Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Shadow and Bone, Season One (Netflix):
Based on young adult fantasy books by Leigh Bardugo, this series is mostly successful in setting up an interesting world that can be easily understood without exposition dumps. The two main characters, Alina and Mal, are easily the weakest links, lacking much in the way of personality, but the supporting "Crow" characters cover the deficit. I liked this less than His Dark Materials and more than The Witcher.

Final Grade: B-

Blackfinn Ameripub - Ashburn:
This restaurant popped up on GrubHub in our ongoing search for ways to use all of the GrubHub gift cards Ian received for being born. It's more pricey (like Burton's) but has a varied menu with lots of food that sounds exciting (unlike Burton's). Rebecca and I were both satisfied with our order -- I never expected a delivered French Dip to taste as good as it did! We'll have to try eating here in person when restaurants are more normalized.

Final Grade: B+, so far

Infinite Things by Paloma Faith:
Paloma's music continues to get less interesting the more she moves away from here original 70s sound. This album is good if you ever want to sit in the basement and pretend you're in a bookstore.

Final Grade: C

Grim Dawn:
I originally reviewed Grim Dawn in 2019. It took the place of Overwatch as a baby-friendly game that I could pause and play in spurts of 10 - 20 minutes while feeling like I had made progress. I picked it back up last month to find that it had continued to receive regular content patches. Even though the core experience is exactly the same, there are several new zones to explore and random monster encounters that make uncovering the whole map fun again. The only downside -- there is so much content in the game now that you'll probably outlevel the 2nd Elite difficulty level. This results in a brain-dead slog to get to Ultimate, which is still very fun and challenging. Thank goodness for the Grim Internals add-on which let me zoom through Elite at 3x speed. More things in life should have speed controls.

Final Grade: B+