The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: In the Time of Dinosaurs by K. A. Applegate

Book #265 of 2021:

In the Time of Dinosaurs by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs Megamorphs #2)

I’m rather lukewarm on the first Megamorphs release, but this is the sort of big blockbuster adventure that the line seems built for, an over-the-top extravaganza that might strain the limits of the regular Animorphs series and benefits from alternating among all six narrator perspectives. The extra page count is a boon too, as this volume is around one-and-half times the customary length but never lets up on the action for a moment.

As the title suggests, our heroes find themselves flung into the past by another Sario Rip, but unlike the short hop in The Forgotten where Jake underwent a doubling of consciousness by existing in two different places at once, on this occasion they arrive in the late Cretaceous period, 65 million years before humanity. One of the fun running gags that ensues is how everyone still expects their resident alien expert Aximili to have all of the answers, despite the fact that his own people and all the species they know haven’t evolved yet in this era either.

There are extraterrestrials on the scene, however! Yes, ancient earth was apparently a battleground between two warring forces, and if I can offer one critique of this story, it’s that neither group is ultimately fleshed out very much, although the Nesk display a cool design as small ant-like creatures that can swarm together into larger constructs to wield weaponry and other tools. But their presence is a fun and relatively unexpected twist, and the reveal that the Mercora have brought broccoli from their own planet and are responsible for introducing the crop here is the kind of ridiculous K. A. Applegate detail that I absolutely adore. These crab beings also generate a gut-punch of pathos at the end, when — spoiler alert — the Animorphs are forced to coldly betray their new allies in order to preserve the timeline and return home. Cassie raises the usual moral objections, but it’s the latest indication of how the protagonists are being hardened by the continual trauma of their experiences.

Mostly, though, this novel is about the dinosaurs. It’s a pulse-pounding rush from one encounter to the next, repeatedly emphasizing how out of their depth the humans (and Andalite friend) are in this environment, regardless of the ability to morph. Tobias soon receives significant wounds that don’t heal properly, and whether that’s because of his peculiar situation or an effect of the temporal shenanigans, it functions to increase the stakes as well. The characters draw the expected comparison to the overwhelmed visitors of Jurassic Park, as is entirely appropriate for 90s kids, and it’s a real struggle to survive until they manage to acquire Deinonychus and Tyrannosaurus Rex morphs (which prove unusable back in the present for unspecified time-travel reasons, but is presumably due to the meta-justification that these assets would simply be too powerful for them to retain for further events). The team gets separated near the beginning too, a neat structural complexity that wouldn’t be as manageable within a single POV.

The biggest divergence from a typical plot may be the utter lack of Yeerks, the primary villains of the franchise. Normally they make at least some appearance, but even the initial mission here involves rescuing a downed submarine that the teens saw on the news, not countering any immediate threat in their guerilla war against the invaders. Only The Ellimist Chronicles, a fellow companion piece, likewise features none of the mind-controlling slugs. And that’s probably for the best, as there’s a danger that the ongoing narrative could lose focus if minor episodic concerns were to keep popping up that don’t involve the enemy. But for a one-off special event, that absence helps contribute to an excellent change of pace.

[Content warning for body horror, genocide, and gore.]

★★★★★

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Book Review: Last Drink Bird Head edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer

Book #264 of 2021:

Last Drink Bird Head edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer

In this 2009 charity anthology to benefit the ProLiteracy organization, eighty writers answer the prompt, “Who or what is Last Drink Bird Head?” It’s flash fiction, meaning the authors are encouraged to respond off the top of their heads, unplanned and unpolished.

The results, as you might expect, are not so great. Most are just distractingly weird, but several are nonsensically awful and devoid of substance, leaving the impression that editors Ann and Jeff VanderMeer have simply included everyone who wrote back to them at all. Only a rare handful of entries truly shine, and yet these too seem constrained from reaching their full potential by the 500-word limit.

It’s an interesting experiment, I guess, even if largely a failure in my opinion. But at least it’s for a good cause?

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

Book #263 of 2021:

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

This novel hasn’t quite grabbed my heart as fiercely as author Casey McQuiston’s earlier Red, White & Royal Blue, but it’s still a pretty great story with incredible levels of queer representation. That includes not only the bi protagonist’s F/F romance, but also her found family of LGBT friends and multiple scenes at drag balls and brunches. Like a lot of fiction set in New York City, it reads as a bit of a love letter to the area and particularly the diverse community that can thrive in that sort of urban environment. You do have to kind of ignore the many coincidences of how certain people all know and keep running into one another in a city that big, though.

