The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: The Body in Question by Jill Ciment

Book #237 of 2021:

The Body in Question by Jill Ciment

Two middle-aged jurors in a major murder trial — who go unnamed until a verdict is reached two-thirds of the way through the text — embark on an affair while sequestered, after which one must return home to her dying husband and deal with the assorted fallout. That premise has potential, but in execution I feel too disconnected from all of these characters, and too frustrated by their common inability to articulate and advocate for their particular desires.

The central Florida setting lacks the specificity that I want as someone who grew up in the area as well; other than references to Casey Anthony and George Zimmerman there are few distinguishing features provided for the locale. And the case under deliberation is so gruesome, involving a one-year-old burning to death in his crib, that more substance is really needed somewhere in the novel to justify and offset it. Unfortunately, the story just never gets there for me.

[Content warning for euthanasia and ableism including slurs.]

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: The Gap Into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge by Stephen R. Donaldson

Book #236 of 2021:

The Gap Into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Gap Cycle #2)

This sequel is a major improvement over its predecessor, deepening the worldbuilding of the space opera setting and populating it beyond a simple archetypal trio. We also switch our focal protagonist from the rapist lowlife Angus Thermopyle to his recovering victim Morn Hyland, who proves to offer far more engaging a perspective. Although there’s still a fair bit of rape and other brutality, we are at least no longer seeing it through the eyes of the perpetrator, which is a welcome change. I don’t recommend the previous volume to everyone, but I will say that any readers who can bring themselves to finish it should check this one out to watch how the story gets better from there.

Morn herself is a capable heroine, in the tradition of author Stephen R. Donaldson’s earlier Linden Avery and Terisa Morgan (of the Thomas Covenant and Mordant’s Need series, respectively). Like those women aboard Starfare’s Gem or within the walls of Orison, she spends a lot of time bouncing around a contained environment, learning how to leverage the insights of her despair in conversation with one figure after another. Here, that’s the spaceship of the pirate who rescued her from Angus, and who gradually reveals himself to be just as cruel and vindictive a captor. Nick Succorso is the true villain of this piece, and his steady transition into that role is a skillful exhibit of writing and plotting.

The richer texture of the narrative adds an interesting transhumanist element as well. Morn’s neural implant was initially employed to keep her docile for Angus’s regular assaults, but now that the controls are in her own hands, she’s able to wield it to both manage her Gap sickness and push her mind and body way past their natural limits. She’s reclaiming her power following significant trauma, especially when she uses the device to secretly increase her arousal for marathon lovemaking sessions with Nick, whose touch we’re told she would otherwise loathe. This sci-fi sex work isn’t always comfortable to observe, but as a way of playing the captain’s egotistical expectations against him, it’s a great weapon in her arsenal.

Honestly, the cadet’s personal arc in this novel is fantastic, and I’m tempted to give the title my highest five-star rating on her basis alone. Two items temper my praise somewhat, however. First, the background thread of galactic politics and Angus’s transformation into the cyborg ‘Joshua’ doesn’t really go anywhere, teeing up certain important details for the rest of the saga but not exactly contributing to the immediate adventure quite yet. And second, too little attention is given to Morn’s “son,” the child grown from a fetus to a teenager in minutes and imprinted with an exact copy of her memories. (Thank the local aliens, whom I haven’t had room for in this review but who are creepy and incomprehensible in the best way.) This could be a valuable transgender storyline — Davies clearly experiences some dysphoria at not having Morn’s expected form upon waking — but the text and characters all use he/him pronouns for the kid, without exception or challenge. While I’m trying not to impose my 2021 understanding of gender on fiction from three decades ago or insist on a tidy exploration of an inherently messy subject, something feels off about all this. I think my issue is not that this treatment of the teen is automatically transphobic, but rather that Donaldson keeps such a fascinating development on the periphery of the tale, depriving us of the information necessary to grapple with it effectively at all.

It’s been so long since my last reread that I can’t remember how these aspects continue to play out, but they’re substantial enough to impact my enjoyment and merit a ‘very good’ four stars instead of an ‘excellent’ five for the current book. Overall, though, this is a strong effort that’s far darker than the usual products of its genre, and a big step forward from the original launch.

