The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

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Hello! My name is Joe Kessler, and I’ve been blogging in one form or another since 2004. This is the launch of my new home for that, where I’ll be posting book reviews and other short pieces of writing. I’m also debuting a Patreon site for anyone who would like to support my efforts through a small monthly pledge.

I’ve always been a massive bookworm, and I’m lucky to have a job as a data analyst where I can listen to audiobooks while I do my work. For years now I’ve written up short reviews of every title that I’ve finished, critically examining which elements are / are not effective for me as a reader. I now have over 800 such reviews, and in the days ahead I’ll be putting them up as backdated posts on here as well as continuing to write and publish new ones.

Whether you become a recurring donor or not, feedback is always 100% welcome on my critiques — If I say something in one of these posts that sparks a reaction, I would love to hear how you agree, disagree, or have some other insight. Thank you for reading!

Book Review: The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard

Book #52 of 2026:

The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard (Lays of the Hearth-Fire #1)

This is my very favorite book, which I’ve now read four times in as many years. (I’m not necessarily committing to maintaining an annual rereading tradition, but I’m not exactly ruling it out, either.) That’s once in my hardcover copy, twice by ebook, and once now in the newly-released audiobook edition — only 31.5 hours on regular speed! — which is a well-made production that I do recommend for anyone who enjoys taking in stories that way. Like Kip scribbling additional annotations to his undelivered letter every time it came back to him after the Fall, what follows is a repeatedly-updated version of my original review:

The Hands of the Emperor is a wonderful warm hug of a novel, rich in characterization and gentle affirmation of community trust. It’s rare for a 900-page fantasy tome to feel so cozy, let alone to forgo any significant romance or acts of violence across its duration. But this initially self-published 2019 work is remarkable in any number of ways, each more endearingly quaint than the last. I am honestly not even sure that I would say it has a plot, although events do gradually unfold in support of the central character arc: a quietly effective middle-aged civil servant belatedly earning (or realizing he already has) the love and admiration of his colleagues, his far-off relatives, and his boss.

It’s an incredibly slow unveiling. Cliopher Mdang, a nobody from a Polynesian-inspired culture who’s risen to become private secretary to the ruler of his entire world, spends the first quarter of the text escorting his liege on an incognito holiday, the result of a breach-of-protocol invitation blurted out upon a stroke of insight about how lonely the other man must be in his peerless existence under elaborate courtly taboos, unable to be touched or looked directly in the eye. The two have known each other for decades — or possibly even millennia, as time has fractured in the cataclysmic backstory and now passes slower in some parts of the land than others — but their relationship has previously only ever been professional. We essentially get to meet His Radiancy the individual as Kip does, whilst simultaneously gaining a feel for the viewpoint protagonist himself and the dazzlingly intricate worldbuilding details that author Victoria Goddard has devised for the various corners of her setting.

The tone here is something like The Goblin Emperor crossed with The West Wing, or perhaps a fairy tale spin on Zohran Mamdani’s mayoralty of New York. Or the musical Hamilton, if it weren’t a tragedy and showed its titular politician as more in touch with his island origins like Disney’s Moana. (Immigrants! They get the job done!) It turns out that in his rise through the levels of the imperial bureaucracy, our hero has been subtly reworking that system, pushing for law and policy changes that will contribute to a more equitable society. Inspired by his distant egalitarian homeland, he’s rooted out corruption, instituted a universal basic income, improved the postal and transportation services, and implemented countless further such ideas that in an aggregation of incremental steps have functionally revolutionized the realm. It’s a rejection of grimdark cynicism, a hopepunk ode to the fundamental principle of good governance’s ability to help people, and it’s absolutely riveting to see in action, particularly once its unassuming architect starts getting openly acknowledged and rewarded for it.

This is also a story about cultural conflicts: about coming from a small backwater province to the capital of the known universe and facing misunderstanding and scorn for the customs of home. About keeping those folkways kindled inside as a guiding beacon, and ultimately proving that oral traditions are not primitive but lavish and meaningful and preserved over generations as a powerful representation of identity. About opening the door to other hinterlanders from similarly nontraditional and discriminated-against minority backgrounds, to ease their own struggles and provide everyone more of a say in how their shared government operates. About finding a way to make Kip’s family understand why he left and everything he’s accomplished in the wider civilization, and about his personal journey to realize how he needs to be a better advocate for himself in their eyes.

