Monday Media Musings: Being an attempt at 2025 in review

[owlmoose]

In hopes of bringing more structure to my life of continued unemployment, let's see about bring this series back, today with some media highlights of 2025. My writing is terribly rusty, but in the interest of starting somewhere, here we go.

The Finder Series by Suzanne Palmer: I've read the first two books of this series and am slowly working on the third. It's a series of heist novels in space starring Fergus Ferguson, who a first seems to be an interstellar repo man, but turns out to be far more fascinating and complex. The humor is first rate, as are the relationships he builds with other characters despite his best attempts.

The Witch Roads by Kate Elliott: First in a duology (the second is also out but I haven't read it yet; it's next up after I finish my current Finder book), this book follows the adventures of Elen, a courier in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world navigating mortal danger, twisted politics, secrets of her past and her present, and her attempts to protect her just-come-of-age nephew Kem from all of it. Elliott is one of my favorite writers, and she's in particularly fine form here. This might be the only book actually released in 2025 that I read last year, so it's maybe cheating to put it on my Hugo nomination ballot, but it's still an easy choice.

Murderbot, Season 1: I had my concerns about this one, mainly around the casting of Alexander Skarsgård in the title role, but not only were my feasr unfounded, I came away delighted by this adaptation. Skarsgård pulls off the performance beautifully, and the supporting cast could not have been better. Really curious to see how they tackle the later books in future seasons.

K-Pop Demon Hunters: This film took not just the world but my house by storm, as T became completely obsessed with it (he's probably seen it a dozen times at least). I've only watched the whole thing twice, but I still came away impressed by the characters and the storytelling, especially the near-perfect use of music to move both characterization and story beats forward.

Star Trek: Lower Decks: I can't remember exactly which seasons of this I watched in 2025, so I'll just mention that the entire series was a hoot, easily the best Star Trek of the Paramount+ era (though I also enjoyed Discovery and the first two seasons of Strange New Worlds (I didn't hate S3 the way some people did, but I found it wildly uneven at best)), and I wish it had gone on for longer.

The Blue Prince: Deck-building rogue-like puzzle game is not something I had on my bingo card for the year, but boy did T and I get sucked into it. Deeply satisfying mysteries to solve, if some of them were a bit random, and we needed to look up more hints than ideally I would have preferred, and I know there are puzzles we have not yet even discovered, but we hit what felt like a good time to move on. Hard to say more without spoilers, but anyone who wants to chat about it, let me know!

Balatro: Speaking of deck-building rogue-likes, I guess I've found a new genre, because my obsession with this one continues unparalleled. I have all the decks and most of the jokers and vouchers, but I find myself coming back to it almost every day to keep working on just one more achievement.

Comments

[renay]

Maybe I should see if Zachariah wants to play Blue Prince. I foresee needing critical help with it. 😂

[owlmoose]

I definitely recommend playing Blue Prince as a group project -- having two brains working on the puzzles made everything much easier: we could talk things through, and often we would notice different things.

[zahraa]

I was worried about Murderbot, too, but it turned out so well! I hope they can do as well with the second season. They may have to mix some of the next several books together, because the characters in the next book are most Murderbot and ART. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do.

Happy New Year!

[owlmoose]

Happy New Year to you, too!

NOTE FOR OTHER READERS: Further thoughts contain book spoilers. I also theorize that they will start mixing the books together, since the PresAux folks don't appear again until Book 4, and I can't imagine the show creators wanting to drop the entire supporting cast for that long. My current theory is that Season 2 will be the second and third novella combined, along with side scenes of what Mensah and her team are up to, and then S3 can get back to the fourth book. That said, I can't wait to get to the Murderbot and ART show, and I'm so curious who they will cast as ART!

[ladythmpr]

I finally got around to listening to the 'Murderbot Diaries All Systems Red' book last October. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I haven't gotten round to watching the series yet, because it sounds like something to watch with someone else, and we don't have space for that yet.

'The Witch Roads' might already be on my 'For Later' library shelf. I've enjoyed Kate Elliot's past works, I just haven't been able to read 'meaty' fiction of late.

I'm a KPDH fan; I can't tell you how many rewatches I've done!

[owlmoose]

I hope you enjoy the other books and get to watch the show soon!! Also I will always encourage people to read more Kate Elliott. :)