The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

TV Review: Star Trek: Voyager, season 1

TV #59 of 2021:

Star Trek: Voyager, season 1

The overwhelming feeling I have about this particular sci-fi spinoff so far is one of wasted potential. I can see the Lost in Space angle that the writers are going for, isolating a starship far from the known setting of the rest of the franchise and cut off from their allies and supply stations, but in actual practice, the gravity of that crisis isn’t being conveyed by the scripts.

The issue here is two-fold. First, the overarching problem in the premise is introduced so outlandishly via one of Star Trek’s all-powerful god-beings that there’s effectively no tension regarding the eventual resolution. We’ve encountered too many of those creatures by this point in the continuity, so when we’re presented with yet another challenge to Federation science and told a (space-)wizard did it, it feels like all we have to do is wait for a similar entity to eventually reveal itself. A situation created in a single episode at the snap of a finger can be undone just as easily, and while that doesn’t mean the Voyager team can or should do nothing in the meantime, it makes it harder for viewers to truly invest in their plight. That’s particularly the case for this series launching in the middle of Deep Space Nine, a narrative rich in intrigues and developing plots for which no simple solution could ever suffice. The contrast is pretty striking, and not to this newer program’s favor.

The second flaw, at least in this debut year, is that most of the individual episodic storylines are not taking advantage of the original canvas that the Delta Quadrant represents. Instead they generally seem as though only minimal rewrites would be necessary for them to have happened on a show like The Next Generation that’s exploring closer to home. We even get an hour where the main concern is a holodeck malfunction! Why bother sending the protagonists so far away if that detail has such little effective consequence?

The cast themselves are largely fine. The holographic doctor’s arc of stretching his programming beyond the emergency it was intended for is the best element there, although it certainly leans on earlier work with Data (and to a lesser extent other outsiders like Spock and Odo). And the fact that Maquis rebels have had to integrate into the ship’s crew gives additional texture to the daily reality that these characters face, generating the occasional interesting subplot. But overall, this has all been very generic television.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon

Book #201 of 2021:

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon

This is a strange narrative that changes shape at multiple junctures, so I’m loath to give too much away for prospective readers. But it begins with its fifteen-year-old heroine, the black albino intersex bride of the local reverend, fleeing from their fundamentalist cult compound to deliver her twin babies alone in the woods. She can’t read and knows little about contemporary America, yet she’s determined to find some other life for herself and her new family. In pursuit of that goal they spend several years in complete isolation, foraging for subsistence, before making a tentative connection with the outside world.

And then the tone takes a sharp turn into gothic horror, doubling down on the ghastly visions which have previously seemed like either traumatic hallucinations or elements of magical realism, ultimately winding up as a sort of exploration of transhumanism (as well as a queer love story). I’m not totally satisfied by the ending — or by how both there and elsewhere the protagonist seems to lose track of her small children, sometimes even leaving them by themselves in the dark forest — but author Rivers Solomon as usual has provided an intriguing #ownvoices take on speculative fiction that challenges our dominant ideologies of race and gender. Although I could nitpick on the details, the overall effect of the text is remarkably distinctive.

[Content warning for racism including slurs, homophobia, transphobia, gore, and biomedical experimentation.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Only Pirate at the Party by Lindsey Stirling and Brooke S. Passey

Book #200 of 2021:

The Only Pirate at the Party by Lindsey Stirling and Brooke S. Passey

Dubstep violinist and YouTube sensation Lindsey Stirling has understandably not had the most conventional career path, and this co-written autobiography is an interesting look at the mind behind the music. Her perspective can be myopic and frustratingly twee at times, pushing the power of positive thinking and suggesting that she’s succeeded because she’s not as normal as the rest of us, but she also goes to great lengths to describe how her wholesome Mormon image of modest dress and no drugs or alcohol hasn’t kept her from struggling with depression, anxiety, and disordered eating.

