The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip José Farmer

Book #286 of 2021:

To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip José Farmer (Riverworld #1)

This Hugo-winning tale from 1971 pitches an intriguing scenario: all humanoids who have ever lived on the earth — including neanderthals from the distant past and an alien who was visiting the planet in 2008 — are resurrected in the far future, in copies of their healthy 25-year-old bodies (or their age at death, if younger). They find themselves naked and hairless beside an impossibly long river boxed in by mountains, and eventually discover that if they are killed, they will again wake up at some random point along the millions of miles of shore.

There are three main avenues for this premise to develop, which achieve varying levels of effectiveness in my opinion. The initial big driving question is the matter of why all this has happened, but it isn’t answered satisfactorily in this first novel, or in the rest of the series to my recollection. This may be the precursor to later genre works like Battlestar Galactica and Lost, pitched on the basis of mysteries that the writers don’t have planned and frustratingly never figure out how to adequately resolve. So many bizarre details are thrown at us here — All the men are circumcised even if they weren’t in life! The daily teleported rations always include lipstick and cigars! — that a proper explanation becomes fairly important for understanding the full scope of the story. Yet unless I’m misremembering the sequels, no such accounting ever really arrives. It certainly doesn’t in this debut.

The other two narrative threads fare a little better. One concerns the worldbuilding of the new civilization that gradually develops in this place, as cultures clash from throughout history and everyone struggles to find purpose in the strange corporeal afterlife. And the second is the personal level of individual character interactions, for now primarily concerning protagonist Richard Francis Burton and his quest to reach the headwaters where the all-powerful beings who devised this arrangement reputedly dwell. That nineteenth-century adventurer is among several real historical figures that author Philip José Farmer features in the plot, for no reason I can detect beyond his own amusement and perhaps a ‘Great man’ theory of social change. Thus our hero encounters people like Alice Liddell and Hermann Göring, not to mention a self-insert writer with the same initials as Farmer.

Overall it’s a mixed bag, and the resolution to this particular title isn’t terribly exciting. But the ideas are worth exploring, and on revisiting the text today, I can understand why parts of it have stayed lodged in my imagination for decades now. I hope I’m remembering correctly that the following volume with Mark Twain is stronger, though.

[Content warning for torture, slavery, suicide, sexism, racism including slurs, antisemitism, pedophilia, and rape.]

★★★☆☆

–Subscribe at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke to support these reviews and weigh in on what I read next!–

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Sunreach by Brandon Sanderson and Janci Patterson

Book #285 of 2021:

Sunreach by Brandon Sanderson and Janci Patterson (Skyward Flight #1)

I wasn’t sure what to expect of this first spinoff novella from author Brandon Sanderson’s main Skyward series, especially after not caring for his previous attempt at YA co-writing, Lux: A Texas Reckoners Novel. Luckily, I’ve enjoyed this one a lot more, although I couldn’t say whether that’s because of the different partner involved, the different franchise, or a different division of labor behind the scenes. But whatever the reason, this is a pretty fun adventure that feels recognizably Sandersonian, despite covering an interstitial period before the forthcoming third novel that’s presumably not going to confuse anyone who skips over it.

In this story we follow Freyja — callsign FM — one of the young pilots who flies with the regular protagonist Spensa, as she deals with the immediate aftermath of book two (and an unexpected romance with another returning ally). It’s neat to see this side character fleshed out a bit further, as well as a few smaller worldbuilding details that haven’t previously been explored and a cameo appearance from the nonbinary alien Cuna. I like the heroine’s internal conflict over the treatment of certain creatures that her people are exploiting, and the ultimate resolution that they respond better to kindness is expected but sweet. It may not move the larger plot too much, but the spaceship dogfights are as thrilling as ever, and it’s great to see the setting through someone else’s eyes. I look forward to the next such release, and will have to check out Janci Patterson’s other work at some point too.

[Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with Sanderson.]

