The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: The Loneliest Americans by Jay Caspian Kang

Book #372 of 2021:

The Loneliest Americans by Jay Caspian Kang

A soul-searching 2021 effort to explore the thorny issue of Asian-American identity: why it’s a problematic construct for attempting to incorporate so many diverse experiences and national origins into a theoretical monolith, and why it has generally been a poor fit within this nation’s customary binary understanding of race. (How can someone like Korean-American author Jay Caspian Kang look at scenes from the Civil Rights Era, he asks, and see himself as either the black folks denied a seat at the lunch counter or the white oppressors barring them? And why are today’s social justice activists so often silent when Asians suffer, particularly at the hands of other minorities?)

There are no easy answers to such questions, but the writer does a valuable service in raising them, as well as observing how the failure of the multiracial liberal coalition to engage with and support Asian-Americans on their own terms has led plenty in his demographic towards toxic “Men’s Rights” groups and similar outlets of reactionary politics. Even as xenophobic attacks soared in the wake of Donald Trump’s anti-Chinese rhetoric at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, many recent immigrants and Asians around the world continued to view conservative America as an attractive option, and Kang forces us to consider how to address that perception of opportunity rather than just insist that it’s misguided. Part history lesson, part memoir, and part polemic, this is altogether an uncomfortable yet acutely necessary read.

[Content warning for racial slurs.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: All of the Marvels: A Journey to the Ends of the Biggest Story Ever Told by Douglas Wolk

Book #371 of 2021:

All of the Marvels: A Journey to the Ends of the Biggest Story Ever Told by Douglas Wolk

This is a rollicking nonfiction attempt to grapple with the wide range of Marvel Comics titles, written by a lifelong fan after he went back to read literally all of them — the 27,000+ comic books, spanning over half a million pages, that all tie together into one massive interconnected work that’s been building for six decades now. Author Douglas Wolk is quick to note that that’s not how the stories were ever intended to be consumed, and certainly not the only way to enjoy them — and that there are many that have not stood the test of time, either due to racism and sexism more obvious in hindsight or just because they aren’t particularly good overall. But he’s a kind and welcoming guide to a world that can often seem impenetrable from the outside, walking us through the publication history and major milestones of the fictional continuity.

With so much content at hand, the writer can’t possibly feature everything, yet he does a fine job of distilling characters like Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and the X-Men down to their core essences, as well as exploring how their depictions have shifted throughout the years to reflect the politics and culture of the moment. Specific issues are cited not to form any sort of best-of or required reading list, but merely to suggest potential entry points for readers whose interest is piqued by his overview. In Wolk’s opinion, the Marvel superhero canon is an inherently iterative construct, regularly referencing its long past in a way to reward eagle-eyed fans without (hopefully) alienating newcomers. If you aren’t taking in the entire enterprise as he has — and which he does not recommend — you are going to inevitably encounter callbacks you don’t understand, forming a richer experience as you read further, but you should also be able to follow along in the immediate plot at every stage, regardless.

I’ve never been especially into Marvel Comics myself, although I like their cinematic adaptations, but this project captures their wild fun and rings true to my engagement with other long-running franchises such as Star Wars or Doctor Who. With no single creator at the helm, differing visions yield odd components of a theoretically-unified universe, but there’s a certain delirious joy in watching pieces click together across lifetimes of steadily-improvised collaborative storytelling. Wolk channels that nicely here, giving all of us a taste of what it was like for him to read through Marvel in its entirety and why he loves it still.

★★★★☆

TV Review: Star Wars: The Bad Batch, season 1

TV #90 of 2021:

Star Wars: The Bad Batch, season 1

My expectations weren’t high going into this recent Clone Wars spinoff, as I generally found that parent show to be of variable quality and didn’t think these particular ‘defective clone’ figures made much of an impression beyond a gimmick during their brief appearance there. Luckily, this new series proves stronger than my fears for it. The animation inherits the stylized blockiness, but it’s never looked smoother, and the action spectacle is just as awesome as you’d get on The Mandalorian or the big-screen films. The protagonists have a fine degree of depth to them (although Tech and Echo tend to fade into the background a bit), and lead actor Dee Bradley Baker does an incredible job at differentiating their voice patterns, which has sometimes been an issue for me in his work with the Jango Fett imprints in the past.

