UNREASONABLE OPINIONS BY KNR

Go Everywhere Else First

A place to hear unasked-for opinions expressed with utmost zeal by someone who is an expert on nothing.

Jun 9, 20232 min read

Une Vie and Other Stories, Volume I

I had never heard of Guy de Maupassant when I walked into an old-timey room in Los Angeles’ the Last Bookstore. But I was determined to...

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Jun 2, 20231 min read

The Raid 2: Retaliation

This movie goes hard. There isn’t an action movie from the 2010’s that smashes, slashes, or crashes more spectacularly than this one. So...

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May 26, 20231 min read

Partial Reviews: Magic Mike

Boring. Surprisingly skewed so far up the male gaze’s ass that I wonder why it was marketed toward women. So boring. Felt like a male...

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May 19, 20231 min read

In the Watchful City: Fragmentary Beauty

This novella details an exchange of stories investigating colonization, freedom of migration, surveillance, human agency, and...

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May 12, 20231 min read

Magic for Liars: Contemporary Fantastic Noir

Sarah Gailey constructs a fun, engaging magical mystery in Magic for Liars. It’s a classic whodunit, set in a magical high school, with a...

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May 5, 20231 min read

The Last Black Man in San Francisco: Identity in a Box

Two Black dudes squat in an old house in a gentrified neighborhood. Character posing is extraordinary, colors vibrant, frames often...

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Apr 28, 20231 min read

Starless and Bible Black: A Horror Extravaganza

From creeping dread to psychological horror to outright terror, Susan York’s short story collection has you covered. The range of the...

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Apr 21, 20231 min read

Under the Pendulum Sun: Victorian Tragedy at Its Strangest

Ee~~~ew. This one, nah. Content warning: incest, violence, christian themes, excessive englishness, and if you can believe it, even more...

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Apr 14, 20231 min read

Dead Collections: Vampiric Tale of Love

Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman is a speculative romance novel where the main character is afflicted with vampirism: here, a...

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Apr 7, 20232 min read

FINNA: Multiversal Traveling With Your Ex

The way many spec fiction authors write, this novella could easily have been a four-hundred page tome that opens dozens of subplots and...

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Mar 31, 20232 min read

Phantastes: Aged But Potent

First published in the mid-1800’s, Phantastes is a dated but influential and fascinating work of fantasy fiction. It indulges in...

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Mar 24, 20232 min read

The Book of Form and Emptiness: A Tome That Overflows With Meaning

Benny Oh and his mother, Annabelle, deal with the loss of his father in very different ways. Their mourning is the fabric that the rest...

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Mar 17, 20232 min read

Hell Followed With Us: Beautifully Gruesome

The gore! Lord Jesus, the gore! This is a post-apocalyptic sci-fantasy story about a plague that induces horrific body transformations on...

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Mar 10, 20231 min read

The City We Became: Suck It, Lovecraft

Contemporary cosmic horror that centers a diverse cast. Excellent plotting, but it’s a part-one-of-x so it fails to tell a complete...

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Mar 3, 20231 min read

Everything Everywhere All At Once

Multiverse-hopping mayhem, riotous comedy, inventive action; Everything Everywhere All At Once may not be a film for everyone, but for...

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Mar 23, 20221 min read

Spider-Man: No Way Home; No Meme Too Desperate

Too focused on landing memes to tell an effective story. Every other line of dialogue and character interaction seems to have been...

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Mar 23, 20223 min read

The Poppy War: Action-Packed Sadness

The Poppy War is a dark fantasy war story in which embracing power holds the inherent risk of losing oneself. Its pacing is smooth as...

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Feb 21, 20222 min read

The Shadow Rising: And A Yawn As Well

Book four of the Wheel of Time series is the best so far. Fewer of its subplots stall out without going anywhere, more of it is pulp...

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Sep 17, 20211 min read

Kill Your Darlings (2013)

Well, it’s not boring. I was sucked into Allen Ginsberg’s (Daniel Radcliffe) obsessive emotional spiral around magnetic but dysfunctional...

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Sep 10, 20211 min read

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

This movie kicks ass. It’s a visual feast with a soundtrack to match, the writing is tight as hell, the action tells a potent story, and...

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