STAR WARS: DARK DROIDS (graphic novel) by Charles Soule (Author), Luke Ross (Illustrator), Leinil Yu (Cover Art)

Published by Marvel Universe in 2024.

Star Wars: Dark Droids is a collection of the first five comics in an extensive Dark Droids story arc. 

The basic story goes likes this: A group of Imperial droids and soldiers encounter a self-aware droid in the form of a tiny disc. This would be between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. The disc attaches itself to an imperial droid and takes it over. Then it takes over another droid and another and another. 

The self-aware droid is known as The Scourge. It quickly spreads through both Imperial and Rebel forces - even taking over C3PO!

As it spreads, it tries to bring together a union of droid and organics in order to truly be able to control the galaxy. When it discovers that the force exists and can only be controlled by biologics, it redoubles its efforts. Then, it discovers that there is a a force user that is already a mixture of organic and mechanical parts - Darth Vader.

My Review

I liked the idea of this story, but it has a basic problem - this threat is so big that it threatens to overthrow both the Empire and the Rebels at the same time. It is a bigger threat to each of them than they are to each other. It is like a virus that spreads quickly and could literally kill everyone. 

Yet, there is no mention of any of this immense threat and the trauma it would cause in Episode VI. 

I appreciate the difficulty of creating a story arc that fills in the middle of two movies that were made more than 40 years before that poses enough of a threat to the main characters to make it interesting, but you can't actually hurt them too much. For example, we know that The Scourge doesn't effect Princess Leia because she is alive, intact, and healthy in Episode VI. 

*****Spoiler Alert*****

The Scourge is so big and so dangerous that it actually kidnaps Darth Vader when he is out of his suit receiving medical treatment on Mustafar. If it is that much of a threat, it would have actually changed the events of Episode VI. Everyone would have scrapped their droids out of fear.

*****End Spoilers******

To sum up, nice idea, but the bad guy is overpowered and it is poorly placed in the timeline. I really liked the art, though.

I rate this graphic novel 2 stars out of 5. I am NOT reading other parts of the collection. This graphic novel can be found on Amazon.com here: Star Wars: Dark Droids.

EVERYTHING IS TUBERCULOSIS: THE HISTORY and PERSISTANCE of OUR DEADLIEST INFECTION (audiobook) by John Green

Published in 2025 by Listening Library.
Read by the author, John Green.
Duration: 5 hours, 35 minutes.
Unabridged.

Goodreads Choice Award Winner for Readers' Favorite Nonfiction (2025)

Audie Award for Narration by the Author and Nominee for Non-Fiction (2026)

Normally, John Green writes YA fiction, but this is his second non-fiction book in the last five years. His first non-fiction book was an excellent series of essays called Anthropocene Reviewed. His second non-fiction book is an in-depth (but still, fairly short) look at the deadliest disease of human history - tuberculosis.

In Everything Is Tuberculosis, Green gives a quick history of the disease that has killed 1 out of every 7 humans that has ever lived (yes, that is truly an amazing statistic) and even in the modern world, tuberculosis kills millions every year. 

Over the years, tuberculosis has a lot of names and suspected causes. Before it got its current name, the most common name for tuberculosis in English was "consumption." No one really knew where it came from and they were equally ignorant of how to cure the disease. Oddly enough, most people (90%) who are infected with tuberculosis (TB) never develop any symptoms and are not able to spread the disease. This is called "latent tuberculosis." Literally, 25% of the world is walking around with latent TB and more are added every day.

Doctors describe latent TB as an infection that takes advantage of its host's weakened immune system to spread and become a full blown case of TB. Immunosuppresent drugs would do this, but more mundane things like famine, poor diet, an HIV infection, diabetes, cancer, or being an elderly person make an infection move from being latent to active.

Green makes the story personal by describing the treatment of a young man he met in Sierra Leone named Henry. Green deftly goes back and forth between the big picture discussion of treatments, the countless challenges of treating TB cases in high poverty countries like Sierra Leone, and Henry's specific case. 

This is not a happy book in any way. But, it is important and it is very well told.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: EVERYTHING IS TUBERCULOSIS: THE HISTORY and PERSISTANCE of OUR DEADLIEST INFECTION (audiobook) by John Green.

BOUDICA: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

Published in 2026 by Hourly History

Hourly History specializes in short histories that take about an hour to read. In the case of Boudica, that's more space and time than needed to fill in what we actually know.

Boudica was a queen of a Celtic people called the Iceni (or Eceni) who lived in what is now Eastern England. Her husband was older than her and he had made a deal with the invading Romans. He agreed to be a vassal state of the Roman Empire in the hopes of saving a semblance of independence. The agreeement stated that the Roman Emperor would receive half of the Iceni kingdom when the king died.

But, when the king died the Romans claimed the entire kingdom as their own. Boudica protested that the Romans were reneging on the deal and claimed the entire kingdom for her and her two daughters.

The Romans responded by invading and capturing Boudica and her daughters. They raped her daughters and flogged Boudica in public but did not kill her.

When Boudica recovered from her injuries, she appealled to the other Celtic peoples to rise up and destroy the Roman invaders and soon she she found herself leading a mob of 100,000+ men, women, and children descending upon three Roman cities and completely destroyed them, including Londinium - modern day London.

The Roman soldiers retreated from the mob until they gathered up enough soldiers to make a stand of sorts in a place of their choosing. The Celts had numbers, but the Romans had military discipline and despite being outnumbered by 10 to 1, the Romans routed the Celts.

Boudica fled the scene of the battle and killed herself. Her body was never discovered and her daughters disappeared from history.

In the past, I read an article in a history magazine about Boudica that told me about the same as this e-book did. The problem is that all of the history is told from the Roman point of view and they didn't even know much about Boudica. They do agree that the Romans were initially dismissive of her, they then abused her in some way, and they were completely surprised by the revolt she led. There's just not that much to tell.

I rate this history 3 stars out of 5. It tells the story, but it pads it from time to time by repeating facts or writing things in an overly-complicated way. Perhaps this one should have been a 45 minute history rather than an Hourly History.

This short e-book can be found on Amazon.com here: Boudica: A Life from Beginning to End by Hourly History.

THE LAST SUNDAY in MAY: A NOVEL (kindle) by Kate Clark Stone

Published by Lake Union Publishing in May of 2026.

Synopsis:

10 years ago Mack Williams was the hottest driver on the midwest sprint car circuit. She was the daughter of a sprint car legend, she grew up racing on her family's small town Indiana dirt track and she was on the fast track to the IndyCar series and its ultimate race - the Indy 500.

But, she got pregnant and immedately after that her father was in a devastating accident that left him disabled for many months. Between caring for her father, her baby, and managing the dirt track, racing took a back seat and eventually was just a forgotten dream.

Then, after ten long years, one of her racing heroes, Janet Joyner, shows up at the track after a long night of races. She was a female driver at the Indy 500 when it was still a novelty and never had a chance to drive a quality ride in the race.

Joyner is now the owner of a small one car race team that has flashes of racing competitively with the bigger teams. Shas an offer for Mack Williams - she has a seat available in a second car and Mack can try to qualify for the Indy 500 in just a few weeks if she can get a sponsor.

My Review:

Up front I have to state a few facts about myself. I am an Indy 500 fan. I have gone to every 500 since 1986 (except the Covid year when no one could go). I went to qualifications and practices for years before that with my father. I have been to just about everything you can do at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway - I have watched tire testing days, been to the old musem, been to the new museum, taken the bus tour around the track, and more. Once I paid $10 to drive my minivan around the track as a fundraiser for some sort of charity. I have been in a suite, I have been in the scoring tower, and I have been in the garage area when it was full of cars being worked on.

I got The Last Sunday in May for free as a part of Amazon Prime and was fully expecting to laugh it off of my Kindle app. The cover conveyed the idea that it was going to be about a female driver, but it didn't inspire much confidence.

Instead, I found it to be an unlikely story, but one that could happen. The Indy 500 is full of unlikely stories. I saw Al Unser, Sr. win the Indy 500 in 1987. He didn't have a ride when he arrived and the car was part of a display in a hotel in Pennsylvania when his deal was signed. I saw Billy Boat qualify a rebuilt Frankenstein of a car at the last second to make the Indy 500. In the 2026 Indy 500 a small team beat the historically best Indy 500 team of all time by a time of 0.0233 seconds - they were literally side by side.

I've seen championship teams struggle to make the field and little teams do well. I've seen front row starters wreck before the race even started and last row starters be contenders. Oddly, the front row wrecks are more common than people coming up from the last row to be contenders.

Danica Patrick in the 2006 Indy 500.

The Janet Joyner character is an amalgamation of Janet Guthrie, Lyn St. James, and Sarah Fisher. Fisher had a small team and could spot talent - she gave two-time Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden his first ride in IndyCar. As of this writing, he has won a total of 34 IndyCar races - she was right to take a chance on him. Lyn St. James was very much interested in expanding opportunities for women in racing. Janet Guthrie could build a car from scratch, if she needed to.

There are a couple of questionable moments of geography that stuck out to this Indy westsider, but only a couple. 

