2026 on the inkwell

"Assassin's Apprentice" by Robin Hobb

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I enjoyed Hobb’s “Assassin’s Apprentice”, but I’m hesitant to have any strong opinions. This is the first book in a trilogy in such a way that it’s an incomplete experience on its own. I personally prefer first installments that stand alone well; this book is not that. I don’t mean that as a condemnation — I note it because it heavily colors my perspective on the book and makes me apprehensive as to whether the subsequent novels can deliver on what is being set up. This is inherently riskier than a strong stand alone novel that extends into a trilogy. Any positive opinion I have could be soured by the next or third novel.

Superman (2025)

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There are a lot of things to like about Superman, but my high expectations left me feeling underwhelmed.

I have the advantage of being familiar with some of what the movie is drawing from. I inferred the Ultraman twist off the name (Crisis on Two Earths) and I’m familiar with Metamorpho from Young Justice and the DCAU, but the decision to blitz past establishing the setting and characters deadened a lot of the potential emotional impact or investment.

Voice of Cards - The Isle Dragon Roars

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There is a lot that can be said about this game, but what really stands out to me — and what I appreciate the most — is its commitment to its premise. That isn’t all positive; by the time I was halfway through the game I found myself wishing from time to time that individual characters had been voice acted, so that at least their spoken lines would be a break from the narrator. Looking back in hindsight, I respect the iron-clad adherence to the premise of a table-top game. I don’t think the game would have been meaningfully improved by having individual voice actors for each character as opposed to having the narrator do it. It’s also interesting to see any media presented from a second-person viewpoint; I can’t deny I found it novel.

"A Wizard of Earthsea" by Ursula K. Le Guin

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It’s quite odd; I cannot figure out how I feel about this book’s prose. I could politely describe it as hyper-efficient and concise. Less politely, the prose is often reminiscent of a summary. In some ways it harkens back to mythological texts — painted in broad strokes, focused when important — simultaneously straightforward and poetic. It’s clear that A Wizard of Earthsea is written to evoke that comparison to mythology: the introduction and final paragraph both frame the events of the story as a story being retold. I don’t feel equipped to explore this to any meaningful depth, but it felt important to acknowledge because it makes A Wizard of Earthsea stylistically distinct from anything I’ve read recently. I find it interesting even if I’m not sure how I feel about said stylistic distinction.

Reducing My Reliance on Google

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Earlier this year, I saw a now-deleted Reddit post about Google shotgun banning a collection of accounts due to misconduct on one. Per this medium article the entire situation can be generously described as “unverified,” but it got me thinking about my reliance on Google’s services. It is, ultimately, a single point of failure held by a company that has no financial incentive to act in my interest. Google has the right to ban me at any moment, for any reason — if my Google account is banned, I lose access to my email, my cloud storage, my two-factor-authentication, my domains, and any other services or accounts tied to my Gmail.

"Annihilation" by Jeff VanderMeer

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Lurking between the weird and the horror, there’s something beautiful about Annihilation. Area X is strange and unknowable; it’s surreal and beautiful and horrifying and dangerous and natural and parasitic. The characters in the book are a mirror of their environment: nameless, hostile, and unreliable as the weird world they’re stuck inside. In some ways, the anthropologist, the surveyor, and the psychologist are as unknowable to us (and the biologist) as the subject of their investigation.

"The Blade Itself" by Joe Abercrombie

Sun, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a quote on the back of the book where a reviewer compares The Blade Itself to The Lord of the Rings. I initially rolled my eyes at the trite and overplayed comparison, but after finishing the novel I’m rather resigned to agree. The Blade Itself is like if The Fellowship of the Ring was solely focused on the lives and history of each member of the Fellowship — and how they ended up joining the fellowship — and if the story concluded immediately upon the Fellowship’s formation and departure. I don’t mean that as a negative; it’s an interesting and novel approach to telling a story. But like The Fellowship of the Ring, The Blade Itself is very much the first act of a larger story.

Building a Blog Because Goodreads Requires Signing in to Read Reviews

Sat, 09 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Why

The title speaks for itself, but I’m going to elaborate anyways:

I had a rather annoying realization last week. I like writing reviews for the books I’ve read, and movies I’ve watched, and I like to send them to some of my friends over Discord. Imagine my surprise when on an otherwise benign Tuesday night, I drop a link into the chat and the site preview looks like this:

"The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde

Tue, 05 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is one of several books I’ve slowly been making my way through this year. This one in particular was a slog for the first few chapters, but after the first quarter was finished, things picked up and I read until the end that same day. As a story, I thought it was alright. There are certainly interestingly explored ideas and elements, but it’s so painfully slow to start that I doubt I would ever make it through a book like this if it weren’t for its legacy. I want to emphasise that I mostly enjoyed the latter three-fourths of the novel, but my overall opinion is heavily colored by how little enjoyment I found at the start of the story. The opening’s inanity could be spun into a deconstruction of the mundanity of life that leaves Dorian so obsessed with Lord Henry — I can think of several ways to justify such a reading — but at the end of the day the fact is that it was unpleasant to read for uninteresting reasons. On the thought of deeper meaning in incredibly boring passages: chapter eleven is simultaneously incredibly important to the book and the most mind-numbing collection of text I’ve read outside of a textbook. I understand what Wilde is doing but I feel as if there has to be a less headache-inducing way of emphasising Dorian’s obsession with beauty and descent into materialism.

"Stories of Your Life and Others" by Ted Chiang

Sun, 03 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a single, consistent, through-line that binds this short story collection together: Chiang’s exploration of some fundamental aspect of our reality being altered or broken. “Story of Your Life”, the titular title of the collection, is about the perception of time. “Understand” presents a man whose intelligence has so dramatically increased that his perception of reality is incomprehensible to a normal man. “Division by Zero” has a character’s sense of purpose annihilated by the realization of a theorem that mathematically proves numbers as being arbitrary. “Liking What You See: A Documentary" investigates a world in which individuals have the ability to disable their perception of beauty.

"Baptism of Fire" by Andrzej Sapkowski

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a bit concerned about my ability to be fair to this book. On one hand, this is probably my least favorite in the series so far. On the other: I’d be malignant to ignore that I’ve struggled to find the energy to read this year, and it’s resulted in this book being split across multiple months. It’s an inevitability that the story would lull after The Time of Contempt — especially with the former having such an explosive ending — and a large chunk of my frustration comes from how the narrative focus is split. Conceptually I understand that storytelling dictates a falling action after the climactic events of the previous novel, but The Time of Contempt really left me wanting to follow Ciri’s story. Baptism of Fire leaves her on the wayside for the majority of the book; off the top of my head, Ciri has three scenes. Broadly speaking I think this is a difficult issue for a book or series which splits across multiple perspectives to cover: it’s impossible to always be following the perspective which the reader is most invested in. This is the only part in the series where I’ve found it grating, but it’s a frustrating low in a series that I’ve otherwise enjoyed.

"Frankenstein" by Mary Shelly

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

As an aside from the review, this year has had a rough start for me reading-wise. I’ve read bits and pieces of books, but it took me until now to actually finish one. I’m happy to say I’ve started with a good one.

I’ve always struggled with books written before around 1930 or so. There have been exceptions — “The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckel and Mr. Hyde,” comes to mind — but there’s always something about the pacing and word choice that grates on me. I don’t mean that in the sense that these books use a lot of words that I don’t understand, (this does happen) but rather that the sentence structure and word choice feels archaic in a way that’s hard to concisely describe. Things change over time, my point is that I’m a bit biased against several aspects of books like “Frankenstein,” due to their slow openings, slow overall pacing and how dated aspects of them are.