★★★★☆

–Subscribe at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke to support these reviews and weigh in on what I read next!–

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Godbody by Theodore Sturgeon

Book #284 of 2021:

Godbody by Theodore Sturgeon

I’ll be charitable and say that this strikes me as a novel that really requires readers to get on its particular wavelength, which I was unable to do. It’s graphically sexual, albeit with the occasional giggle-inducing word like “dong,” and deeply rooted in a religious tradition that’s not my own. The basic plot here is that a messianic Christ figure — likely but not definitely Jesus himself, speaking contemporary English and going by the name Godbody — has arrived in a small New England town, where he awakens anyone he touches to the revelation that nudity and sex are higher ways of worshiping the divine. Every chapter follows a different character as they experience his gospel, death, and resurrection, and it all builds to a literal sermon about how modern Christianity has drifted from the church of the apostles’ time.

Perhaps I’m too removed from author Theodore Sturgeon’s faith practice, or maybe I’ve just read too much Stephen King, but I feel like this text has the unwitting structure of a horror story, as protagonists get picked off one by one to join the psychic cult. And that could be the interesting basis of a tale, but it’s clear that the writer expects us to share in the rapture of his creations, glorying to the message and mourning when the messenger is (temporarily) killed. He also wants us to accept a serial rapist’s immediate repentance and redemption, which might be easier to swallow if the true villain of the piece, the bitter woman who writes the local gossip column, were allowed some of that same dignity and chance for growth.

Anyway, this is a book that has largely glanced off me, and I can imagine other people enjoying it better, especially as a posthumous work channeling themes that apparently interested Sturgeon throughout his career. But I’m not altogether surprised it’s faded to obscurity in the decades since.

[Content warning for gun violence.]

★★☆☆☆

–Subscribe at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke to support these reviews and weigh in on what I read next!–

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: The Threat by K. A. Applegate

Book #283 of 2021:

The Threat by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #21)

So it turns out, most of what I’d remembered from this story arc about the new kid David joining the Animorphs actually takes place in the next / final book of that unofficial trilogy. Luckily, this middle volume is a lot stronger than the first, with clearer pacing to its twin rising threats: the challenge of infiltrating the nearby political summit to stop the Yeerks from infesting world leaders (and maybe even reveal the truth of the alien invasion to them) and the growing signs of instability in the latest team member. We’d seen red flags in David’s behavior already, but they become steadily more flagrant here until finally reaching a crisis point in the form of a violent break from the rest of the group.

The chilling thing about this character is his unpredictability, coupled with an apparent lack of conventional morality. When he wonders aloud if his lion morph could best Jake’s tiger in a fight, there’s a real frisson of tension from the sense that that’s not idle speculation or banter. When he seems receptive to Visser Three’s offer to betray his allies, only to switch sides again when the tide of battle shifts, it’s nearly impossible to believe his claims that it was all a ruse. That slim margin of plausible deniability is key, however — it maintains an edge of uncertainty throughout, and stops the others from leaping to respond to the danger as they ordinarily would. David has an instinct for the tactics of an abuser, which contributes to the uneasy dynamic around him well before he reveals his nature for certain.

I like the occasional glimpse of what he might see as his provocations, too. I’m in no way defending the guy or suggesting that anyone else bears responsibility for his actions, but author K. A. Applegate is smart to include scenes where his fellow Animorphs make tough choices that unfortunately hurt him in passing. In my last review I mentioned how their initial carelessness has led to his current untenable situation, with his parents taken as Controllers and his name and face known to the enemy, and that characterization is strengthened here by their earnestness contributing to his unhappiness as well. Mostly, everyone is simply including him in the same sacrifices they’ve all had time to accept for themselves, yet it’s clear this chafes against him as somehow unjust. While a whole novel from that sort of perspective probably wouldn’t work, our understanding of it helps deepen him as an emerging antagonist for our familiar heroes.

(Applegate fudges a bit here too, making the teens particularly sanctimonious as they lecture David not to steal or use his morphing powers frivolously. They espouse previously-unmentioned rules that they’ve all broken in the past and that would be ludicrous for members of a small band of resistance fighters to adhere to, presumably just to further the brewing conflict. It’s effective but a little cheap on the writer’s part, much like a certain death we learn about in the cliffhanger that’s later walked back in the sequel.)

Ultimately I think this David sequence feels closer to a single adventure split into somewhat-artificial sections than a typical serialized narrative, and I wonder if it would have been better combined into one of the special longer side releases like Megamorphs or Visser. Placing it in the main series is an interesting experiment that pays off fine as it goes along, but it’s not quite the slam-dunk classic that it could have been.