The book likes to introduce new chapters with emails or social media comments from fans about Mack Williams. Some readers might find those to have been unrealistically harsh. I found them to be on the mild side. I have seen completely horrific comments about female and minority race car drivers on all sorts of social media and in the comments sections on racing fan pages. Sexually graphic comments are not uncommon.

It's not just from men. I got into a long argument on a Facebook article about Katherine Legge's performance in the 2026 Indy 500. She finished last in the 500, and a middle-aged woman was basically saying women should stay out of the race. She hadn't seen the race and she didn't know that Legge wrecked her car to avoid t-boning a male driver (a former 500 winner) who had lost control of his car on lap 18 right in front of her.

To sum up, I enjoyed this book. There was too much romance novel for my taste, but the book kept me reading and wanting to know what happened next. The Indy 500 stuff is improbable, but not impossible. I've seen the highly improbable happen before at the Indy 500 and I will undoubtedly see it happen again. 

Does she win? I would never tell what happened in a race - that ruins the anticipation of a race!

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Last Sunday in May by Kate Clark Stone.

HISTORY MATTERS (audiobook) by David McCullough. Edited by Dorie McCullough Lawson and Michael Hill.

Published in 2025 by Simon and Schuster Audio.
Read by John Bedford Lloyd, Dorie McCullough Lawson, and David McCullough.
Duration: 5 hours, 59 minutes.
Unabridged.

David McCullough (1933-2022) was a prolific historian, a two time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a winner of the National Book Award. He was proud to be known as a writer that wrote smart, well-documented histories that were aimed at general audiences. 

McCullough was also known as well-respected narrator. You may know him as the narrator of Ken Burns' Civil War documentary miniseries. 

McCullough's daughter and his researcher put together this book as a collection of speeches, letters, and essays that were previously unpublished or only published in small publications. For example, he wrote a nice little essay for a local public library about his family's tradition of giving books at Christmas. 

Dorie McCullough Lawson introduces every entry in the collection, often including some context about her father's interest in the topic or why he gave a speech to this or that particular group. Sometimes, they are just annotated lists of books that McCullugh really liked (he was a man that liked to make lists) or speeches about authors that he admired.

Most of the readings were by narrator John Bedford Lloyd, but there are a couple of instances where there was a recording made of McCullough himself giving the speech.

There are a variety of topics, including Harry Truman, George Washington, and the time that a young McCullough really wanted to make a suggestion to then-candidate John Kennedy about a topic to include in his campaign stump speech. I was pleased to note that he mentioned three authors that I really like as authors to emulate - Bruce Catton, Michael Shaara, and Dr. Suess. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: History Matters by David McCullough.

Robert F. Kennedy: A Life from Beginning to End (kindle) by Hourly History

 

Published in 2024 by Hourly History.

Robert F. Kennedy is remembered largely as a tragic lost opportunity due to his assassination as he was running for President in June of 1968 at the age of 43.

Hourly History specializes in short biographies and histories that a reader can read in about an hour. 

In this case, Hourly History has provided a lively, balanced biography that does not hide Kennedy's warts, but also lets the reader know why so many people had high hopes for him as he was mounting a late campaign for the Democratic nomination for President in 1968.

I rate this short bio 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Robert F. Kennedy: A Life from Beginning to End (kindle) by Hourly History.

MATA HARI: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

 

Published in 2019 by Hourly History.

When I was a kid, people would mention Mata Hari whenever a woman in the news or in a story was supposed to have seduced men in order to obtain secret information. I didn't know anything about her besides that. I wasn't even sure she was a real person. If she was real, I didn't even know if she had actually done any spying or stealing of secrets until I ran across this short biography.

Mata Hari was indeed a real woman. She has a reputation of being a seductive woman from the Far East, but she was actually born in the Netherlands. She started out in a prosperous family, but they came upon hard times and she married an older military officer who was stationed in the Far East. 

When she returned to Europe she divorced her husband (he was abusive) and took on the character of a seductive dancer from the Far East and performed in shows. The shows started out small, but soon moved into larger and larger venues. She became famous, if not infamous, for her sexually charged dances (remember this is the early 1900s, so they were wild stuff for the day, not necessarily nowadays.)

Her story was always one of finding a rich man to take care of her and falling back on the exotic shows when the relationship with her patron went sour. Over time, her shows had smaller audiences because she was aging and other women were doing similar shows. 

When World War I broke out, she mostly ignored it. She crossed borders at will and sought favors from officers on both sides. It was rumored that she had contracted with a German officer to seek information from a French officer. She was captured and executed by the Allied powers despite scant evidence. 

Was she a spy? Maybe. Was she just trying to make a little money and not really serious about being a spy. In my opinion, probably. 

I rate this short e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Mata Hari: A Life from Beginning to End.