The book is a little slow in laying out its high-concept premise, but it’s ultimately revealed that the butch lesbian from our heroine’s subway meet-cute has somehow come unstuck in time and stuck in place, now able to exist solely within the limits of the Q-line train, where she hasn’t aged since the 1970s. The two women fall for each other hard, and then must navigate a very strange relationship while simultaneously trying to figure out what happened and how to undo it — which may cause Jane to vanish back into the past for good.

It’s a charming and endearingly original tale, full of characters who are easy to adore and frank conversations about lifestyles that aren’t always well-represented in popular media. The narrative occasionally takes shortcuts that undercut the stakes and leave a few side threads underdeveloped, but overall, it’s another delight from this #ownvoices writer.

[Content warning for mention of homophobia, transphobia, racism, and antisemitism.]

★★★★☆

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TV Review: ReBoot, season 1

TV #72 of 2021:

ReBoot, season 1

I have a lot of fondness for this old cartoon, which premiered in 1994 as the world’s first all-CGI series (before the movie Toy Story helped popularize the technology). Set inside a computer where the digital heroes have to fend off viruses — plus the users playing games on the system, for some reason — it’s an immediate delight in this episodic debut season. The worldbuilding isn’t totally there yet and the larger plot definitely isn’t, but I’m always impressed at how many clever puns and cultural references are packed into a program that otherwise feels aimed at a fairly young audience. Structurally, it’s also neat how Bob, Dot, and Enzo seem to take turns as the focal protagonist, each bringing a slightly different style of approach to the adventures around them. The villains Megabyte and Hexadecimal have distinct energies in the threats they represent, too.

I actually think the graphics here have aged just fine, but I unfortunately can’t say the same for the occasional objectifying line about female characters or the Asian stereotypes behind the wise old sprite Phong, complete with cringeworthy orientalist theme music. I’m aware that the media environment has changed a lot in the past 27 years, but for a title that was notoriously subjected to overbearing network censorship at the time, it’s a shame that these issues were still apparently considered acceptable.

Nevertheless, it’s probably no worse than a typical product of its era, and there are growing signs of complexity over the course of this run. We’re even starting to get arguable personal arcs for the main cast and a few recurring figures outside them, although the ongoing narrative won’t really arrive until halfway through the following year. Overall these initial thirteen installments feel somewhat repetitive, inessential, and goofy, but at under five hours in total, they’re fun to revisit and worthwhile as setup for the much stronger tale ahead.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Closers by Michael Connelly

Book #262 of 2021:

The Closers by Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch #11)

After two volumes spent as a private investigator, Harry Bosch has now returned to his roots at the LAPD. (In an afterword, author Michael Connelly explains that his favorite cases are the murders, and it seemed too implausible for a civilian to keep getting caught up in them. I don’t know that that would have been any more outlandish than some of the other developments in this series, though.) Apparently the first-person narration was also a short-lived experiment tied to Harry’s retirement, as we’re back to third-person limited here for whatever reason.

Those larger connections are a little awkward, but luckily, the main plot of this novel is a strong one. The protagonist has been assigned to a division looking into unsolved crimes from decades past, which is a good use of his talents and his well-established drive to find justice for forgotten victims. The first mystery he confronts is a murdered teen who had had a recent abortion no one knew about until it showed up in her autopsy, requiring Bosch and his partner to dig through the old file and reinterview witnesses to try and finally ID the secret boyfriend / presumed killer. I like this type of investigation not only because the cops need to be particularly clever to gain answers so long after the fact, but because their moves bring out countermoves in the suspects that inevitably change the contours of the story as it progresses.

There’s the customary internal politics going on at headquarters too, which is always enjoyable for how it tends to glance off someone like Harry who’s solely focused on the mission at hand. His enemies are the officers who put career interests ahead of their true responsibilities to the community, and that turns him into a valuable tool for a new chief aiming to clean out corruption, bringing the detective up against the sort of colleagues who would have been content to let the cold case stay shelved forever. The ensuing book is a slow and methodical procedural, but it’s a fine example of that genre, and it generally avoids the over-the-top elements that can sometimes drag down this writer’s work.