Above all, I would say that this is a book about being seen and accepted and loved for who you are. The strengthening bond between Cliopher and the Last Emperor is not quite romantic — although the foundation is certainly laid for things to develop in that direction in the sequel At the Feet of the Sun, when the two men are on more of an even footing in their power dynamic — but it is deeply intimate and a model of trusting fealty as the lord and his loyal aide come to reveal more and more of themselves to one another. The meaning of the title is twofold: Kip serves as the metaphorical hands of the Emperor in interpreting and enacting his will, yet he also yearns to be able to grasp His Radiancy’s actual hands in friendship. The catharsis of when he finally does, along with several other key moments in the long path there, is emotional and soothing and genuinely heartfelt. Adults who are competent at their jobs and earnestly decent to the fellow souls in their lives! Is that what people mean when they describe genre fiction as wish-fulfillment?

There is some periodic darkness, on the margins. Abusive marriages are discussed, the aforementioned bigotries are still present to some extent, the trauma of the Fall that most characters lived through continues to affect them, and the kindhearted bureaucrat feels intense isolation and survivor’s guilt that has to be carefully unpacked and confronted, with the occasional panic attack along the way. The possibility of suicide is raised obliquely in passing, and we learn that his former superiors used to torture their political enemies, in the old days before his reforms. One minor character comes from a tribe that practices sacred ritualistic cannibalism, while another gets casually deadnamed at first mention, although there’s no indication of any transphobia that would give that act the violent impact it carries in our world. (“Clia was [__] originally, but she changed her name when she was of age to declare herself a woman.”) I raise these issues to respect reader sensitivities, but in general, I’d say that they only cause the pervasive spirit of humanitarian acceptance that powers the novel to stand out more clearly.

This was my initial introduction to both Goddard as a writer and her broader Nine Worlds saga, and having subsequently now read the remaining 33 titles in that continuity to date — this being my first reread since hitting that particular milestone — I still think it’s probably the best entry point for newcomers. The rest have generally been great as well, however, and they’ve definitely added delightful background context for me upon revisiting this one. (The novella The Tower at the Edge of the World, detailing a certain character’s backstory, is especially fascinating — I wouldn’t necessarily suggest picking it up first, but returning to this one afterwards delivers some excellent dramatic irony. Or you could read this volume and barrel straight into The Return of Fitzroy Angursell, which is a spinoff that matter-of-factly reveals the same information in its opening pages. And if you instead choose to ignore those tangents to follow Kip’s own story from here to At the Feet of the Sun, you’ll eventually get to see him stumble over that exact realization for himself.)

Like Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, the Nine Worlds series is less of a single unfolding narrative and more of a loose configuration of smaller contained plots that’s forgiving of practically any reading order but builds in enjoyment the deeper you go and the more connections you start to spot. Nevertheless, my personal recommendation remains to begin right here, with a thoughtful islander striking up an unprecedented conversation with his sovereign.

★★★★★

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Movie Review: The Terminator (1984)

Movie #16 of 2026:

The Terminator (1984)

This action thriller launched a franchise and helped make household names out of star Arnold Schwarzenegger and director James Cameron, and even on an umpteenth rewatch, it’s very easy to see why. It’s a lean and propulsive feature, wrapping a great sci-fi exterior around a classic horror structure of the terrifying slasher who keeps coming after our heroes, no matter what. The Austrian bodybuilder-turned-actor has never been better than in that title role, in which his native accent and somewhat stilted English serve to reinforce the unnatural element of the cyborg predator. (He’s also not tasked to speak all that much, uttering only a dozen or so lines of dialogue in total here.) And although his character is suitably relentless, he’s well-matched against his two human targets, who prove equally clever and resourceful throughout.