The new addition of young girl clone Omega is well-pitched too, falling somewhere between Ezra Bridger and the Child / Baby Yoda in terms of her role in the group dynamic and effectiveness in battle. (It’s hard not to read Hunter’s relationship with her as anything but father/daughter, despite the insistence that the gang are all siblings and a late reveal that she’s actually older than the rest of them.) The faulty inhibitor chips are a neat plot device hanging over the heads of this strange family, with the brainwashing mantra of “Good soldiers follow orders” sending chills on every occasion we hear it threaten to split the team. And some fun characters from other Star Wars lines make surprise intersections with their journey, from the bounty hunters Cad Bane and Fennec Shand to future Rebel Hera Syndulla.

Possibly my favorite aspect about this program, though, is how it explores the time right after Revenge of the Sith, starting when the command to “Execute Order 66” doesn’t hit our heroes with the same force as the regular troopers, setting them up as fugitives and eventual mercenaries instead of loyal grunts. From that point we see the dawning of the Empire in a way no other movie or television feature has yet depicted, and while each episode’s storyline tends to be a standard job-of-the-week, that backdrop gives the whole enterprise a current of excitement akin to how The Mandalorian has handled the era following Return of the Jedi. In my opinion the now-ended Rebels and Resistance largely missed the mark in fleshing out their own corners of the broader franchise timeline, but so far, The Bad Batch is delivering the goods.

★★★★☆

Book Review: Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids by Hunter Clarke-Fields, MSAE

Book #370 of 2021:

Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids by Hunter Clarke-Fields, MSAE

Like many self-help books, this 2019 title feels as though it probably could have been stripped of repetitive examples and published at magazine-article length, if not for the fact that that obviously wouldn’t make as much money. I also don’t agree with all of author Hunter Clarke-Fields, MSAE’s hot takes either, despite appreciating her core insight that parents should learn to recognize and resist our natural stress responses when difficult situations with our children arise. The reminder that physical and verbal violence are unproductive and harmful is good for readers too, I guess, although the writer seems way more tempted to go that disciplinary route than I ever have been myself.

Mindfulness overall still strikes me as a bit of a scam, yet in general I’d say this is a solid parenting guide that doesn’t overemphasize that practice out of any reasonable proportion. I’ll round my rating up to three-out-of-five stars due to sheer inoffensiveness, but given how common-sense most of this advice appears, I don’t know that I’d necessarily recommend the text to anyone.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Within These Wicked Walls by Lauren Blackwood

Book #369 of 2021:

Within These Wicked Walls by Lauren Blackwood

The publisher is pitching this novel as an “Ethiopian-inspired… fantasy retelling of Jane Eyre,” which doesn’t quite seem to hit the mark, as the two books really only share a wealthy man named Mr. Rochester whose manor holds dark secrets (and a few isolated scenes like a home burning or a horse falling down, I guess). In this case, the house is haunted by a literal demon rather than a hidden wife, and the heroine is a young exorcist hired to cleanse it.

I’m not the world’s biggest fan of the original Charlotte Brontë story, and in many ways, I appreciate this version better. The manifestations are suitably creepy, the action is pulse-pounding, and the protagonist reads as less of a pushover, in my personal opinion. There’s a nicely complicated relationship with her emotionally-distant mentor / father figure as well, which adds good pathos to the plot.

Unfortunately, a greater portion of attention is given to the title’s romance, which is somehow simultaneously toxic and bland. Andromeda is so poor that she’d literally be back on the streets if she lost this job, while her beau is the rich employer who lies about the scale of the possession problem and inappropriately begins hitting on her at the earliest opportunity. It’s not exactly love at first sight, but it’s pretty close, with no particular demonstration of why these two folks would be drawn to each other or apparent chemistry in their interactions. I don’t mind messiness in fiction or demand characters be perfect, but this is more boring than objectionable overall.

