My first holiday experience as Commander of the Death Star. New television dropped into nonexistence after Wednesday night, but our contributors used the free time given to them by the dearth of programming to good use, because we have a plethora of book reviews and sundry other items to make up for it. If you were too busy stuffing first the turkey and then yourself to check in every day, have no fear! I have your cheat sheet, my weekly run-down of our original content so that you can be sure you didn’t miss something awesome.
Events
BSC is proud to announce our new (kid) sister site, BSC Kids, which–while still in beta phase–is up gnashing its terrible teeth and ready for a wild rumpus already!
Interviews
My Fangirl Interview Tour continues this week as I grill UK fantasy author Joe Abercrombie on his inspirations, research methods, and more
Book Reviews
Heat Wave by “Richard Castle,” ABC’s tie-in novel to the show, is a must for any fan of the series and possibly a great read for any mystery fan in general
dragonwomant thought James Enge’s The Blood of Ambrose has “everything a fan of high fantasy could want” in one reasonably sized stand-alone novel
amberdrake revisits Devon Monk’s Allie Beckstrom series and found its third installment to be her favorite so far, titled Magic in the Shadows
The Nerd of Noir reluctantly scrawls his own praises for Stuart Neville’s The Ghosts of Belfast and adds a dessert course with some thoughts on Brian McGilloway’s Gallows Lane in his double review on books Dealing with the Troubles
With The Infernal City, Aaron Teiser visits the first-ever tie-in novel to the Elder Scrolls game-verse, from veteran fantasy author Greg Keyes, and decides it’s only for fans of the games
Brian dips into a new genre this week with Justine Larbalestier’s YA novel Liar–but, he assures us, it’s got elements of mystery and perhaps even “psycho noir” to keep it relevant to his other reviews
Damon Cap thinks back to last summer with his (somewhat belated) review of Markus Heitz’s The Dwarves
The Darkness that Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker is this week’s retrospective review installment from Jay’s old blog
Professor Crazy is back with an overview of horror anthology Hellbound Hearts, based on Clive Barker’s novel The Hellbound Heart and the Hellraiser movies, and edited by Paul Kane and Marie O’Regan
We get another golden oldie from Jay with Tobias Buckell’s The Crystal Rain, another refugee from his old blog
The Week in Television
Gerald So thought “The Vengeance Formulation” (guest-starring Katee Sackhoff as…herself) was the best episode of The Big Bang Theory so far this season
“One Man’s Treasure” from Castle this week makes me want to employ bad puns, as it was a veritable gold mine of humor
Gerald So thought NCIS‘s Thanksgiving episode, “Child’s Play,” was really well-executed, while NCIS: Los Angeles tried a cool idea without such cool execution in “Random on Purpose”
Glee‘s “Hairography” was all sunshine and light for Matt Cibula
Gaming
B.T. Robertson gives us his Final Review of Playstation 3′s God of War Collection (HD re-release of the first two games for PS3)
B.T. also offers his First Impressions review of the latest Call of Duty installment, Modern Warfare 2 (on PS3)
Webcomic
BSC’s own webcomic, Finder Incorporated continues with Page 4 and Page 5. Check back every Thursday for updates!
Columns
The Bodice Rippeth returns for a special Thanksgiving edition. Share the laughter and be thankful for Photoshop