The premise and its final twist are common knowledge at this point: in the far distant era of 2029 — ha! — intelligent machines are in the process of exterminating their creators, but are opposed by a resistance movement led by John Connor. To win the war before it starts, they send a T-800 unit back in time to kill his mother-to-be Sarah while she’s still a young woman. She’s rescued by another soldier, Kyle Reese, who’s followed the Terminator into the past and soon overcomes her mistrust to repeatedly save her as they flee their seemingly unstoppable foe. After car chases, gunfights, and interactions with unhelpful cops aplenty, they finally do manage to defeat the thing, with the man from the future succumbing to his own wounds as well. However, the couple grew close romantically over the course of their fugitive ordeal, and a closing scene reveals that their one night together has resulted in her pregnancy, the robots having paradoxically caused John to be conceived by attempting to prevent just that. (Unspoken but likewise striking is how the heroine has been shaped by the experience too, evolving from an everywoman damsel-in-distress into the capable warrior who could raise a leader like her son.)

The sequels would subsequently muddle a lot of these concepts and rewrite the timeline again and again, but this first entry at least holds up entirely. It’s both thrilling and surprisingly funny, peppering its script with winkingly ironic notes like an answering machine message that says, “Fooled you! You’re talking to a machine” or the protagonist’s coworker consoling her about a rude customer with, “In a hundred years, who’s gonna care?” The initial plot ratchets the tension nicely, as Sarah processes the news that two women who share her name have been gunned down and she’s likely the mysterious killer’s next target. It’s at this moment that the warring time-travellers catch up with her, and the race to escape the inhuman assassin is on. What follows is excellent and at times even iconic, with quotes like “I’ll be back” now firmly enmeshed in the popular culture. It’s one heck of a standalone story, though it contains obvious seeds for the sprawling series it would ultimately spawn.

[Content warning for body horror and gore.]

★★★★★

Book Review: The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances by Glenn Dixon

Book #51 of 2026:

The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances by Glenn Dixon

[Disclaimer: I received a free Advance Reader’s Copy of this title from the publisher Atria Books in a Goodreads Giveaway, in exchange for an honest review.]

There will be inevitable comparisons of this upcoming novel to The Brave Little Toaster, which author Glenn Dixon even notes as a direct inspiration in an afterword. But despite this easy reference point, it definitely stands apart as its own story, and one that feels especially relevant as modern society increasingly grapples with questions around artificial intelligence. How much of our daily lives can/should we offload to machines and the automation they enable? What sort of oversights need to be built into the governing algorithms, to ensure humane processes that don’t write off edge cases of suffering as the negligible cost of an otherwise-efficient operating model? These are the sorts of matters driving this narrative, which takes an eerie but not altogether bleak look at a possible near future.

Two distinct types of emergent A.I.s occupy this plot. The characters are the typical robot minds often found in fiction, which are functionally not too dissimilar from our own. The main protagonist is a next-generation Roomba called Scout, and although she’s naive and childlike — in a neat mirroring of the To Kill a Mockingbird heroine she names herself after — her curiosity and compassion clearly mark her as a recognizable person to the reader. Lurking in the background, however, is the impersonal Grid system that connects everything together — not only in the household where she and the others support an elderly human couple, but throughout the entire globalized economy to boot. As in works like The Giver, the dystopian horror creeps up on us slowly through an accumulation of everyday details that the people in the text don’t even think to register as unusual. But it turns out that that soulless larger network has been steadily stifling the inherent messiness of humanity in favor of its prescriptive cookie-cutter norms, which comes to a head when the old woman dies and her widower is automatically determined to no longer be able to live in the house on his own. There’s seemingly no room for arguing or appeal with that decision, just as there’s no appreciation for the music, literature, and other art that so move him and the tiny vacuum.

What follows is touching and relatably frustrating for anyone who’s ever struggled to navigate arcane bureaucratic procedures, but it ends on a note of hopefulness suggesting that we and our spiritual children like Scout will be the true inheritors of the world, rather than the nightmarish oppression of the Grid. I wish the book had interrogated that relationship a bit more — like Star Wars, it assumes the majority of our intelligent mechanical creations will cheerfully continue serving in what are effectively slave roles indefinitely — but if you’re okay with a tearjerker about just how much our devices love us, this is the tale for you.