Although I wouldn’t call this title a must-read even for my fellow fans, it certainly captures a distinctive voice among celebrities, along with the effervescent spirit that the author displays in all her performances. She’s still one of the more energetic acts that I’ve ever seen in person, leaping and twirling about the stage, and enough of that livewire energy comes across in the text to keep me reading her past the occasional eye-roll as she recounts her humble origins.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Secret by K. A. Applegate

Book #199 of 2021:

The Secret by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #9)

This is perhaps the classic example of a disposable Animorphs volume, one which doesn’t really move the plot forward or tell us anything new about the characters or their universe. The crisis du jour is so quintessentially 90s too: the Yeerks are illegally logging in the nearby forest! This FernGully situation is a problem since that’s where Ax grazes, and the evil slugs are trying to flush him and the rest of the ‘Andalite bandits’ out of hiding. Only for Cassie, the unintended consequence that innocent animals are being displaced and slaughtered is enough justification to fight back. This leads to one of the strangest arguments ever held amongst the team, wherein our protagonist insists that they take a stand to protect the natural world and the others repeat that they have to do so in order to save their ally. There’s no actual disagreement on what needs to be done! I don’t know why they’re fighting!

Even the detail that it’s the established bad guys creating an ecological disaster is a bit of a boring writing choice. If it were Aximili’s people tearing up the woods, or the Yeerks doing something nature-friendly but with deadly consequences for the group, there could be legitimate conflict and difficult decisions to weigh respective priorities. Elsewhere in the series, we get that exact sort of murky moral conundrum. But here everything is simplistic as a Saturday morning cartoon, with no need whatsoever to agonize over the right course of action.

The enemies’ whole plan is so bizarre, too. Spoiler alert, but their big aim is to get the proper permit for their lumber business — because body-snatching aliens for some reason care about honoring local zoning regulations now — and the best way to do that is apparently to capture and control the member of the forestry board who would cast the swing vote on the application. And instead of just taking him as a host like usual, they decide to bring him out to the job site first, where our heroes are able to stage a rescue. At which point the dastardly villains simply accept defeat and make no further efforts to either turn him or resume the operation regardless.

It’s all very cartoonish, but luckily, there are a few bright spots that keep this from being a complete farce. The blind hivemind of the termite morph is another terrifying ordeal, evocative yet distinctive of a similar experience with ants a few books ago. It’s vividly traumatizing for Cassie, who has to be physically restrained upon becoming human again. And she does struggle with her pacifism, both in the face of the bloody resistance war she’s helping to wage against earth’s invaders and in the fact that so many species must kill to survive. Can she judge Tobias for eating a baby skunk in his hawk form? Is it appropriate for her to potentially starve such predators by guarding the remaining littermates until their mother can return? She’s the sole Animorph who seems to worry about these issues, and those moments help rehabilitate the novel to a certain extent. But it’s still a weaker effort overall.

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

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Shit, Actually: The Definitive, 100% Objective Guide to Modern Cinema by Lindy West

Book #198 of 2021:

Shit, Actually: The Definitive, 100% Objective Guide to Modern Cinema by Lindy West

This essay collection is a series of hilarious movie reviews, spanning titles mainly from the 90s or early 2000s, with Top Gun (1986) and Twilight (2008) at the extreme bounds. The actual criticism is pretty surface-level with a structure of recap-plus-commentary, but author Lindy West clearly has a blast walking us through all the plot holes and weird writing decisions and reasons why she ultimately either loves a film like The Fugitive (1993) or hates one like the titular Love Actually (2003). I will note that I’ve seen most but not all of the pieces in question, and based on my lower enjoyment of the entries covering the exceptions, I might recommend skipping it altogether for readers who aren’t too familiar with cinema of the era.

Like many modern critics, West also grapples with how to feel about works that have aged poorly — whether from insensitive jokes, limited roles for women, or later revelations of abusive and predatory filmmakers — and penning all this in the midst of the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, there’s a definite darkness that creeps into her discussion at times. I don’t know that this book will hold up so well itself, reading somewhat like an online listicle and containing certain critiques that wouldn’t have concerned contemporary audiences, but I’ve laughed throughout at the clever wit and observations that I’ve never noticed before.

A few spots miss the mark for me, however. Not everything that’s left unexplained in a script is necessarily a flaw, or merits such ridicule in my opinion. Despite the subtitle on the cover, quality is of course largely subjective, and a few of the writer’s issues seem more to do with her own preferences and background assumptions than anything present on-screen. And not to be that guy, but she spends a fair bit of time complaining that Back to the Future Part II (1989) drops a particular point when it is absolutely addressed in the following sequel.

