The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses by Kristen O’Neal

Book #219 of 2021:

Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses by Kristen O’Neal

Given the title of this YA novel, I hope it’s not too much of a spoiler to mention that there’s a literal werewolf in it, even though that fact isn’t confirmed until almost a third of the way through. But both before and after that point, it is mostly the story of a girl taking a medical leave of absence from college due to a bad case of Lyme disease, and the online support group of other chronically ill people who help her vent and cope. Author Kristen O’Neal is a member of that demographic herself, and the #ownvoices details she builds into the perspectives and daily lives of her characters are most appreciated. (Although I should note she’s been criticized in some circles for appropriation as a white person writing a Tamil protagonist.)

I also think this book is a great representation of digital friendships, and how strangers can click and grow close over social media, gradually opening up and sharing more personal aspects about themselves as a mutual trust is established. Tumblr messages and Discord chatlogs constitute a decent portion of this text, and this too feels organic and authentic, right down to the brand of weird humor so common in that sort of virtual space. In short, I’ve been charmed by this tale well in advance of any supernatural element, which is only a further delight once it finally appears.

Because yes, again, the malady afflicting one of Priya’s new friends is that she occasionally turns into a hulking furred creature with an appetite for raw flesh. (When do you break that kind of news in the getting-to-know-you stage?) I love the parallels that the writer creates between that condition and those of the rest of the group, from lingering aches to unpredictable debilitating flareups to difficulty in securing a diagnosis. On one level, this is a new take on a classic horror monster and what it might be like to care for someone who can become one. On another, it’s a fantastic metaphorical exploration of living with any chronic illness. These layers feed into and reinforce each other throughout the plot, to rather brilliant effect.

[Content warning for body horror / gore, hospitalization, gaslighting, depression, and suicidal ideation.]

★★★★☆

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TV Review: The Americans, season 6

TV #61 of 2021:

The Americans, season 6

A time-skip is an inherently risky creative maneuver, introducing discontinuities that can suspend audience investment in the ongoing narrative and generate boring mysteries of the what-do-these-characters-know-that-we-don’t variety. (Both examples are apparent in the final season of Parks and Recreation, to note just one prominent example.) There are potential rewards to it too, however, and I can’t remember ever seeing a series so capably land on that side of the balance sheet as this. Jumping forward three years for this last run of The Americans was absolutely the correct call, a surprising and exciting writing decision that immediately reinvigorates the story for its endgame and allows the writers to quietly drop a few dead-weight threads that had been dragging the past few seasons down.

Gone is Oleg’s repetitive and uninteresting investigation of supermarket corruption in Russia. Now he’s back in America, meeting up with Philip for the first time! No more Martha or Mikhail or Tatiana or Pastor Tim — or if not completely, at least not as central interests that have to be regularly checked in on and take critical space away from the leads. Paige is in college and fully committed to the cause! Henry is happily at boarding school and with a richer relationship to his father! These developments are great and propulsive, but they’re also merely the new status quo for the ten episodes ahead to upset. Even ignoring the actual Cold War history that has to be incorporated into the show, there would be no way to tell this strong a closing chapter if we had stuck to the timeframe of previous events.

The biggest change is in our two primary protagonists, of course. It turns out Philip really did quit the spy game like he said he would (a shock in and of itself given how often he’s made that empty threat on prior occasions). And Elizabeth is running herself ragged to pick up the slack, even before she gets tapped to carry out the deadly mission that Oleg’s faction then wants her husband to report on and block. These moves and countermoves and unclear allegiances return us to the early days of the program, when Jennings v. Jennings action formed a nuanced foundation to our understanding of the stakes of this title. Is their marriage a sham or a true partnership, and what would betrayal entail in either context? Are they a real family to their children behind all the lies? The answers have perhaps shifted over the course of this journey, but we’ve ultimately come full circle to consider such matters afresh.

Stan is circling too. The FBI agent has never been so bumbling as his cop-next-door summary might suggest, but he’s finally able to start putting pieces together and see how many clues point subtly towards his neighbors. That keeps his portion of the plot more relevant than it’s sometimes seemed in the past, and forces us as viewers to make tough decisions about where our loyalties lie, especially since Philip and Elizabeth seem to gain a degree of moral clarity regarding their larger purpose(s) right as the dragnet begins to tighten. Beeman is conflicted too, and reluctant to believe his instincts that his best friend is an adversary while he nevertheless follows the evidence trail and prepares to confront him. It’s a thrill through and through!

These elements combine with the late-stage Soviet era to provide a suitably apocalyptic atmosphere to the proceedings, a sense that we are watching the familiar world irreparably crumble. The spies’ individual fates are kept up in the air as a source of high tension, but we realize that one way or another, the life we’ve seen them leading in all its disguises and missions and cover stories and attempts at normalcy will soon be vanishing forever. You couldn’t ask for a better farewell to a serialized tale like this, or a finer single outing of a character-driven drama in general. It’s everything I’ve wished The Americans could have been all along.

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

This season: ★★★★★

Overall series: ★★★★☆

Seasons ranked: 6 > 2 > 1 > 3 > 4 > 5

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Book Review: When We Were Magic by Sarah Gailey

Book #218 of 2021:

When We Were Magic by Sarah Gailey

Author Sarah Gailey always has great casual representation of gender and sexuality in their characters, and this YA novel is no exception with its tale of six queer best friends, including the bisexual heroine with two dads. I dig the gutsy premise too, which starts when she accidentally kills the boy she’s hooking up with on prom night and gathers the rest of the secret coven to cast a spell that will hide the remains. Only the sorcery goes wrong, and their subsequent efforts to finish the job — and maybe somehow bring him back to life? unclear — end up extracting a succession of dreadful costs from each of the high school seniors, such as the memory of a dead sibling or the ability to dream. Meanwhile, our protagonist is trying to find a way to confess her feelings for a girl she’s pretty sure has never considered her romantically.

These are solid foundations with which to construct a narrative, but the final product doesn’t quite get there for me. On top of the group members being written a bit similarly to one another especially early on, I generally prefer magic that’s closer to the systematically rule-based end of the spectrum, and much of it here is just the opposite. I have a harder time investing in the stakes of a fantasy work when it feels as though literally anything might happen next. The focus also seems off to me, with the slain classmate treated as a simple logistics problem and not a cause for any anguish or regret. It’s not like he had been handsy or something either; he’s entirely a victim of unfortunate circumstances when Alexis explodes him crotch-first.

I could see this playing out as a dark comedy in a visual medium like Netflix’s short-lived I Am Not Okay With This series (which would likewise help distinguish the cast), but on paper it reads as too casually cruel in my opinion. Although I like the idea of the witchy femmes, I think a story about them without the murder element would have been more my speed.

[Content warning for panic attacks and gore.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Reaction by K. A. Applegate

Book #217 of 2021:

The Reaction by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #12)

Another goofy one-off premise, this time involving Rachel’s allergic reaction to the DNA of a crocodile she acquires. (At least the Sario Rip of the previous novel’s time-travel eventually comes up again; the idea of a morphing allergy and the ensuing ‘hereth illint’ crisis adds nothing to the larger continuity beyond strengthening the general sense of unknown dangers the kids continue to risk as they wage their guerilla war against the Yeerks.) I actually like this title better on the adult reread than I expected to, although I would say it’s a mid-tier entry for the series overall.

There’s a potential reading of the whole Animorphs saga as a metaphor for puberty, with adolescents coming of age into grown-up responsibilities and concerns just as their bodies are undergoing somewhat grotesque changes into unfamiliar configurations. And if you subscribe to that interpretation, the strongest evidence is probably here, where our current heroine finds herself unable to stop shifting forms during periods of heightened emotion, including direct morph-to-morph transitions that should regularly be impossible. It’s the teenage experience writ small for the protagonist, her physical presence becoming a distressing battlefield terrain of roiling hormones outside of her control. That thematic edge helps paper over the weaknesses of the plot, such as the fact that this is the second volume in a row to generate tedious drama from the focal character not informing their teammates that they’re going through something weird. But that’s teens for you too, I guess.