[Content warning for racism including slurs, homophobia, antisemitism, gun violence, sexual assault, suicide, and mention of incest.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass

Book #261 of 2021:

The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass

There’s enough of a distinctive (and #ownvoices) gay black perspective to this YA horror novel to save it from my lowest possible rating, but overall, it’s a real mess. Our protagonist can see visions of dead people, but the exact nature of his powers and theirs stays poorly-defined, and it’s never explained why the ghost of a school shooter from a few years ago has suddenly started trying to kill him. Worse yet, we spend alternating chapters in the actual POV of the murderer via his old journal entries about being abused at home and bullied by classmates, which comes pretty close to seeming like an attempted justification for his crimes. I’ll grant that there should be room in literature to explore the psychology that leads someone to such heinous acts, but the way author Ryan Douglass does so here falls right on the line between uncomfortable and irresponsible, offering little to explain why the boy — unlike most kids in his position — ultimately turns so awfully violent. And if Sawyer’s diary is not meant as an apologia for his actions, then I’m at a loss as to its function in the narrative at all.

Again, we need more representation of queer people of color in popular media, especially from writers like Douglass in the same marginalized group. There are microaggressions and other specific lived realities he’s captured that I don’t see fictionalized very often. It’s just a shame that the work surrounding that portrayal is so heavily compromised by its flaws.

[Content warning for racism, homophobia, suicide, incest, sexual assault, revenge porn, cruelty to animals, gun violence, and gore.]

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: The Gap Into Madness: Chaos and Order by Stephen R. Donaldson

Book #260 of 2021:

The Gap Into Madness: Chaos and Order by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Gap Cycle #4)

The penultimate volume in this Wagnerian space opera is a welcome step back up in quality after a third novel that I personally consider a bit slow and talky. This one is an improvement on all fronts: it’s action-packed, it focuses more on the immediate stakes surrounding Morn among the unsavory criminal and alien elements and less on the cerebral plotting of her distant superiors, and the scenes in that latter arena are actually gripping for once.

On this reread, I’m particularly interested in the debate over whether to bring the galactic security forces under the administration and oversight of the elected government, as opposed to the private corporation they work for now — which isn’t an exact analogue to our modern ‘defund the police’ conversation, but has a certain resonance to it nonetheless. Both there and out in frontier space, we find intrigues aplenty, with shifting loyalties and power dynamics that feel in a state of constant negotiation. It’s hard to predict exactly which rivals will put aside their differences to team up next, but when they do, author Stephen R. Donaldson always manages to make it seem perfectly motivated and true to everyone’s history and nature. That’s no easy feat, especially in the midst of the massive interstellar battle that takes up a lengthy portion of the end of this title.

In terms of the wider series, this entry is also refreshing for including a minimum of rape and other forms of abuse. Those things still happened to people in the past and inform their decisions and reactions in the present, but they aren’t really actively threatening the protagonists for the most part anymore, which is a nice change. Likewise, although the child born full-grown and implanted with a copy of their mother’s memories continues to be problematically described as a boy, they do use the word “daughter” to refer to themself here, which is probably the queerest characterization possible in a Donaldson story. (Offhand, I can think of only two gay figures in all his writing, Milos Taverner in the last book and Master Gilbur in Mordant’s Need, each of whom turns out to be a minor antagonist and sadistic sexual torturer. I’d love to be wrong about that, though, so please do correct me if I’m mistaken.)

The narrative remains somewhat uneven, and I can tell that I’m never going to enjoy the Gap Cycle as much as I do this writer’s Thomas Covenant fantasy saga. But this is one of its better moments overall, delivering a thrilling setup for the final hour ahead.

[Content warning for ableism, child abuse, gun violence, body horror, and gore.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Decision by K. A. Applegate

Book #259 of 2021:

The Decision by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #18)

The sci-fi concept of Zero-space in this series is one that doesn’t necessarily stand up to close scrutiny: it’s the empty dimension where Andalite spaceships go during faster-than-light / warp travel, but it’s also where a morpher’s excess body mass is temporarily deposited whenever they become something smaller. (It’s not clear to me why that justification for shapeshifting is even needed, nor what provides the extra material when someone turns into, say, an elephant.) But that’s the setup for the premise of the back half of this novel, in which an ordinary mission gets derailed by a passing ship somehow running into the bits of Animorphs that are halfway across the galaxy, yanking them from mosquitos to their own bodies to be quickly rescued by the aliens.