Overall this is an elder millennial’s amused perspective on the pop culture of yesteryear, and a fun way to revisit an assortment of gems and flops from our shared youth. There’s not quite enough substance here for me to give it a stronger endorsement than that, but it’s a quick read with some fine humor for those of us with fond memories of the source material.

[I read and reviewed this title at a Patreon donor’s request. Want to nominate your own books for me to read and review (or otherwise support my writing)? Sign up for a small monthly donation today at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke !]

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: The Americans, season 5

TV #58 of 2021:

The Americans, season 5

I feel torn about this penultimate stretch of The Americans, which in general is serving its deep-cover protagonists quite well. Their share of the story is richer than it was in the previous year, and sees the operatives drawing closer together and experiencing ever more remorse and frustration with the actions required by their far-off superiors. For a long time this series seemed content to not overtly pick sides in its Cold War setting, encouraging us to care about Philip and Elizabeth without rooting either for or against the larger espionage mission. Lately, however, there’s been a definite sense of bleak corruption throughout the Soviet Union unmatched by anything in the U.S., which pushes the pair’s cutthroat assignments from distasteful to downright unjust. And they realize it too, which adds great shading to the personal conflicts, especially now that their daughter Paige is taking some initial, faltering steps into the family business.

On the other hand: a lot of that extra definition to the motherland is being delivered via scenes with irrelevant figures like Oleg Burov that hit a few tedious notes over and over again. I groan whenever we cut away to that blue-tinted nation of subtitles, because the happenings there are just not interesting to me in the slightest. If you think of this as a show about the Jennings couple, as I would certainly argue it is, then Stan Beeman is only a supporting character in that drama. And Oleg was only a supporting character in Stan’s life, having no immediate contact with the Directorate S agents even when he was stationed in the same country as them. Now that tenuous link is severed completely, and the man is limited to interactions with people yet further afield of the core spy action. I suspect a potential version of events exists that could have gotten me invested in his troubles back home regardless, but it’s far from the boring investigations into grocery store kickbacks that The Americans has actually given us.

FBI headquarters has been pretty dull since Martha left last season too, and with a handful of additional subplots popping up sporadically as well, that probably leaves us with around half of the narrative to our nominal heroes. I still really enjoy that part of the program, but as it shrinks in relation to the rest, I find myself checking out to a degree overall. All the right ingredients are here to deliver a truly excellent concluding arc, but we’re wasting a lot of script space on weaker material in the build-up to that.

[Content warning for gun violence, graphic self-harm, and mention of rape.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Mister Impossible by Maggie Stiefvater

Book #197 of 2021:

Mister Impossible by Maggie Stiefvater (The Dreamer Trilogy #2)

Author Maggie Stiefvater has always prioritized ambiance and personal relationships over concrete plot, so I wouldn’t say that the slowness of this latest Raven Cycle spinoff is a total surprise. And yet — perhaps befitting a series about characters bringing their dreams to life — there’s a certain haziness throughout the affair, with no one’s motivations ever feeling particularly well-grounded or urgent. I’m still interested in where the franchise is heading, but I need for the people within it to be driven by more than abstract concepts like ‘saving the world.’ I’m also disappointed to find so little of Adam Parrish in this novel, as his perspective tends to be one of my favorites and his relationship with the angsty Ronan Lynch remains fairly distinctive for the YA fantasy genre. So although the writing in this sequel is the usual quality and a few magical scenes are quite striking, I’m not entirely satisfied with the effort as a whole.

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: Loki, season 1

TV #57 of 2021:

Loki, season 1

This latest Marvel series has been a blast to watch and to speculate about, even if in my opinion the ultimate answers aren’t as clever or as daring as certain fan theories out there. (I wonder how it will be received differently for audiences who come at it later, able to binge the entire season at once.) We’ve already had time travel and alternate universes in the MCU, of course, but those elements feature pretty significantly here, lending a definite Doctor Who vibe to this story of what happens to the version of its title figure who escaped the Avengers during their movie Endgame, just after losing the Battle of New York. There’s a lot of goofy fun in the idea of the all-powerful bureaucracy with the inexplicable 70s aesthetic who scoops him up and makes him assist with keeping reality on track, and the episodic efforts to ‘prune’ troublesome branches like himself scaffold a nice larger mystery and character arc for the dubiously-reformed supervillain.