Also, for these juvenile resistance fighters purportedly taking precautions to keep their identities a secret, this is one of those books that really strains credulity. Unless key details have been changed, the news coverage and local visit from a celebrity heartthrob would make it pretty simple for anyone discovering this account in-universe to track down the writer and her friends. The framing device of the group telling us their secrets but not their full names has always been a little iffy, but instances like this threaten to collapse the suspension of disbelief entirely.

Anyway, the story aside from the uncontrollable morphing is that a major TV star is coming to town and planning to publicly endorse The Sharing, the front organization for the alien villains infiltrating the earth. The Animorphs don’t seem to have a particular plan to deal with this, but the chaos that erupts at the broadcast station when Rachel finally ‘burps’ out the offending croc and then must fight it in the shape of a grizzly bear manages to ultimately resolve the situation. It’s not the most satisfying adventure, but there are some great moments throughout — especially for Cassie, who tells her mother that the band Nine Inch Nails is actually Nice Is Neat, morphs into her best friend to provide cover for her ailment, and snaps off a delightful ad-lib pun to pretend that she doesn’t know the word “Andalite.”

It may be far from a franchise high-point, but I’m generally finding that even these lesser entries have enough fun wrinkles to be worth the quick read.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Jews Versus Zombies edited by Lavie Tidhar and Rebecca Levene

Book #216 of 2021:

Jews Versus Zombies edited by Lavie Tidhar and Rebecca Levene

I like this short story collection marginally better than its sister volume on extraterrestrials — my individual ratings average to 3.25 out of five stars this time, an improvement on my previous 2.5 — but it’s still a decidedly mixed bag that doesn’t live up to its full potential. Too many entries employ the walking dead as an artsy metaphor instead of a concrete issue for characters to deal with, and there’s somehow not enough Jewishness throughout.

The best titles, such as Rena Rossner’s “Rise” and Benjamin Rosenbaum’s “Tractate Metim 28A” actually attempt to build a tale about reanimated corpses within an existing belief framework of (admittedly archaic) Judaism, or at least seem to adopt a Jewish perspective on the zombie apocalypse a la Adam Roberts’s “Zayinim” or Daniel Polansky’s “Ten for Sodom.” But the weaker elements are disjointed and boring, and all too often reliant on stereotypes for a cheap laugh. Although the writers are all #ownvoices storytellers, they tend to use the premise of the anthology as a punchline rather than a prompt for truly engaging fiction from our particular cultural viewpoint.

As I said before, I’m glad these publications exist in the world, but I wish the editorial process had been stricter. In addition to an abundance of typos, it feels almost as though editors Lavie Tidhar and Rebecca Levene have published any submissions that answered their call, and that’s disappointing for such a distinctive enterprise.

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

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: While Justice Sleeps by Stacey Abrams

Book #215 of 2021:

While Justice Sleeps by Stacey Abrams

A hokey but entertaining legal-political thriller, sort of halfway between John Grisham and Dan Brown. You have to really not think too hard about some of the developments here, beginning with the initial premise of a Supreme Court justice putting himself into a medical coma and leaving a series of obscure clues about a conspiracy for his law clerk, to whom he’s awarded his power of attorney. I have a particularly difficult time accepting the pseudoscience of an experimental poison gas that can be targeted to kill off only members of a given ethnoreligious group, which hinges on a complete misunderstanding of the biological reality — or lack thereof — behind apparent racial divisions. Even for fiction of this general level of absurd implausibility, that feels like a step too far.

The main appeal of this title is of course that it’s written by Georgia politician Stacey Abrams, the first novel that she’s published under her own name (following a few romances going by the pseudonym Selena Montgomery). I love her work on voting rights and wish she had been able to win her governor’s race, and it’s a thrill to occasionally remember while reading just who came up with this story. On its own merits, though, there’s not much to elevate it above the typical fare of this genre.