[Content warning for addiction, domestic abuse, torture, self-harm, suicide, and racism.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Unknown by K. A. Applegate

Book #235 of 2021:

The Unknown by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #14)

It’s hard to pick the single goofiest element of this story. Is it the Yeerks infesting wild horses — the first earth animal hosts we’ve seen — to sneak into the setting’s equivalent of Area 51 and discover what the government is hiding there? Is it the ultimate punchline of the secret artifact being an alien toilet, one of several pieces of potty humor throughout the text? Is it the team getting caught on-base by the military, giving their names as 90s pop culture figures like Fox Mulder, and escaping as cockroaches clutched in Tobias’s talons? Is it our protagonist morphing into a horse herself and racing to qualify for the Kentucky Derby? Or maybe the final climactic showdown at the local amusement park, in which oblivious human onlookers think the fierce combat they’re witnessing is part of the House of Horrors ride?

Don’t get me wrong — this book is deliriously fun to read, particularly with the additional nostalgia factor of coming back to it decades later. It’s just missing the weight and personal stakes that I most appreciate in the Animorphs series. Everything feels rather inconsequential and cartoonish, which can be a nice breather amid the darkness of some other volumes but is never going to capture my attention as fully. Cassie doesn’t even raise any deep moral questions for her friends to ponder, for once. It’s overall a pretty silly time, give or take the customary scenes of body horror and the underlying premise of the larger franchise that remains.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Wayward Witch by Zoraida Córdova

Book #234 of 2021:

Wayward Witch by Zoraida Córdova (Brooklyn Brujas #3)

Although I appreciate that this third heroine in author Zoraida Córdova’s Brooklyn Brujas trilogy is less foolhardy than her older sisters — as shown by how she’s the only one whose adventure doesn’t begin with her own selfish spell gone wrong — the downside is that I don’t sense as much specificity from her as a character at all. She and her quest through a fairy wonderland instead feel like pretty generic examples of YA fantasy, carried out competently enough but with few of the fun #ownvoices cultural flourishes that first drew me into this setting. I’m also not especially satisfied with this volume as the conclusion to its series, given the elements that remain unresolved at the end and how few key figures from the earlier books make any appearance whatsoever. There is still a baseline quality to the plot that I wouldn’t rate lower than three-out-of-five stars, and the introduction here of a new nonbinary companion is well worth celebrating, but it is firmly a story that I like and don’t love.

This volume: ★★★☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Volumes ranked: 1 > 2 > 3

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Book Review: Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie

Book #233 of 2021:

Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot #20)

Should a mystery story be solvable by its audience? That’s a philosophical question, and I suspect perhaps a matter of personal taste. Do we prefer tales where we are expected to simply observe as a detective protagonist investigates and unravels the puzzle, or those where we’re able and encouraged by the narrative to figure things out alongside them?

I fall firmly into the latter camp myself, and that’s what makes a title like this one (also published as Murder for Christmas and A Holiday for Murder) less satisfying for me. The ultimate solution is not too implausible, and in fact I applaud author Agatha Christie for the somewhat postmodern twist of a reasonable culprit who’s nevertheless outside the apparent group of automatic suspects. But the deductive reasoning that leads Poirot to that conclusion is heavily based on family resemblance between certain people, which we obviously don’t have access to as readers. This is not the writer’s most engaging cast of characters either, nor a particularly distinctive use of the festive yuletide setting. Overall it just feels like a wasted opportunity throughout.

[Content warning for racism including slurs.]