If that element were removed or handled differently this could easily have been a four-star read for me, and I do think debut author Lauren Blackwood shows a lot of talented potential elsewhere in the text. But I just don’t care enough about the two lovers to accept how often the narrative drags to a halt for their strained declarations of emotion at one another.

[Content warning for domestic abuse, racism, post-traumatic stress disorder, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: The Reversal by Michael Connelly

Book #368 of 2021:

The Reversal by Michael Connelly (Mickey Haller #3)

I enjoy both Mickey Haller and his half-brother Harry Bosch as protagonists, and a team-up is always fun for combining their respective lawyer and detective perspectives. This particular exercise feels as though it needs some further twist to really elevate the material, however, and it just never gets there for me. Instead it offers a pretty straightforward legal matter — the retrying of an accused child murderer, after his original conviction from decades ago has been overturned — that’s notable mainly for the bizarre decision to have defense attorney Haller appointed as independent prosecutor. I guess it’s interesting for him to experience a trial from the opposite side for the first time, but there’s no clear payoff for the odd premise. The alternating chapters from him and Bosch also tend to be repetitive early on, with many instances of one character informing the other about something we’ve already seen firsthand for ourselves.

Still, author Michael Connelly has a base level of workmanlike competency that comes through as usual, and the court case is readable even if not exactly a page-turner. I’m not disappointed by this novel like I was with Harry’s last story Nine Dragons; I’ve simply not been especially impressed either.

[Content warning for gun violence, drug abuse, incest, and pedophilia.]

★★★☆☆

TV Review: Hawkeye, season 1

TV #89 of 2021:

Hawkeye, season 1

The latest Marvel show on Disney+ is a flawed but fun action-comedy, taking full advantage of the Christmas setting for a festive buddy romp as Clint Barton reluctantly accepts an eager new junior partner. He’s trying to shut down a mob investigation into the Ronin, his blood-soaked alter ego from Avengers: Endgame, when he crosses paths with young archer Kate Bishop, who’s idolized him since childhood and is now in trouble with those gangsters herself. Their very different energies alternately clash and mesh nicely together, and the two exhibit hilarious verbal sparring as well a few delightful combat scenes with the help of Hawkeye’s trick arrows.

This series teases certain dramatic questions that don’t get particularly satisfying payoff, but it’s overall a good time with some surprising connections across the MCU. It’s way more of a sequel to the Black Widow movie and ode to her character than I would have predicted, for instance, and the whole venture carries the small-stakes vibe of the old ‘Defenders’ shows on Netflix, where a neighborhood or family could be threatened without placing the entire world in peril. A late crossover appearance even helps cement that yes, those stories are still canonical to the franchise, and I’m looking forward to seeing other figures pop up again, now that the contractual limits have lapsed and the floodgates are open.

The disability representation is great too, finally depicting Clint’s hearing loss from the comics in the form of a new hearing aid and use of sign language, and introducing a villain (slash antihero?) Maya Lopez who is deaf and wears a prosthetic foot and now has a spinoff of her own in development. Ultimately this is not as mindbendingly imaginative as most of the recent streaming Marvel titles have been, but its holiday spirit is certainly a big step up from the often-dreary The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

[Content warning for gun violence.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: The Separation by K. A. Applegate

Book #367 of 2021:

The Separation by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #32)

I realize suspension of disbelief is an odd criterion for a series about middle-schoolers changing into animals to fight aliens, but I find this book with the two Rachels particularly hard to swallow. I actually dig the initial premise: the protagonist is injured while in starfish morph — literally ripped in half, which that species can survive — and somehow both parts demorph back into her human form. There’s potential to the idea of a sudden exact duplicate on the scene, with both girls having a reasonable claim to their life and the affection of their friends, but this tale goes a different route of dividing elements of Rachel’s nature between the pair. Thus one version is insecure and ditzy, yet able to construct long-term plans, while the other is overly aggressive and incapable of thinking beyond the present at all. They are swiftly dubbed Nice Rachel and Mean Rachel respectively (by the chapter headers as well as the characters), which feels a bit harsh, but okay.

