The Ricochet Reviewer: Books, Movies, and Comics

by Patti Smith Rock musician Patti Smith’s diary-like, dream-logic memoir of 2016 is written as a roaming, often hallucinatory travelogue where the plot is less about destinations than about grief, omens, and the way reality starts to behave when you’re bracing for loss.  Patti Smith It reads like a senior nomad meditating on the death and decay of dear old friends, framed by the death of record producer Sandy Pearlman and the slow decline of playwright Sam Shepard from ALS.  At the beginning you’re not always sure what’s happening versus what’s being dreamed, remembered, or symbolically staged, and the reader has to do a lot of the sorting.  The opening is bewildering, floaty and disjointed, capturing the condition of being half-awake in grief and anxiety.  "A Dream Year" (Chinese) But it gathers strength and momentum and shifts toward more concrete imagery and sharper storytelling as it goes.  "Year of the Monkey" (Serbian) There is a more straightforward back...

by Tanith Lee In the aftermath of a siege, a worn-down warrior walks away with a cursed chalice and a few uneasy companions.  As they move through a ravaged countryside, three mysterious figures trail them at a distance, clearly and unsettlingly tied to the chalice itself.  This book is very dark for something originally written for younger readers, but the darkness feels earned—an extension of war, guilt, and bad bargains rather than window dressing.  The prose is tight and controlled: clean sentences, strong images, and no wasted scenes or side-quests.  "The Cup of Avillis" (Dutch) The characters don’t invite deep emotional attachment so much as they feel like archetypal figures in a dark fairy tale, which fits the story’s mood even if it keeps them at a distance.  The book is about guilt, war-weariness, and the cost of stealing sacred things, not about whether the heroes can outrun the supernatural.   The ending leans into that approach: the curse is con...

A ranking of all the science fiction films that have been reviewed on my blog. #81 Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010) https://thericochetreviewer.blogspot.com/2024/10/beyond-black-rainbow-2010.html #80 The Divide (2011) https://thericochetreviewer.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-divide-2011.html #79 Gargantua (1998) https://thericochetreviewer.blogspot.com/2025/09/gargantua-1998.html #78 The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) https://thericochetreviewer.blogspot.com/2025/09/the-ghost-of-frankenstein-1942.html #77 The Day After Tomorrow (2004) https://thericochetreviewer.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-day-after-tomorrow-2004.html #76 Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975) https://thericochetreviewer.blogspot.com/2025/09/terror-of-mechagodzilla-1975.html #75 Fire in the Sky (1993) https://thericochetreviewer.blogspot.com/2024/09/fire-in-sky-1993.html #74 Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) https://thericochetreviewer.blogspot.com/2023/05/mad-max-beyond-thunderdome-1985.html #73 The Stepford Wives (1975) https://therico...