It’s very strange, and we’re told highly unlikely, although no Ellimist or anything appears responsible for the event. Luckily Ax is on hand as the current narrator to lend focus to the plot, and the tale which unfolds from that point is a good one. He’s compelling and funny before the sudden redirect too, distracting Yeerk guards and innocent bystanders by just strolling down a hospital wing, exhibiting his usual love for Cinnabons at the mall — a recurring gag I’ll admit is growing on me — and challenging Visser Three to a deadly duel. But he’s really in his element once he’s back among his own people, and the story deepens accordingly to explore his conflicting loyalties. The young aristh feels caught between worlds, simultaneously an outsider to his new friends and a bit of a heretic to the rest of his species for aiding them, and the text explores that tension in an interesting way.

The remainder of the book is equally momentous. The teens are meeting other Andalites for the first time, and following up on a hint in The Alien that they have traitors in their ranks and are hardly the paragons of virtue that Aximili sometimes pretends. (He’s oddly preoccupied earlier with the question of how the visser could have acquired the DNA of a kafit bird native to his homeworld, with no one suggesting the simplest explanation that Alloran already had the creature prior to his capture, but I suppose the matter is dropped after a different character’s duplicity is confirmed.) And the craft soon lands on the planet of the Leerans, those aquatic telepaths from The Escape who are now under open siege by the Yeerks.

Then it’s a race to reach a target that will secure an Andalite victory, and the action in this stretch is particularly exciting, as many of the locals are Controllers, and any enemy who reaches near enough to psychically learn that the guerilla force on earth is made up of human children cannot be allowed to survive to spread the word. Adding to the stress of the situation, the heroes begin snapping away from the scene one by one, although no one knows whether they are returning safely home or perishing in Z-space. The result plays out like a war movie with a shrinking team of fighters being shot out of the sky, despite what we can assume will be the ultimate conclusion.

So it’s a busy and somewhat messy adventure overall, but a real thrill-ride with important continuity developments nevertheless. I’d say Ax earns his latest “bun-zuh.”

[Content warning for body horror, gore, and suicide.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Spirit Thief by Rachel Aaron

Book #258 of 2021:

The Spirit Thief by Rachel Aaron (The Legend of Eli Monpress #1)

Eli Monpress is a very silly character — a thief pulling audacious heists and kidnappings in country after country apparently just to amass history’s largest total bounty on his head — which is not necessarily a problem, except for how the rest of this novel generally struggles to match him on that wavelength. The bare-bones fantasy worldbuilding provides no distraction either, and although the magic system shows creative promise, it’s so poorly explained that each new reveal of someone’s latest devastating counterspell isn’t particularly engaging to read. Our protagonist Miranda, the wizard detective chasing the crook only to ultimately team up with him in the face of a true villain’s threat, likewise does little to seriously distinguish herself.

This is my least favorite sort of book to review, because the overall effort isn’t especially bad, and besides some repetitive language that could have used another editing pass, author Rachel Aaron avoids any major blunders. It even has a satisfying enough ending that wraps up the main plot while keeping things open for the sequels. My three-star rating for the story reflects the middle-of-the-road Goodreads label of “I liked it,” and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that other readers have enjoyed it more. But for me personally, it’s a blandly functional text that offers no great incentive to return for the remainder of its series.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

Book #257 of 2021:

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

This standalone YA fantasy novel hasn’t completely won me over, but I like it a lot more than author Holly Black’s The Cruel Prince, which has a somewhat similar premise of fairyland intrigue. (The central romance here, for instance, strikes me as just a bit bland, whereas the other one was pretty toxic and abusive.) It helps that I really enjoy the setting of a small wooded town that’s entirely modern — complete with references to smartphones and Doctor Who — yet also normalized as to the existence of magic. The locals all know that fae creatures are a minor fact of life, that the protagonist’s love interest is a changeling and there’s an unaging horned figure asleep in an impenetrable glass coffin nearby; they simply don’t ever mention these things to outsiders.

In the actual plot of the story, that case is finally opened under mysterious circumstances, and the price of a bargain that the heroine struck as a child seems to be coming due. The writer takes a trick out of her Curse Workers series as well, with certain memories locked away from the main character until the time is right. At this point I suspect Black’s general style is never going to be a great match for my particular preferences in the genre, but I do appreciate the casual diversity she builds into her writing, which in the current title includes an interracial relationship and a gay happily-ever-after, two important real-world dynamics for younger readers to see reflected in fiction. And while I could nitpick a few of the developments in the slower middle section of this book, it’s overall one of the stronger works that I’ve read by her.

[Content warning for underage alcohol abuse, parental neglect, self-harm, and gore.]

★★★★☆

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