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

★★★★☆

–Subscribe at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke to support these reviews and weigh in on what I read next!–

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie

Book #282 of 2021:

Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot #24)

This mystery novel has a few solid twists to it, mostly via the inclusion of false testimony from a guilty party or two. Author Agatha Christie, several decades into her writing career by this point, has grown rather adept at that trick, keeping readers scouring the evidence for weak links that often nevertheless pass us by. On the other hand, she’s still too reliant on bizarre psychoanalysis and gender stereotypes, here resulting in her detective Hercule Poirot concluding that a strangled murder victim must have been killed by a man (because a woman would have used poison) who knew her (because the expression on her face would have been different if seeing a stranger). That sort of hogwash hasn’t stood the test of time nearly so well, and it cuts against the overall effectiveness of the plotting.

[Content warning for racism and suicide.]

★★★☆☆

–Subscribe at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke to support these reviews and weigh in on what I read next!–

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: The Ugly Cry by Danielle Henderson

Book #281 of 2021:

The Ugly Cry by Danielle Henderson

This is a memoir about author Danielle Henderson and the grandmother who pretty much raised her, although the exact shape and point of the text isn’t especially clear until near the end. It’s not a tale for the faint of heart, as it contains plenty of domestic violence, sexual assault, child endangerment, and other forms of abuse — only some of which the writer seems to understand as such. That makes for a bit of a disquieting read, with casual anecdotes turning horrifying without any particular warning or acknowledgement. One could stretch to say that that helps put readers in the shoes of a victim, never knowing when the next blow is going to land, but I’m not sure it’s actually an intentional narrative choice. While the childhood described in these pages is certifiably awful, in my opinion the book could use a little more structure and introspection throughout.

[Content warning for depression, suicide, and racism including slurs.]

★★★☆☆

–Subscribe at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke to support these reviews and weigh in on what I read next!–

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly

Book #280 of 2021:

The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly (Mickey Haller #1)

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect of Harry Bosch‘s estranged half-brother, but I’m delighted to find that he’s a lawyer in the Jimmy McGill style, barely scraping by as he represents various miscreants — literally operating an office out of the back of a Lincoln Town Car with a former client as his discount chauffeur — and using underhanded tactics to stay right inside the thin line dividing criminal from defense attorney. This first novel capably introduces our new protagonist, then swiftly launches him into a twisty courtroom thriller, wherein he realizes that his latest defendant may be guilty of the crime he unsuccessfully represented someone else for years ago… and is blackmailing and framing the hero to make certain he follows professional ethics to keep quiet and give a full and vigorous effort in court against the current charges.

It’s a fun spin around a different side of law and order than author Michael Connelly usually depicts as the wily operator scrambles to win the trial and his own freedom, and while there’s no sign of everyone’s favorite L.A. homicide detective for now, I can’t wait for the sparks to fly when these series inevitably cross over.

[Content warning for rape, gun violence, domestic abuse, incest, and child endangerment.]

★★★★☆

–Subscribe at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke to support these reviews and weigh in on what I read next!–

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America by Carrie Gibson

Book #279 of 2021:

El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America by Carrie Gibson

A staggeringly comprehensive history of Spanish speakers in North America — primarily Mexico and the mainland United States, but also Puerto Rico, Cuba, and other islands nearby — from the first conquistadors all the way up to the middle of Donald Trump’s presidency when this was published. In reading this book, I’ve been astonished again and again by how much is new to me: excluded by the curriculum of various classes and generally unremarked upon by our broader popular culture. Traditional accounts of America’s past may cite the circumstances of states like Texas or Florida joining our nation, but rarely look in-depth at life in these regions before they entered the union. Author Carrie Gibson has done a tremendous job compiling this text to fill that gap, detailing as indigenous lands were conquered by Spain, traded among its rival colonial powers, and later formed into an independent Mexican country, which subsequently went through political shifts of its own, both until and after ceding certain territories up north.

All of that is prelude to where tellings of the American story often begin, but necessary for a fuller picture of the historical dynamics at play, which in many ways continue to inform our shared present. This title is important in that sense and as a history of Mexico alone, but the writer goes further to track major developments for Hispanic and/or Latinx peoples in the U.S. as well. This represents a conscious pushing back against the forces that try to sell an ahistoric view of Anglo Protestant uniformity here, not to mention a racial system that can sometimes seem built to sort everyone as either black or white without room for additional nuance. The intersection of such identities with Jim Crow discrimination, the differences across communities of varying national origin, the surprisingly recent cultural conversation about immigration and border control: these are complicated topics, yet always traced out with great precision and care. I have learned a lot, as I think most readers would.

