tek's rating: ½

Sword & Laser, on YouTube
G&S Wiki; Goodreads; IMDb; official website; Wikia

A talk/news web show about fantasy and science fiction books, hosted by Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt, both of whom have previously done stuff for CNET... which I may or may not have seen, I forget. Also, they did (and still do) a podcast together called Sword & Laser, but I definitely never heard that. Anyway, in 2012 they started a video version of Sword & Laser on Geek & Sundry, which I suppose is probably a lot like the podcast. Oh, I also should mention there's a dragon on the show. For several weeks, it had no name, and there was a contest for viewers to guess what its name was (which the dragon itself would indicate whether it was right or not, though it doesn't talk). It's name was finally determined to be Lord Bookwyrm Lem of Swaser, though they normally just call him "Lem."

The show has several regular segments, including "Quick Burns," in which Tom and Veronica tell us some news about... as I said, f&sf books and related subjects; "This Day in Alternate History"; the Calendar, in which they tell us about release dates for upcoming books; and the major segment (which I don't think has a name), in which they interview a different author each week. Also, viewers can send in their own video reviews of books they've read. I should also mention that Tom and Veronica originally did a discussion of a specific book each month, which they were reading in their book club, on Goodreads. I keep meaning to explore that site eventually, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Anyway, they eventually spun the book discussions off into a secondary video, which I'm afraid I don't bother watching. I liked it well enough when the discussions were part of the main show, but... I dunno. Maybe I'll watch the other thing some week if they're talking about a book I've read or have a specific interest in reading. Meanwhile, they do still talk about specific books on the main show, of course, particularly in the author interviews. And of course they'll mention what book they're discussing on the subshow (and they still mention Good Reads all the time on the main show). And um... if I hear of a book on the show, I may consider getting it someday, though for now I'm behind on my reading and have so many books already just waiting to be read. Not sure what else to say, except that Tom and Veronica are quite likable, and the show is definitely fun to watch.

The show ended its run on Geek & Sundry after one season, but it later returned for a second season on its own YouTube channel. I haven't watched any of that and I'm not sure when I might get around to it, if ever. (Edit: in 2019 I was moving my web reviews around, and discovered that the season they did on Geek & Sundry seems to have vanished from the internet, which I think is a terrible shame. What's also a shame is that I never did get around to watching anything they did after that, and now so much time has passed that I definitely don't think I ever will.)


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