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Void Moon by Michael Connelly

Book #232 of 2021:

Void Moon by Michael Connelly

This title is a neat divergence from author Michael Connelly’s usual work. Although set in the same continuity and Los Angeles / Las Vegas locale as his Harry Bosch stories, it follows two new characters, with no appearance from the detective or his regular supporting cast. Both are also operators on the criminal side of the law, giving a bit of an Elmore Leonard vibe to the affair: a paroled thief carrying out one last casino robbery to fund the abduction of her birth daughter before the girl’s adopted family moves away, and the crooked P.I. moonlighting as a Mafia hitman who’s tasked with tracking down the loot that she steals. Given these faults it’s hard to really invest in either the protagonist or her opponent, but I appreciate how competent each one is at their respective profession, and how the writer spends long passages explaining in detail the procedural steps that they take to meet their objectives. This slow and methodical pace always has the potential to turn boring, but it reminds me of those extended montages on shows like Better Call Saul where audiences can just sit back and watch an expert practicing their craft.

Ultimately the narrative doesn’t carry a lot of surprises to elevate its share of familiar hardboiled tropes, and I’ll be interested to see how relevant or not Cassie Black turns out to be when she crosses over into the main Bosch series later on. But even as a standalone piece, this novel is a fun heist thriller that fans of the genre and the franchise should enjoy.

[Content warning for gun violence, sexual assault, and child endangerment.]

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: Kim’s Convenience, season 5

TV #65 of 2021:

Kim’s Convenience, season 5

Given the Korean-Canadian representation on-screen, I’ve always felt like this sitcom had the potential to turn into something special, but even in this final season, the writing just never delivers. I count a grand total of three plot elements that span multiple episodes / would identify a random installment as coming from this particular year: Janet’s new job at the rec center, Jung’s time away at business school (while the actor filmed his new Marvel movie), and Yong-mi’s medical diagnosis. Of these, the last one alone offers any meaningful character hook, and it’s simply not enough to lift the program beyond the funny-but-forgettable gear it’s occupied for most of its lifespan.

So this is an underwhelming farewell to an underachieving show, made worse by the recent revelations from Simu Liu and Jean Yoon that the writers room had only one Asian voice and actively rejected attempted contributions from the cast for more focused personal arcs and authentic cultural storylines. (To say nothing of the fact that it’s the white role of Shannon who’s now been awarded her own spinoff series.) I don’t want to get too harsh, because it was an effective comedy that could reliably make me laugh, and its visible diversity shouldn’t be discounted so readily. Yet in considering everything that’s aired in either this stretch or the past, it’s ultimately hard to conclude that the creative team had any larger ambitions with this project whatsoever.

This season: ★★★☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Seasons ranked: 2 > 3 > 4 > 5 > 1

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Book Review: Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford

Book #231 of 2021:

Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford

An interesting look at the historical record surrounding the Alamo battle site in the Texan war for independence from Mexico. The first half of the book contextualizes what’s known and unknown about the skirmish, a subject which is uncontroversial among expert historians but radically different from the story that’s been passed down through popular culture as a brave stand for freedom against an oppressive regime, with the two sides read along homogeneous racial lines. (In reality, the rebels included both Anglo and Tejano participants, and they were largely fighting for their right to continue owning slaves in the face of the Mexican government’s efforts to stamp out the practice. There’s also little evidence of the Davy Crockett heroics commonly associated with the conflict.) In the remainder of the text, the authors trace how the legend developed, and how it continues to be passionately defended as an apocryphal piece of white cultural heritage today.

This is a pop-history title that mostly reports and summarizes rather than bringing any new analysis to bear, and its claims have been making headlines solely due to the modern conservative effort to crush any work under the imagined umbrella of ‘critical race theory’ that dares to teach unflattering facts about our nation’s past. It’s still worth the read, but is far less bold or original — let alone misleading or dangerous — than its opponents would have you believe.

[Content warning for racism and rape.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck

Book #230 of 2021:

Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck

I’ve heard there’s reason to doubt that the events related in this 1962 travelogue actually happened as written, but if you take everything at face value, it’s a lovely tale of author John Steinbeck’s leisurely drive around the country with only his dog for company. The resulting observations feel effortlessly charming and surprisingly timeless, from the writer’s spontaneous interactions with people he meets on the road — again, allegedly — to his worry that local accents and customs might be disappearing in favor of a nationwide uniformity. The novelist was in poor health and aware he was likely nearing the end of his life during this trip, but his tone is largely wistful and warm as he reflects on what constitutes a fulfilling existence and seeks in vain to distill his experiences into a succinct summary of America’s national character(s).