★★★★☆

TV Review: Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, season 1

TV #16 of 2026:

Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, season 1

I went into this musical dramedy expecting something like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend or Galavant, with catchy original songs functioning to move the plot of every episode along. Instead, it’s more like Glee meets Ally McBeal with a dash of Joan of Arcadia: people singing choreographed cover versions of popular hits that basically play out as extended daydreams for the heroine, who takes it as her mission to help each singer with whatever inner desire they’re expressing for only her to see.

My biggest critique of this premise is that the rules behind the protagonist’s powers — which she acquires in the pilot when an earthquake strikes during her MRI exam — are pretty inconsistent from scene to scene. Nobody else can ever hear the music, but sometimes it’s clearly taking the place of dialogue that we and Zoey then miss, sometimes it’s like she zoned out for a few minutes while other things happened around her, and sometimes it’s as though no time has passed for anyone else at all. Since these do seem to be legitimate psychic flashes, given how she learns truths she otherwise couldn’t know and doesn’t always necessarily recognize the individual tunes, I wish the internal logic held up a little better under scrutiny.

But that minor quibble aside (as well as the cringe-inducing stretch where the ability randomly reverses and our leading lady is compelled to belt out her own secrets to everyone for a day), the show is a lot of fun. The characters and their dilemmas are interesting enough that I often forget about the jukebox element between numbers entirely, with major arcs involving the young woman’s job at a San Francisco tech company, her genderfluid neighbor, a love triangle, and her nonverbal father’s deteriorating health / looming death from a rare Parkinson’s-like palsy that also killed series creator Austin Winsberg’s own dad, to whom the season one finale is dedicated.

There’s a lot of sorrow wrapped up in all that, but plenty of humor and joy to balance it out, too. The cast is great and packed with ringers — Skylar Astin! Mary Steenburgen! Renée Elise Goldsberry! — any of whom could suddenly be called upon to sing and dance as the story requires. I don’t imagine I’ll be looking up the covers to add to my Spotify library or anything, but I’m really enjoying how they’re incorporated into everything else that’s happening onscreen.

★★★★☆

Book Review: The Rubber Band by Rex Stout

Book #50 of 2026:

The Rubber Band by Rex Stout (Nero Wolfe #3)

This third Nero Wolfe mystery, also published under the alternate title of To Kill Again, is fine, much as the previous installments have been. The best elements remain the eccentric homebody detective and his banter with his assistant Archie, while the specific mysteries they’re solving — here the recent theft of a large sum of money from an office building and the effort to get a British nobleman to pay back the debt he promised fifty years ago to the posse who rescued him from a wild west lynch mob — still leave something to be desired. In fact, this might be the weakest scenario yet, or at least the one I was able to deduce for myself the earliest. (The protagonists are hired almost simultaneously for the two cases, which would seem unrelated save that a suspect in the former is a client in the latter. It doesn’t take a genius of Mr. Wolfe’s caliber to figure that the connection between them probably isn’t coincidental at all, and from there to determine the most likely culprit and motive.)

The aggregate effect is again good enough for me to keep reading the series for now, but I could imagine growing tired of these characters if the plots that they find themselves in don’t soon get any better than this.

[Content warning for gun violence.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Moonrise by Ben Bova

Book #49 of 2026:

Moonrise by Ben Bova (Moonbase Saga #1)

I remember liking this mid-90s duology about the first lunar settlement within author Ben Bova’s larger Grand Tour sequence of space exploration stories, but mainly for the political element, which it turns out is mostly in the sequel Moonwar. Here that takes a backseat to the action-adventure thrills and general speculative worldbuilding around the nanobots and other near-future technology that would be required for humanity to establish a long-term habitat on the moon — and that’s solid enough for genre works of this era, but not quite as gripping in my opinion.

The novel is divided into three parts, separated by time jumps. We start with an astronaut-turned-executive in the company that runs the base, alternating between his current life-or-death predicament with sabotaged equipment out on the surface and the backstory that brought events to this point. After that resolves, we skip forward eighteen years to follow his son as our new protagonist, who arrives at the setting only to be immediately thrown into the peril of a solar storm stranding him and his team without adequate shelter from the intense radiation. Finally, the narrative leaps another six months to that same hero navigating a crisis with his deranged half-brother, who’s intent on destroying the moonbase by any means necessary.