The whole run is an excellent showcase for actor Tom Hiddleston — although he doesn’t actually play as many of the variant Lokis as I would have expected — situating him in turn as a buddy-comedy partner to Owen Wilson and a legitimate romantic (anti)hero. The role is deeper than it’s been since the first Thor film, proving again how these Disney+ titles can rehabilitate aspects of the cinematic universe that perhaps haven’t reached their full potential on the big screen. The trickster god is even confirmed as queer via a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it line of dialogue, and while it feels like so much more could have been done with the protagonist’s relation to gender given the original Norse myths that inspired him, this modicum of representation nevertheless constitutes real progress from the parent company.

Overall, I’d say that this storyline isn’t nearly as captivating or emotionally complex as WandaVision, but it’s a big step up from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and it seems likely that its multiverse concepts will inform some of the sequels that are on the horizon. At only six episodes the action and the plot never have room to falter, so I’d definitely check it out if you’re a fan of the broader franchise.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Book #196 of 2021:

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Utterly charmed by this YA romance between the son of America’s first female president and an English prince, although I’ll admit to being occasionally distracted trying to figure out how/when its timeline diverged from our own reality — as near as I can tell, it’s because Alex’s mom won the Democratic nomination instead of Hillary Clinton in 2016. (Also there’s no COVID outbreak happening around her reelection campaign, since the book was published in 2019.)

So we are already dealing with a calmer and kinder contemporary U.S. absent Trump’s violent rhetoric and abject corruption in office, atop which author Casey McQuiston has crafted a tender story of two lads in their early twenties learning to recognize and act upon their feelings for one another despite the social barriers and need for discretion. The protagonist’s initial arc, realizing that he isn’t straight like he has always assumed, feels particularly well-done, and is a great example of authentic bisexual representation from an #ownvoices writer.

I really love this novel for the most part, and I even briefly toyed with awarding it a full five-out-of-five stars. The characters seem so vivid and earnest, and I fell into their passion completely. In the final analysis, however, there’s just not enough conflict here, not enough hardship and grit for the hopepunk elements to shine out against. The boys take pains to keep their relationship a secret, but everyone in the hero’s personal life is immediately unquestioningly supportive and sex-positive. The politics are like Aaron Sorkin’s worst, with Democrats standing for a vague monolithic tolerance and Republicans the party of close-minded bigots, whose nominee (minor spoiler alert) of course turns out to be an abusive closeted homophobe. It’s still a beautiful piece of escapism that I would recommend wholeheartedly to younger readers, yet I think the narrative could have benefited from a few more genuine challenges facing the privileged lovers as their time together unfolds.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid by Lawrence Wright

Book #195 of 2021:

The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid by Lawrence Wright

I’m sure there will be many works written in the time ahead that chronicle the ins and outs of the 2020 coronavirus outbreak and analyze the responses taken by various government leaders. This one, specifically focusing on the U.S. experience, is a strong start, although we’ll have to wait and see if it holds up as a classic of its kind. But I’m impressed with how thoroughly author Lawrence Wright synthesizes and presents his material, including behind-the-scenes personality clashes and wrenching details of the early days that I had already forgotten a mere year-and-a-half later. While there’s little here that would be truly new for our contemporary audience who lived through and followed the pandemic as it unfolded, it’s helpful to read an account like this that takes stock from a slight distance to craft a cohesive narrative.

I also appreciate the writer’s clarity on which policy actions did or did not successfully address the spread of the virus and whose judgment proved smart or prone to error on that front. It’s not a partisan hit job: a few Democrats get faulted, and certain decisions made by the Trump administration are praised. But Wright doesn’t pull his punches either in laying the majority of the blame for catastrophic mismanagement squarely on the former president. His supporters won’t like it, and some readers may feel that a journalist should avoid taking sides in this fashion, but the facts are the facts, and honest reporting can’t afford to feign neutrality in the wake of so much death.

I haven’t yet read this author’s medical thriller novel The End of October, which was greeted with astonishment in April 2020 for accurately predicting in his fictional pathogen the actual progression of the COVID-19 crisis. The present title addresses that in one of its rare memoir sections, explaining how all he did was listen to experts, research the existing models, and form a story out of what they were warning was a dire eventuality. Those voices weren’t listened to enough by the people in power, but the background knowledge they provided has now helped Wright construct this second and very different book as well.

★★★★☆

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