[Content warning for gun violence, drug abuse, and biomedical experimentation.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Book #214 of 2021:

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz (Aristotle and Dante #1)

With its sequel due this fall, I figured I should finally check out this acclaimed 2012 Young Adult title about two Mexican-American best friends. I’d seen it described as a queer coming-of-age story, which it sort of is between the lines, but I’m frustrated by how much is left unsaid throughout by either the characters or the text itself. This is hard to discuss without spoilers, but the protagonist basically gets told by his parents that they think he’s in love with the other boy, he realizes they’re right, and then the book ends. He doesn’t come to this realization himself or act upon it until the very last scene, so although there are some private moments that carry an intense charge, the dynamic between the teens is primarily just that of a close same-sex friendship. We know that Dante likes kissing boys and girls and is interested in Aristotle, who initially claims not to enjoy it the one time he agrees for them to try, but that’s the extent of any overt romance before the ending.

Our narrator also honestly reads more as someone figuring out their gender identity than their sexuality to me. We’re shown repeatedly that he’s uncomfortable with his own changing body and with traditional male pastimes; he considers boys to be almost a different species from him and feels he can only fully relax around the girls and women in his life. A lot in that resonates with how I’ve heard my trans loved ones describe their dysphoric experiences, and it’s a narrative thread that appears pretty intentional. That’s not to say that these issues are discrete or that a one-size-fits-all paradigm precludes Ari from being a cis gay or bi guy, but it’s yet another element that’s been disappointingly kept to unexplored subtext. We learn late in the novel that the hero’s brother is in jail for killing a sex worker he didn’t realize was a “transvestite” — language probably reflecting the 1980s setting and not necessarily how that person actually would have identified — and there’s no follow-up about how his sibling might have anything in common with the victim.

The plot is aimless as a typical bildungsroman, and the writing seems overly staccato, at least in the audiobook version. Author Benjamin Alire Sáenz provides plenty of worthwhile #ownvoices flourishes, and I can see why this created a splash in literary circles of the previous decade, but it hasn’t quite lived up to its reputation for me. Too many items remain stubbornly unresolved, which I can only hope the following volume has been built to address.

[Content warning for homophobic violence and slurs, post-traumatic stress disorder, major injuries from a car crash, and underage alcohol abuse.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Atlas of the Land by Karen Wynn Fonstad

Book #213 of 2021:

The Atlas of the Land by Karen Wynn Fonstad

This reference book is a true labor of love for the first six volumes in Stephen R. Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant fantasy series. (It was published in 1985, well before the final quartet arrived. And it’s been out of print ever since; I was lucky enough to finally find a cheap secondhand copy myself.) For 200 pages, author Karen Wynn Fonstad provides gorgeously-illustrated maps and other diagrams to lay out a complete geography of the setting, going well beyond the official frontispiece in the novels. To construct this corpus, she’s drawn from the texts themselves, interviews with their writer, and her own body of geographical knowledge. And it’s an authorized production too; he mentions in a foreword “the dozens of hours of work I’ve done at her request, explaining my ideas, verifying hers, and checking the finished product.” Simply put, this is the best, most accurate representation of how its creator imagined and intended for the Land to look.

I am not a very visual reader, so I’ve found it extremely helpful to have these layouts available to supplement the written descriptions in the stories. Fonstad’s own captions aid as well, divorced from the immediacy of pressing plot concerns. Decades after initially encountering this fictional world, I only now feel I have a solid grasp of where some of its regions are in relation to others, or the exact paths that characters would have traveled across the landscape. I particularly enjoy the section at the end depicting a day-by-day chronology of those journeys, which is really great for tracking where everyone is at any given point over the diverse events and bifurcated narrative of The Illearth War.

I wouldn’t recommend this title for novices to the franchise, since it’s incredibly spoiler-heavy and arranged by location rather than time, so for example we see the town of Mithil Stonedown as described in both Covenant’s original visit and the millennia-later Sunbane era. But it would be invaluable as a companion for a reread, or for fans who already know the books so well. I wish more of my favorite genre works could be awarded this sort of treatment, and I’m thrilled to have acquired this one for my shelves.