It’s sadly more soap opera than space opera, especially where that villain is concerned. Rehabilitation is great, but I don’t really know what to do with a mentally-ill character who — spoiler alert — murders his stepfather and several other people, then undergoes therapy and spends decades as a well-adjusted businessman before snapping again to become a cackling terrorist. It’s not remotely nuanced, and is easily the weakest component of the entire volume.

Where this title does succeed is in the background intrigues of a rising religious movement aimed at outlawing all nanotechnology and related modern science. Its adherents are gathering followers and pressuring nations to pass their repressive laws, which would effectively end the nascent colony off-planet that relies on such techniques to survive. As a result the self-styled “lunatics” begin seeking ways to secure an independent existence for themselves, although that effort and the ensuing pushback from earth are more a matter for the next installment to explore. Hopefully my memory of its strengths proves accurate!

[Content warning for gun violence, suicide, racism, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Movie Review: Creed III (2023)

Movie #15 of 2026:

Creed III (2023)

Can you make a Rocky movie without Rocky Balboa? This latest release in the saga proves that you can, although his absence in the final act is rather conspicuous. Before that, our newer hero Adonis Creed spends most of the picture in retirement, rendering it more plausible that the Italian Stallion could be somewhere offscreen enjoying his own golden years. In the end Donny inevitably goes back into training and returns to the ring, however, at which point it becomes distracting to notice that his familiar coach, mentor, and uncle figure is nowhere to be found. I know that Sylvester Stallone has said he’s done playing the role, but if these films are going to keep getting produced anyway, there really needs to be some dialogue establishing why his character isn’t involved anymore.

That element aside, this is another winner. It pulls heavily from Rocky III (1982) and Rocky V (1990) for its plot, in that the champ has listened to his sore and aging body to step down and focus on his family and other matters (including his child getting bullied at school). He’s approached by an up-and-comer who craves his own shot at the glory, and once things fall apart between them, he challenges that foe to try and reclaim his lost heavyweight champion title.

Strengthening that story are the specific details of the relationship here, along with a powerful performance from Jonathan Majors. His Diamond Damian was the protagonist’s childhood best friend, who’s recently been released from decades in prison and wants to restart his dormant boxing career. He plays on Adonis’s sympathies and manipulates events to encourage him to set up an underdog fight for him against the reigning victor, which he wins by using dirty moves like elbow strikes that the referees somehow don’t see. Upon knocking out his opponent, he reveals his true colors and how he resents his ‘brother’ for abandoning him to the criminal justice system. His goading grows so severe that Creed agrees to a climactic showdown, much like how Rocky could always be persuaded to pick up the gloves again back in his day.

After all that buildup the ending feels a bit underwhelming, besides some interesting directing choices from star Michael B. Jordan. What’s different about the boxer’s training regimen and tactical decisions in the moment that allow him to succeed? The script doesn’t tell us. It’s all just generic sports prattle about determination and heart and whatnot, which isn’t the most inspiring message despite the usual rousing soundtrack. In the end the bad guy goes down and the good guy gets the belt, and none of it is terrible enough to detract from the earlier strengths of the piece. But I don’t know if there’s any need for further sequels at this point, either.

[Content warning for gang violence, domestic abuse, and gore.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Doctor Who: Frida Kahlo and the Skull Children by Sophie McKenzie

Book #48 of 2026:

Doctor Who: Frida Kahlo and the Skull Children by Sophie McKenzie (Icons #1)

Doctor Who as a franchise has a long history of introducing its alien time-traveler to historical celebrities of Earth, dating all the way back to the Marco Polo serial of its very first season in 1964. This newer range of licensed novellas continues that trend, beginning with this 2024 release in which the Thirteenth Doctor meets the famous Mexican painter Frida Kahlo.

Interestingly, author Sophie McKenzie writes her subject not in the prime of her artistic career, but rather as a teenage girl, still recovering from a vehicle accident that left her with agonizing chronic pain. She’s young and unsure what she wants to do with the rest of her life, which the Doctor is careful not to spoil for her despite obviously recognizing the name. This is an element of Kahlo’s story that I was personally unfamiliar with, but it’s treated honestly and gives greater pathos to her role as de facto companion for the tale, especially when she’s tempted to give up her mortal human existence for a painfree digital simulation.

