this sci-fi novella, Le Guin explores the colonization of a forest planet and the role of violence.
Review In The Word for World is Forest, the Terrans are colonizing a planet whose name in the local language simply means Forest (hence the title). The entire landmass of this planet is covered by forest, which makes it very valuable to the Terrans, who have essentially eradicated trees on their home planet. The local people - the Athsheans - are completely non-aggressive and suffer from the Terran's violence until one Athshean decides to lead a resistance against the Terrans. But the Athsheans, who so far have not known violence against men, are left changed by the Terrans' violence forever.

The Word for World is Forest was written during the Vietnam war, which it is clearly referencing, although its main themes - colonization, pacifism, and environmental destruction - are still relevant today. The novella is indeed very determined to get its message across and, in the context, sacrifices character complexity. This is understandable considering the context in which the novella was written (my edition included an introduction by Le Guin, which was very welcome!) and also the fact that it is quite short, but it does keep it from being a five-star-read.

Rachel Reid - Tough Guy (2020) & Common Goal (2020)
★★☆☆☆ & ★★★☆☆

I am planning to make a dedicated post about this series once I read them all, but in short: These are the hockey sex books. They have hockey & sex. Tough Guy is worse because it is mostly about how playing hockey actually makes a guy less sexy.

Nonfiction

Rachel Carson - Man's War Against Nature (1962)

I don't rate nonfiction, but this is an interesting read mostly because Rachel Carson is such a household name in the history of environmentalism!

When I bought this I thought it was its own thing; turns out it is actually just the first third or so of Carson's famous book Silent Spring, a highly influencial book from 1962 about the negative environmental impact of pesticide use. I've heard a lot about Silent Spring in my environmental science classes; it is really interesting to finally read it. The book is about the negative effects of pesticides, especially DDT; and about - as the title suggest - the negative impact of humankind on nature. (It refreshingly still avoids the "humans are the worst and should die out" sort of ideas we sometimes see in the environmental movement.) Today, its key takeaways not particularly groundbreaking - which is perhaps its biggest achievment and why it is such a good read. (Although Carson also writes nicely and evocatively.)

This is a pretty short read of around 90 pages, and I would absolutely recommend it to anyone interested in environmental science and/or its history just for its pure historical significance alone!

TV

Pluribus (2025 -)
★★★★⯪

I watched the first episode knowing only this show was sci-fi and about a lesbian and think that was the best way to experience it, so go watch it and then read my thoughts (but look up trigger warnings in advance if needed).

Review In Pluribus, an alien virus takes over the Earth and turns (almost) everyone in the world into a Hivemind in which everyone shares a memory, personality, and brain. Millions die during this so-called "joining", including the wife of our protagonist Carol Sturka: a closeted alcoholic lesbian author of hetslop romance pre-hivemind, and one of the dozen-or-so people on the planet immune to the virus post-hivemind.

The horror of Pluribus is quiet, slow, and so, so nice. The people of the hivemind are always smiling, ensuring Carol that they are happy and that she will be happy to, once they find out how to overcome her immuneness; they can quite literally not harm a fly; they take care of every wish and need of the immune. In contrast to the hive, Carol is angry and bitter and disagreeable. But the slow-looming horror is: everyone in the world is so happy, and they just want you to be happy to, even if it means giving up every part of who you are.

Pluribus is slow. It lingers on Carol's pain. It is about loneliness and human nature, conversion therapy and colonialism, grief and family and love. The writing is excellent; Carol is perhaps the best character of the year so far. Go watch it now!!

3 Body Problem (2024 -)
★★★☆☆

A science fiction story with very interesting concepts and extremely uninteresting characters.
Review This is an adaptation of Liu Cixin's Remembrance of Earth's Past book series. I once read like three chapters of the first book and was actually quite excited to see it adapted because it had an interesting premise but I never got around to finishing it (plus Silent Spring is actually of plot relevance for this show, which is exciting), but unfortunately, the show just couldn't really convince me.

We follow two storylines: In 1960s China, Ye Wenjie watches her father - a physics professor - be murdered during the Cultural Revolution. In the current day, experiments in all particle accelerators produce non-sense results and scientists world-wide kill themselves while scribbling countdowns on the walls. We follow a group of friends who were first brought together by Vera Ye, the most recent scientist-suicide case, and Clarence Shi, the detective (?) who investigates the cases.

The first few episodes of this are the most fun because they are all about figuring out what's Going On. Once that is figured out, the show is more about "how do we solve it", which it does through various interesting Physics Things, which is less interesting and also hinges more on us caring about the characters who do the Physics Things - and unfortunately, they are all just... not very interesting. The best character on the show is by far the detective (and I think that's just because he hits a lot of tropes I like), everyone else feels extremely flat. Nobody ever shows an appropiate amount of distress to anything happening and it just makes every bit of character interaction really boring to watch.

I will tune in for the next season (or maybe read the book?) because I do actually want to know what happens next - again, the premise of the story is very cool! -, but I am not waiting for it at the edge of my seat.

Fallout (2024 -)
★★★⯨☆

Season 2 is currently airing and it is a fun time!
Review Fallout is adapted from the video game franchise of the same name, which I have never played but have sort of been adjacently aware of forever, and is - as the name suggests - about a world post nuclear fallout. In season 1, we followed three characters - Lucy, who grew up in a wholesome (... unless?) underground vault safe from the mess of the Wasteland; Maximus, a squire in a paramilitaristic organization that preserves artifacts from the old world; and the Ghoul, a bounty hunter who has mutated from radiation and has been alive since before the bombs fell. All of them were in search of the same thing for different reasons, sometimes at odds with one another and sometimes allied, through a wasteland that is full of violence and absurdity. Fun!

Season 2 is a lot less tightly written. We follow too many characters at once and so nobody ever really gets enough screen time, and on top of that we spend big chunks of the season in pre-war flashbacks that cut even further into the runtime. (Eight episodes are not a lot to tell like six different stories!) This season could really benefit from either being longer or cutting some of its characters. The finale is airing next week and I just don't see it wrapping everything up in a satisfying way right now.

Overall, however, this is a fun time. If you like gory violent murder scenes underlaid with fun songs from the 1950s, you might like this show. The characters are enjoyable, it is often funny and sometimes sad, and while it is thematically a little all over the place right now it still has some things to say about capitalism, war, and violence.

Movies

Knives Out (2019) & Glass Onion (2022) & Wake Up Dead Man (2025)
★★★★☆ & ★★★⯨☆ & ★★★★★

We've all heard of these movies, right? I've finally been convinced to watch them by gif sets of a hot priest and I figured I'd watch them in order (which you don't really have to do because, but they're all fun, so there's no harm in it either!)
Review This is a franchise of whodunit murder mysteries connected by private detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), who is gay and mildly eccentric and wonderful. I think all of these immediately are rated like half a star higher because I love eccentric detective crime shows and the vibe is somewhat similar, except there's less cops (awesome!).

These movies all have great cinematography, lighting, and acting; the writing is clever and tight and funny; all of the mysteries are satisfying and just the right amount of guessable (which means: all the clues are there for you on screen, but you don't notice them until it all comes together). All of these movies are also a satire and/or critique of a societal issue; Knives Out deals with class and immigration; Glass Onion is about Billionaires; Wake Up Dead Man investigates radicalization, Christianity, and misogyny in the church.

Knives Out is the best at evoking that classic Murder Mystery feel. Glass Onion is the funniest and also the least subtle about its themes. Wake Up Dead Man has the aforementioned hot priest and also has the best character writing. Guessing who did it is also the most fun in this one! I recommend them all and hopefully they will make ten more of them.