★★★★☆

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TV Review: Justified, season 6

TV #60 of 2021:

Justified, season 6

There are elements in Justified that have kept me from ever wholly embracing the show, but it goes out on perhaps its finest run yet, an operatic movement that delivers poetic justice to most of our major players. True to its roots in the fiction of Elmore Leonard, we also get a fair bit of shaggy-dog storytelling as the outlaws succumb to bumbling infighting in a variety of offbeat ways, but the narrative eventually turns into a strong character study of its leading man and his understanding of the rural Kentucky county that forged him.

I still don’t particularly like Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens as a person, and I think the series overall has been too one-sided as it encourages us to cheer for him unconstitutionally assaulting suspects and taunting them into situations where he can be quicker with his gun. This year takes a somewhat more balanced approach to that dynamic, and while at the end of the day it remains copaganda, at least we’re finally clear that the protagonist is not a very good cop. His misdeeds start catching up to him here, and I appreciate how the finale in particular manages to keep us in suspense as to the sort of man he wants to be and whether he’s earned a fate that will let him be it.

On the weaker front there’s Boyd, the antihero’s mirror image. (Antivillain? Is that a thing?) I’ve complained about this figure before, but the writers are ultimately unable to square his many conflicting facets into anything but a slick-talking chameleon. His closing scene hangs a lampshade on his origins as a white supremacist, and although I’m glad that aspect of him hasn’t been totally forgotten, bringing it up as a punchline further undercuts the gravity which the gangster deserved at his finer moments.

In between those poles, we’ve got the usual Harlan entertainment, with Garret Dillahunt the latest former Deadwood costar lured by Timothy Olyphant onto this modern western. He’s a great late addition to the cast, as is Sam Elliott as his drawling crime boss. Ava’s turn as a confidential informant gives her much better material than her isolation from the other regulars in her prison storyline last season, and Wynn Duffy is at his most hilarious as the consummate survivor scrambling to find a way out of the escalating tension across the various camps he’s allied himself with.

This was a program that could frustrate me in its untapped potential as often as not, and I don’t know that I’ll exactly miss it now that I’m through. But the local color has been fun, and I’m sure to smile fondly when someone quotes the snappy dialogue or mentions one of the less problematic plot arcs.

[Content warning for sexual assault.]

This season: ★★★★☆

Overall series: ★★★★☆

Seasons ranked: 6 > 4 > 1 > 2 > 3 > 5

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Book Review: Lux: A Texas Reckoners Novel by Brandon Sanderson and Steven Michael Bohls

Book #212 of 2021:

Lux: A Texas Reckoners Novel by Brandon Sanderson and Steven Michael Bohls

Although not a complete misfire, this YA spinoff prequel — currently only available on audio, with print and ebook editions eventually to follow — comes up decidedly short when weighed against the original Reckoners trilogy and author Brandon Sanderson’s other work, which I assume is due to the contributions of his first-time cowriter Steven Michael Bohls. I’d be very curious to learn what the division of labor on this project was, because while the setting and the overall shape of the plot feel pretty Sandersonian, there’s a hollowness to many of the individual scenes and character moments. By the end of the story I still don’t really know who these people are or what they mean to one another beyond their one-line introductions, and most of the crew members seem generically interchangeable. Both they and the antagonists demonstrate some occasional weird sexism too, which Sanderson is typically better about. (I raised an eyebrow at the hero being a Civil War buff as well.)

The idea behind the novel is sound enough; since the Reckoners were already established to operate multiple resistance cells across the supervillain-dominated landscape, hopping from the Chicago team to a new group in Texas is a good way to continue the series. We don’t get much additional worldbuilding or larger narrative development, but the Epic powers and derivative technology allow for the usual fun action. It’s just hard to care with no clear heart like David’s anchoring the tale. I’d probably be more generous if this were a standalone title without a favorite name attached, but I wouldn’t say that returning fans need to bother.

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

★★☆☆☆

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