This book is a time capsule of a particular moment in history, especially for Steinbeck’s well-meaning but clumsy efforts to address race in the final section (with a shrug that he’s never understood bigotry himself and a fascinated puzzlement at the angry white crowds protesting six-year-old Ruby Bridges integrating the public schools of New Orleans). Simultaneously, however, much of the text reads as though it could have come from someone hitching a small cabin to their truck and going on a similar journey today. If an acquaintance returned from vacation and started quoting certain passages at you, you might not even notice anything amiss. That’s just the sort of nonfiction this is, that it intuitively feels true — whether it’s ultimately been reported accurately or not.

[Content warning for antisemitism and racial slurs.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Andalite Chronicles by K. A. Applegate

Book #229 of 2021:

The Andalite Chronicles by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs Chronicles #1)

I’m still too early in my Animorphs reread to definitively call this prequel my single favorite entry, but it is certainly a strong contender for that eventual claim. In its first half in particular, it’s a sweeping space opera that takes us far from the earth and thrillingly into the mind of Elfangor, the dying alien who originally gave the team the ability to morph in the series debut. With the young cadet as our guide, we explore new planets and distinctive extraterrestrial cultures, caught up in a propulsive and cinematic rush to keep a piece of ancient Ellimist technology from falling into Yeerk hands. In addition to the protagonist’s own coming-of-age as a capable warrior who can stand up for what’s right even against a superior officer, we wind up witnessing the rise of Visser Three, the only known enemy to gain an Andalite host body, and we learn of a surprising hidden connection among the hero and his later teenage recruits.

Author K. A. Applegate is so confident with the worldbuilding at this point, in both the details that have already been fleshed out and all of the new additions that this volume introduces. The different species and their perspectives feel lived-in and real, creating an immersive atmosphere well-suited to this action-packed tale of honor and cowardice (and how in wartime it can be hard to tell the difference). Aghast attention is given to certain abuses such as mass slaughter of noncombatants either considered or carried out by the Andalite military leadership. Likewise, while the audience is aware of the tragic fates that await several of the current characters, it’s nevertheless surprisingly poignant to watch as they play out. Plus we get some just incredibly striking visuals, like Elfangor driving a modified yellow Mustang across the dusty Taxxon homeworld.

It’s not an altogether perfect read, although it’s near enough that I’m happy awarding it a full five-out-of-five stars. This novel was initially released in three serialized parts, and I think the last installment is a slight step down, consisting largely of a visit to a nightmarish invented landscape that lacks the immediacy of personal stakes present elsewhere in the text. (It feels kind of like the filler portion of an old Doctor Who serial, simply there to take up time by providing weird encounters that don’t add much to the greater plot.) The transitions between each section could have been made smoother for the published composite version too, in my opinion. And there are a few unfortunate continuity issues raised by this book, like the fact that the visser doesn’t seem to know the prince when they meet in The Invasion despite apparently having an extended history with him, or Chapman’s antagonism and willingness to work with the Yeerks contradicting his previous characterization as an involuntary Controller. (To an extent, I suppose those problems can be resolved by pointing to the all-powerful god-being on the scene, but that’s hardly a satisfying explanation.)

As long as I’m offering minor critiques, I also wish more room had been provided for the experience of Loren, the human girl who rapidly ages from thirteen to eighteen as she approaches the Time Matrix at the end. That would be a wildly traumatizing event for anyone to actually undergo, and the narrative’s avoidance of engaging with it at length is the one thing that stands out as a stark reminder that this series was generally aimed at middle-schoolers.

Overall, however, I really do love this one. I don’t have a great recommendation for where in the franchise it should be picked up, other than probably after Ax explains Seerow’s Kindness and similar concepts from his civilization in The Alien and before Tobias discovers his family heritage in The Pretender. But no trip through the wider saga would be complete without flashing back to revisit the origins laid out so compellingly here.

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

★★★★★

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