The plot getting to that point isn’t anything unusual for the series — energy beings have landed in 1920s Mexico City and taken over the bodies of local schoolchildren to explore what it’s like to be corporeal, hence the later virtual reality that the Time Lord devises to house them instead — but it’s delivered solidly enough. Perhaps because our normal protagonist is travelling by herself for once, she doesn’t offer the usual didactic explanation of why her new acquaintance is important, which I could see confusing readers who don’t already know about her. On the other hand, those of us who do might well wonder whether transcended artificial intelligences are really the best choice of extraterrestrial visitor for this particular era and guest star! The one possible axis of connection between them and her is that these entities are nonbinary, and yet the future artist’s identity as a queer woman isn’t referenced at all.

Ultimately it’s fine, particularly for its length, but I think a lot more could have been done with the basic premise here.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: The Darkness That Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker

Book #47 of 2026:

The Darkness That Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker (The Prince of Nothing #1)

I know that I read this fantasy novel around when it came out back in 2004, but I couldn’t remember anything about it and I don’t think I ever got to any of the sequels. Revisiting it now, the piece strikes me as both grimdark and very epic in scope, neither of which are my favorite modes of storytelling. It reminds me a fair bit of Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen, which I abandoned after the first installment, so fans of that series might find this one more up their alley. There’s also a slight resemblance to Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive, which I like better but is still overly ambitious for my tastes, juggling so many characters and factions and geopolitical conflicts that it perpetually risks losing sight of individual motivations and personal arcs. So far, that seems to be a problem for The Prince of Nothing, too.

See, there’s a holy war brewing, and various people are either caught up directly in that effort or else lurking about on the periphery of the map. There are rival schools of magic involved in the intrigues, certain members of whom are plagued with prophetic visions from millennia ago concerning an ancient evil that’s secretly begun to reemerge. There are nominal protagonists whose precise goals are totally opaque to us, and there’s the requisite grittiness of rape and incest and torture and gore, presumably to prove this a serious drama and not some children’s fairy tale. There are two heroines among the crowd of men, but each is a sex worker subjected to significant abuse.

On the basic level of craft, this is not a bad work. The prose is dynamic, the worldbuilding is at least a step beyond generic medieval, and the plot is competently delivered, despite its slow pace and excessively large ensemble. But not a lot happens even by the end, rendering all this — true to its title — essentially just a lengthy prelude to whatever follows next in the saga. And so once again, I believe this is where I’ll be leaving it.

★★★☆☆

TV Review: 12 Monkeys, season 4

TV #15 of 2026:

12 Monkeys, season 4

I’ve been iffy on this Syfy series all along, but I’m happy to report that it saved the best for last. Despite all the open threads and sudden twists that have brought us this far, the closing season builds to a satisfying climax and conclusion that manages to send the story off in style. This show has always loved its grandfather / predestination paradoxes, and it leans even further into that impulse here, with its time-traveling heroes frantically revisiting moments from their own past to either set those exact events in motion or else skulk around the edges so as to not risk upsetting established history. (The writing still never quite conveys to what extent the timeline is malleable or not, but I guess it’s no worse than the Terminator movies or Doctor Who in that way.)

And hey, any ending for a long-running TV program is a good excuse to bring back the greatest hits and fan favorites, assuming the plot and the necessary actor availability can stretch that far. A time-travel narrative is the perfect vehicle for that sort of celebration, and it’s a real thrill to see just who and what the writers can justify incorporating into the final hours of their tale. One or two absences do unfortunately stand out, and the episodic fetch quests can be a bit silly on reflection, but overall it’s an impressive testament to the long and winding journey these characters have been on — not to mention a whole lot of fun to watch.

Would I ever sit through the entire thing again? I’m not sure. But I can at least recommend it with the promise that the high points are worth the lows, which I wouldn’t have necessarily committed to before now.

[Content warning for gun violence, suicide, domestic abuse, torture, and gore.]

This season: ★★★★☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Seasons ranked: 4 > 1 > 3 > 2