It’s a riff on the old Star Trek episode “The Enemy Within” where a transporter malfunction creates split-personality Kirks, and I believe I get what author K. A. Applegate is going for here, similarly dramatizing the conflict inside the heroine by externalizing it in this fashion, but the result struggles to locate the emotional truth of either side. They’re both so over-the-top, and not remotely like the figure we’re more familiar with. “Nice” Rachel in particular rings false to me, given her extreme cowardice, childish giggling, and focus on how cute all the boys are — is the proposition really that there’s an airhead quality like that within our regular Rachel? Only the feelings for Marco which are normally repressed into subtext seem legitimate, in my opinion. The “Mean” doppelganger is absurd too, with her megalomania verging on psychopathy, but I think she could have worked with a better-written counterbalance opposing her.

As is, each twin is pretty goofy, and neither makes for an engaging narrator over the rest of the novel. Then the plot is basically resolved via deus ex machina at the end, although I appreciate the two halves learning to accept that they need one another before that point. And the story outside of their drama is a bit of a wash, with the mission to destroy the Yeerks’ new Anti-Morphing Ray not coming to anything, merely functioning to set up the following volume and provide a backdrop to the main event here. As usual for the Animorphs, there are enough interesting details and moments of alternating comedy and pathos to keep me turning the pages, but this adventure just never provides a reason to take its ridiculous concept seriously. I’m surprised that it’s not one of the ghostwritten entries, to be honest.

[Content warning for body horror and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: The Excalibur Curse by Kiersten White

Book #366 of 2021:

The Excalibur Curse by Kiersten White (Camelot Rising #3)

The beginning of this YA fantasy trilogy held a frisson of excitement in the way it reinterpreted the familiar Arthurian mythos that its sequels have unfortunately never matched. This final volume furthermore takes a few odd detours, like keeping its protagonist a prisoner for the opening third of the text and then sending her through a poorly-motivated existential crisis over whether she has a right to her own body or not. The plot is wrapped up satisfactorily — although the love quadrangle among Guinevere, Arthur, Lancelot, and Mordred isn’t really — and I’d say it’s generally worth reading if you’ve enjoyed the first two novels. But too many characters that we’ve previously seen in meaningful relationships stay apart for too long, which robs the conclusion of its full impact and represents diminishing returns for the series as a whole.

This volume: ★★★☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Volumes ranked: 1 > 2 > 3

Book Review: Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang

Book #365 of 2021:

Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang

A fairly poignant account of a brief but formative period in author Qian Julie Wang’s life, spanning from 1994 when she left China for America with her family at age seven through when they moved again to Canada five years later. This sort of childhood memoir is tricky; although the writer ably captures the feeling of the experience, the details that an adult would know are sometimes absent, and those that we do get can often read as tenuous. For instance, it seems clear that the Wangs immigrated legally and then overstayed their visas, but the text doesn’t identify when that change in status would have occurred or distinguish between their documented and undocumented existence. The young girl was taught from the start to avoid cops, not go to licensed doctors, and lie to teachers about where she lived, yet I can’t tell how much of that was misguided overprotection as opposed to early good advice.

Similarly, there are sections in here when the parents act in ways that their daughter doesn’t understand — only some of which she appears to grasp better now as a grown-up herself reflecting on the events — and I’m genuinely unsure as to the intended takeaway. The general impression of poverty is certainly affecting, as is the depiction of witnessing loved ones who were well-off professors back home being forced to endure racist treatment while scrambling for the most menial of jobs in New York. But on a micro level, I think I want more clarity and mature perspective from a work that deliberately sets this narrow a scope.

[Content warning for racial slurs, sexual assault, domestic abuse, and fatphobia.]

★★★☆☆