The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard

Book #187 of 2022:

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

A wonderful warm hug of a novel, and probably my top read of the year. It’s rare for a 900-page fantasy tome to feel so cozy, let alone to forgo any significant romance or acts of violence throughout its duration. But this 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, personal secretary to the emperor of the 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 empire 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 getting a feel for the viewpoint protagonist himself and the dazzlingly intricate worldbuilding details that author Victoria Goddard has devised for the various cultures of the setting.

The tone here is something like The Goblin Emperor crossed with The West Wing. Or the musical Hamilton, if it weren’t a tragedy and showed its title figure as more in touch with his island origins like Disney’s Moana. It turns out that in his rise through the levels of government, 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 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 small ways 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, especially once its unassuming architect starts being 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 rich and meaningful and preserved over generations as a powerful representation of identity. 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 evolving dynamic between Cliopher and the Last Emperor is not romantic — and I’ve heard that in the new sequel, the gentle bureaucrat is more explicitly characterized as asexual — but it is deeply intimate and a model of trusting fealty as the lord and his loyal servant come to reveal more and more of themselves to one another. The meaning of the title is twofold: Kip both serves as the metaphorical hands of the Emperor in interpreting and enacting his will across the kingdom and 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 being 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-fulfilment?

This has been my introduction to Goddard as a writer, but I am delighted to report that it is one of *22* available stories in this setting, with more announced as forthcoming on her website. Not all appear to be as lengthy as this one, and my general impression is that they function like Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series as a loose configuration with many possible entry points. I will certainly be reading more of them posthaste.

[Content warning for cannibalism]

★★★★★

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Book Review: Even Though I Knew the End by C. L. Polk

Book #186 of 2022:

Even Though I Knew the End by C. L. Polk

Like most novellas, this fantasy story feels like it probably could have been improved by developing its plots, themes, and worldbuilding at greater length, but in the short space allotted, it gets by just fine on pure premise and tone. It’s a queer supernatural female-led noir in an alternate 1940s Chicago, starring a private-eye sorceress we come to learn is living her last days before the expiration of the deal she made with the devil to save her brother’s life at the cost of her soul. When a demon client offers to cancel her chit in exchange for help tracking down a vicious serial killer, she dares to wonder if she might have a future with her angel-possessed girlfriend after all.

If that sounds like a lot, well… it is! Again, there’s a little too much material for the scant page count here, and while it’s a breezily enjoyable read overall, only the heroine’s sexuality — and to a lesser extent, the historical setting — really seems to do anything to distinguish this title from the urban fantasy genre at large. I like it, but I haven’t been drawn in as I was to author C. L. Polk’s earlier novel Witchmark, and I don’t know that I’d necessarily return for any sequels if this one ever turns into a series.

[Content warning for homophobia, institutionalization, electroshock therapy, gun violence, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Seasparrow by Kristin Cashore

Book #185 of 2022:

Seasparrow by Kristin Cashore (Graceling Realm #5)

The loose Graceling series moves at unusual rhythms, both on the macro level of an ostensibly-cohesive ongoing saga and on the micro level within its individual books. These stories regularly zig where the rest of the fantasy genre tends to zag, and while the effect doesn’t always work for me as a reader, it succeeds here as it did back in Bitterblue by focusing narrowly on one soul processing a lifetime of abuse.

Our latest protagonist is Hava, the queen’s half-sister and spy who grew up witnessing their father the king inflict his terrible passions for rape and torture upon her mother. Long after his death, she’s still clearly traumatized by her childhood experiences, not to mention prickly, skittish, and likely somewhere on the neurodivergent spectrum. In other words, she’s the kind of character I absolutely love to read, and possibly relate to far too well. (When she wonders how other folks make friends so easily, or why anyone would want to be friends with her? When she wants to arrange for everyone on the expedition to get warm new coats so long as they don’t know the gift is from her? Whenever she panics at someone’s kindness and involuntarily puts up a magical illusion of herself turned into a statue? I know those feelings, more or less.)

As for the plot, we’re following up on the events of Winterkeep, with some political intrigue and worries about the dawning technologies for this world’s equivalent of nuclear weaponry. But mostly, we’re just observing the heroine on an ill-fated sea voyage and its eventual aftermath, going through the daily tasks aboard the ship and gradually learning to let people (and a certain few telepathic blue foxes) back into her heart again. If you don’t enjoy slow-paced nautical fiction, then this may not be the novel for you. But placing a tight and introspective character study in that environment is a great structural choice on author Kristin Cashore’s part, and I’ve personally relished the journey.

[Content warning for amputation, gore, drowning, homophobia, and death of a baby animal.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Fevered Star by Rebecca Roanhorse

Book #184 of 2022:

Fevered Star by Rebecca Roanhorse (Between Earth and Sky #2)

Black Sun was one of my top reads of 2020, an adult fantasy debut set in a refreshingly diverse world inspired by pre-Columbian indigenous civilizations. Any sequel would likely struggle to match it, and sure enough, this bridge title in the trilogy suffers from classic middle-volume syndrome. The worldbuilding remains well-realized, but it’s not as impressive / noteworthy the second time around, and the story feels less propulsive too after the major event that the first book built up to for its climax. The whole series plot is very scattered, yet there was a sense before that matters were at least converging towards an inevitable collision. In this novel, there are a lot of pieces being moved around to set up the finale, but without as clear a throughline connecting everything together.

And some of the connections we do get seem mighty tenuous. Xiala is too passive here by far, and her primary motivation is finding her way back to Serapio, the one-night-stand she’s elevated into her one true love. In his viewpoint chapters he barely thinks about her in return, for good reason — he’s focused instead on his new role as deity incarnate, the weighty expectations of his estranged community, and his sudden ability to turn into a flock of crows to escape them. Her own part of the narrative is much more interesting once it starts focusing on her respective backstory and homeland, though she’s still not an especially agentive protagonist.

I don’t hate this overall. It reminds me of mid-to-late Game of Thrones, where the general vibe of intrigue is entertaining enough and individual moments can be highly effective despite the somewhat aimless surrounding context. I continue to enjoy the thematic palate that author Rebecca Roanhorse is drawing from, with reluctant divine avatars, identities outside the gender binary, and conflicts over mixed heritages and contrasting worldviews. All the elements are present for the conclusion to blow me away again, but this segment has been a bit of a slow and winding trek to get there.

[Content warning for torture and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly

Book #183 of 2022:

The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly (Ballard and Bosch #3)

Much like author Michael Connelly’s previous novel The Law of Innocence incorporated the real-life COVID-19 pandemic, this 2021 title reflects the strained state of policing in the aftermath of protests over the murder of George Floyd and the systemic racism it embodied for many. The cops are generally feeling bitter and embattled about the criticism and calls for their defunding, and while our protagonists Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch don’t seem to hold that view themselves, they mostly express this by staying quiet when their colleagues complain — which is somewhat disappointing on a character level, but probably realistic (and in keeping with how Connelly has written Bosch reacting to overt bigotry before). With many officers quitting and those who remain acting to slow-walk their orders and sulkily insist on doing the bare minimum they can get away with, the heroes have far fewer resources or trust from the public than usual.

The international health crisis is also still raging, providing a textured backdrop of masking, work-from-home, video chats, elbow-bumps, discussion of vaccination, and the like. I wouldn’t say that this dates the novel so much as it further grounds it in its particular moment in time. It’s an atmosphere unlike any release of the 30+ in this franchise before, despite the fairly generic title.

In this environment, Harry and Renée are investigating two separate matters: a close-range execution that used the quaint L.A. custom of firing guns into the air on New Year’s Eve as cover, and a string of serial rapes that has the police stumped. The balance of these plots isn’t perfect — it seems like we spend too much time with the former, which is surely way less urgent than the ongoing threat to local women — but each is developed with the writer’s typical skill and brought to its thrilling respective climax.

Overall, I would say that this is one of the better stories in the Bosch universe. Ballard has really come into her own as a heroine, and I like that this book finds her at an understandable crossroads over whether she wants to stay in a department that’s continually mistreated her (and others) to try and reform it from within, or to give up that responsibility to become a more effective agent for justice as an official partner in Harry’s PI practice. We don’t learn her ultimate answer inside these pages, but it’s a strong note illuminating an already above-average volume of the series.

[Content warning for suicide and gore.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson

Book #182 of 2022:

The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson (Wax and Wayne #3 / Mistborn #6)

[Note: I am Facebook friends with this author. Review originally written in 2016.]

The fight scenes in this novel are top-notch, and it’s great to see new applications of the basic magic principles Sanderson introduced in the first Mistborn books, but the plot here is pretty thin. I love The Alloy of Law (Mistborn #4, which introduced the current setting and crop of characters), but I just don’t see where he’s going with this trilogy that’s following it. I’m also feeling kind of let down by the slow progress on the Cosmere front… Not to get too spoilery, but there’s a point here where it looks like we’re about to get substantive cross-world interaction, but then it turns out the strangers are just from a different part of Scadriel.

Anyway. A bad Brandon Sanderson book is not a bad overall book, and if you like Mistborn / the Cosmere, of course you should read this one. But I can’t shake the feeling that this whole trilogy is just a transition to introduce the concepts that are going to support the next setting in this world.

[Content warning for gun violence and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Doctor Who: Origin Stories by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, Sophie Aldred, Jasbinder Bilan, Nikita Gill, Mark Griffiths, Katy Manning, Emma Norry, Temi Oh, and Dave Rudden

Book #181 of 2022:

Doctor Who: Origin Stories by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, Sophie Aldred, Jasbinder Bilan, Nikita Gill, Mark Griffiths, Katy Manning, Emma Norry, Temi Oh, and Dave Rudden

A mixed bag, as such collections often are. The premise of this Doctor Who title is that its entries are prequels exploring various incidents from before the characters ever meet up with the Doctor on-screen, and because this is a sci-fi franchise, the authors have all included some sort of alien (or at least, futuristic tech) element in their stories. That works well for the ones whose protagonists led strange lives prior to their canonical time on the show, which indeed have turned out to be my favorites in this book: young Davros seeking the advice of a rumored psychic in Temi Oh’s “The Last of the Dals,” Vastra hunting a murderer in the days leading up to her people’s hibernation in Dave Rudden’s “The Big Sleep,” and Missy killing the Time Lords who brought her child self before the Untempered Schism in Dave Rudden’s “Tempered.”

On the other hand, though, we have a lot of tales here about the ordinary humans who will eventually join the TARDIS as wide-eyed companions, with the writers generally acting to preserve the later TV continuity by deploying some form of a memory wipe at the end. Thus, despite the presence of a few imaginative team-ups — Ace with the Thirteenth Doctor in Sophie Aldred’s “Chemistry”; Yaz and Ryan with the Second Doctor in Emma Norry’s “The Myriapod Mutiny”; Martha with the Ninth Doctor in Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé’s “Doctor Jones” — most of these individuals do not make it out of their adventures actually remembering them, which limits the entertainment value and impact alike. (The licensed audio dramas from Big Finish have done a far better job, in my opinion, of finding ways to cross people’s timelines without resorting to such reversals.)

Ultimately there’s stuff here for fans to enjoy, like former cast members Sophie Aldred and Katy Manning writing for the roles they once played, but only “Tempered” comes close to adding anything essential to our understanding of the characters or the series mythology.

[Content warning for gun violence, insects burrowing into people, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Movie Review: The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (2022)

Movie #19 of 2022:

The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (2022)

At 42 minutes from start to post-credits scene, this second Marvel Studios Special Presentation is…. fine. It’s fine. It’s in no way essential to any ongoing series plot, but it’s a decent check-in on the various Guardians of the Galaxy characters, I guess. We spend most of that runtime with Drax and Mantis, who have decided Peter is sad about a lifetime of missing Christmas back on earth, and that they can rectify this by going to his home planet and kidnapping Kevin Bacon, as played by himself. They bring the actor to outer space, he and Quill both freak out a little, and then there’s some empty platitudes about Christmas. Roll credits.

And, look — the expected quips and the I-am-Groot-ing are here, and they’re entertaining enough. But this does nothing to push either the cast or the franchise forward, as each of the full Guardians movies accomplished in its own right. It’s a wholly tangential enterprise that’s honestly more akin to the thin storyline of the new Cosmic Rewind ride at Epcot, and I’ll admit I’m further disgruntled at the implied diversity gesturing of the “Holiday Special” nomenclature, when this turns out to be Christmassy through and through. (And it’s not nearly as effective a use of that yuletide theming as last year’s Hawkeye miniseries, either.)

This isn’t a misfire; it’s just not much of anything, leaving ultimately less of an impression than Werewolf by Night, the previous entry in this new peripheral / experimental MCU space. Call me a grinch, but I really don’t see the point of it. Two-and-a half stars, rounded up with a shrug.

[Content warning for alcohol abuse and gun violence including police violence.]

★★★☆☆

TV Review: Andor, season 1

TV #57 of 2022:

Andor, season 1

On paper, this prequel to a prequel might have sounded like a wholly unnecessary franchise extension, but in practice, Star Wars has literally never been better. Ostensibly a show about Cassian Andor five years before the movie Rogue One takes place, it has turned out to be more of a look at the scattered rebellion movement coalescing around him at that point, as well as a deep thematic reflection on what leads people to rebel, why fascist governments must be resisted, and how such oppressive regimes ultimately contain the seeds of their own destruction by being too unwieldy to react to ground-level efforts against them. As Princess Leia once said, “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

Andor the series is very concerned with that dual process of tightening and slipping through. Fourteen years after Palpatine declared himself emperor at the end of the prequel film trilogy, the heavy hand of imperial occupation is everywhere. Its military holds demonstrations in cowering city squares, its leaders attempt to suppress local cultural practices, and its bureaucracy has levels upon levels tasked with identifying and stamping out signs of dissent. Yet it’s simultaneously a lumbering beast unable to deliver an agile response to the exact threats it provokes. One focal character, imperial officer Dedra Meero, seems alone in even recognizing that disparate strikes and thefts taking place across the galaxy are linked in a pattern of concerted rebel activity, and she has a difficult time getting the old-boys-club of her superiors to understand and address the situation.

That’s not to argue that she’s positioned as some sort of feminist #girlboss protagonist in the narrative. She is still a fascist, a bigot, and a torturer, but the series is strengthened by her inclusion, particularly when she proves powerless in the immediate physical struggle of a riot in the finale. And while her analytical skills and insights should theoretically make her a formidable opponent, the machinery of empire is simply too big to ever use her effectively. In one of the most cutting pieces of dramatic irony on this series, her intense efforts to turn over every stone to locate Andor come at a time when he is already in imperial custody at a hellish labor camp under an assumed name.

Cassian himself isn’t necessarily the most developed leading man, and of the various minor missteps in this debut season, his truncated arc registers most keenly. His early introduction gestures at an interesting baseline for him — indigenous origins; adopted against his will; still searching for his missing birth-sister decades later — but these elements are swiftly dropped and never revisited. If this program runs for two years as planned, tracing the titular figure’s path from reluctant recruit to the trusted rebel agent of Rogue One, this first half doesn’t quite spend enough time fleshing out his interiority to sell the beginning of that transformation.

But like I said, this isn’t really his story after all. Presented as a sequence of mini-movies, it’s instead the story of a raid on a garrison payroll supply, and how it inspires both further totalitarian crackdowns and people on distant planets like Ferrix to start standing up for themselves against their common oppressors. It’s the story of inhumane prison conditions and a desperate uprising and grasp at dignity there. It’s the story of a far-flung network of rebels who don’t even know one another yet, and the empire’s hunt for the one man (an excellent Stellan Skarsgård) they’re belatedly realizing may be at the center. And it’s the story of Mon Mothma, secretly funding the resistance and scrambling to cover her tracks whilst maintaining her high-society role as a senate busybody. Cassian Andor connects these diverse threads, but the plot as written doesn’t need him to be an agentive hero, and for the most part, he’s not.

Maybe the series is misnamed. Ironically, Star Wars already had a show called Rebels, which narrowly focused on one small cell of the movement. This one that more earns the title is instead named after some guy who isn’t much of a conventional protagonist. Oh well.

I could continue to nitpick here and there — I think Mon’s scenes tend to amount to simple check-ins that repeat the same thematic material and diffuse the tension built up by the lower strata of operatives like Cassian — but overwhelmingly, I’ve been astonished by this production week over week. It’s taken concerns that have been part of the background texture of the Star Wars premise all along and made them suddenly vibrant and vital, and via characters like Maarva and Kino it’s provided a thesis and a rallying cry for viewers in a time of rising fascism in real life. All with nary a Jedi in sight, and hardly even any aliens or droids.

What an accomplishment. A new franchise high point, for sure.

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

★★★★★

Book Review: Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction by Grady Hendrix

Book #180 of 2022:

Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction by Grady Hendrix

A whirlwind tour of decades of English-language horror publishing, spanning from Rosemary’s Baby in 1967 through the middle-grade era of R. L. Stine and Christopher Pike in the mid-90s, and quite a lot in between. While author Grady Hendrix covers too much material to go into significant depth about any individual titles, his pithy summaries and juicy notes on particularly outrageous moments speak to a rich passion and extensive knowledge of the genre. He discusses trends in the industry and in common plot tropes from exorcisms to vampires to haunted houses to animal attacks, while conveying an enthusiast’s chagrin that so much of this pulp fiction seemingly hasn’t made an impact on the culture that’s remembered today. The writer doesn’t mention his own novels at all, but it’s clear how their strengths must derive in part from everything Hendrix has taken in and is writing in celebration of and/or reaction to.

I listened to this 2017 book on audio, and felt torn between a 3-star (“I liked it”) and 4-star (“I really liked it”) rating. I’m rounding up to the latter based on the inclusion in the print edition of so much cover art, which is its own forgotten 20th-century treasure trove. The text describes these images and highlights certain prolific artists too, but I’m sure the visual effect is even more striking.

[Content warning for lurid descriptions of everything from rape to racism to torture and gore. Horror is a genre that can go pretty dark, and this title doesn’t gloss over any of it.]

★★★★☆