[Content warning for rape, genocide, gore, and racism including slurs.]

★★★★★

–Subscribe at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke to support these reviews and weigh in on what I read next!–

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: To Jerusalem and Back by Saul Bellow

Book #278 of 2021:

To Jerusalem and Back by Saul Bellow

This is an odd and somewhat disjointed little title, as much a travelogue of Jewish-American author Saul Bellow’s 1975 visit to Israel as a literature review of what other thinkers have had to say about that nation and the global status of contemporary Judaism. Together with his own observations and reflections, the writer also includes excerpts of his conversations with prominent Jews like Yitzhak Rabin, Amos Oz, and Henry Kissinger. Forty-five years on, the resulting text is a definite time capsule of sorts, although there are sections that remain fairly insightful and relevant alongside those that have proven hopelessly naïve in the decades since. Overall I can’t say that it’s aged great or represents any required reading on the region, but I suppose it’s interesting enough as a historical document at this point.

[Content warning for self-harm, gore, ableism, and racism including slurs.]

★★★☆☆

–Subscribe at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke to support these reviews and weigh in on what I read next!–

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: The Discovery by K. A. Applegate

Book #277 of 2021:

The Discovery by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #20)

Well, I’ve been wanting the Animorphs series to grow more serialized, and it’s hard to beat the introduction of a new member, for the first time since Ax’s arrival in #4 The Message. (That would ordinarily be a bit of a spoiler, as David doesn’t officially join the team until pretty late in this novel, but given how it’s mentioned right there on the cover, I think it’s fair game to discuss in a review.)

On the other hand, there’s a difference between contributing to a larger ongoing story and neglecting to tell a wholly compelling immediate plot, and that’s where this volume falters for me. It has plenty of great elements, like the idea of a classmate finding the Andalite device that bestows morphing powers or the red flags which begin to foreshadow that he might not be as worthy of the accompanying responsibility as our original heroes. But it’s also an adventure that cuts off on a sudden cliffhanger, with no resolution to any of its episodic concerns. We don’t even get to learn what battle morph David picked out at the Gardens! Although the immature recruit arc probably benefits from playing out over the space of several titles, the mission to infiltrate and protect a nearby political summit doesn’t feel nearly as important, especially when all that happens for now is Visser Three acquiring the DNA of someone who might be the president. (Insert the same complaint I’ve made before, that the narrators taking pains to avoid mentioning the name of their hometown is absurd if they’re going to be so upfront about major events occurring there.) Overall this seems like the sort of outing normally knocked out in a few chapters, not stretched across multiple releases.

But back to New-boy, as Marco unaffectionately calls him. This is a character we’ll get to know a lot better later on, but there’s already something plainly off about the kid, which really drives home how risky it is for the Animorphs to trust him with their secrets and their shapeshifting ability. Once they do, and he starts pushing back against the best practices they’ve developed to keep themselves safe from the Yeerks, there’s a lurching feeling of guardrails dropping away from the premise. David is unpredictable as a would-be ally, and that’s a specific danger that’s altogether new for the franchise.

It’s a little frustrating too, though I assume intentional on author K. A. Applegate’s part, how the group doesn’t take the situation with the cube’s discovery particularly seriously at first. They realize it’s a threat and a potential aid for their enemies in the hands of a civilian, but they’re repeatedly careless with how they attempt to retrieve it, to rather disastrous effect for David and his family. We’ve previously seen these teenagers act a lot smarter than this, and while I understand it makes narrative sense to give the newest morpher a grievance to eventually resent them for, I don’t enjoy watching those blunders happen in real-time and I wish the issue could be raised here instead of being left to fester in the subtext until the sequel.

Ultimately, then, this is a flawed opener to a storyline that will go to some truly unpleasant places, functioning primarily as setup for the twists ahead. It’s ambitious and worthwhile for what/who it introduces, but as an individual book, it’s regrettably thin.

[Content warning for body horror and gun violence.]

★★★☆☆

–Subscribe at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke to support these reviews and weigh in on what I read next!–

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter