The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

Book #208 of 2021:

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

The Jamaican-British heroine of this contemporary novel has an engaging character voice, and her foibles with casual sex during a “break” from her boyfriend play out like a bleaker Bridget Jones’s Diary, a tone underscored by debut author Candice Carty-Williams layering in a variety of #ownvoices experiences with racist microaggressions throughout the text. There’s a verisimilitude here, and the comedy earns some appalled laughter for the sensitive topics that it touches, but this is generally not my favorite sort of story. I find myself wanting more from the plot in terms of clear objectives and escalating drama, and I’m often as exasperated at the protagonist’s ongoing poor choices as her friends clearly are. It’s a well-crafted slice-of-life narrative that I’m sure other readers will enjoy better, but my own reaction feels too muted to rate the title any higher than three-out-of-five stars.

[Content warning for miscarriage, sexual assault, racial slurs, sexism, ableism, domestic abuse, gaslighting, panic attacks, and mention of specific real extrajudicial police killings.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Double Life of Danny Day by Mike Thayer

Book #207 of 2021:

The Double Life of Danny Day by Mike Thayer

This middle-grade novel goes far on the strength of its high-concept premise, which is that the ten-year-old protagonist lives every day twice. He treats the original go-round as a bit of a practice session, either goofing off or scribbling notes on quiz answers and various mishaps, then acts more seriously for the official version that follows, with the benefit of his mysterious foreknowledge. Teachers and classmates have no idea that any of this is happening, although he has gained a reputation as a bit of a psychic.

It’s a spin on the old time loop formula that I don’t believe I’ve seen anywhere else, which presents a fairly engaging read. I think younger audiences will especially enjoy it, both for the Fortnite-like gamer antics that make up a surprisingly large percentage of the plot and for not caring as much about a few sticking points that my own perspective brings.

My issues here are twofold. First, there are all sorts of interesting morality questions implicit in the setup that are barely discussed at all. Is it unethical to learn what’s on a test before technically taking it? How would living through a world without apparent consequences warp a person’s ideas of appropriate behavior and consent? The worst thing ‘Discard Danny’ ever appears to do is eat a lot of junk food and play relatively harmless pranks, but he effectively has no safeguards against significant abuse of his special circumstances. While I don’t need a child hero to actually do awful things, it feels a little disingenuous to not even raise the possibility of temptation in this scenario.

My second problem is a subtler matter, and has to do with the narrative structure of this text. Essentially, it all seems like act one of a story, the initial background information waiting for some big development to kick everything into the next gear that ultimately never arrives. The boy is at a new school where he makes friends and forms a plan to take down a local bully, but there’s no inciting incident that really escalates the situation. A few side threads end up getting dropped without particular resolution too, giving a further lopsided shape to the overall affair.

That concern might be alleviated to a degree if this ends up as just the start of an ongoing series, and again, I don’t know that a junior reader would even notice or mind. But as a standalone volume in my view, the title doesn’t quite hit its full potential.

[Content warning for cyberbullying and schoolyard violence.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie

Book #206 of 2021:

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot #17)

This is one of the better entries in the series, I think, close in spirit to its famous sister volume Murder on the Orient Express, which likewise finds detective Hercule Poirot stumbling upon a deadly plot in a confined space whilst on holiday abroad. The tour vehicle / setting here is a placid river steamboat in Egypt, and the drama that unfolds takes some surprising turns both before and after the bodies start dropping about halfway through the text. It’s all ingeniously plotted by author Agatha Christie, and the ultimate solution to the main thread is clever yet plausible, a balance she sometimes has difficulty striking.

The 1937 publication date shows in a few expected but frustrating ways. There’s racism toward the native population, and an anticapitalist character treated like a joke and later revealed to be a hypocrite whose actual arguments seem pretty reasonable to this reader in 2021. The number of red herrings and other coincidences may strain credulity as well, beginning with the protagonist and his associate Colonel Race each happening to be on this particular boat in the first place. But overall, the novel represents an excellent mystery adventure.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Android by K. A. Applegate

Book #205 of 2021:

The Android by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #10)

I wouldn’t go so far as to call this a series-best Animorphs volume, but it’s one of the stronger entries for sure. It’s also the rare case of an item in this franchise with an unambiguous, straightforward title: this is in fact a story about an android!

Specifically, he’s a Chee, a race of cyborgs who long ago fled to earth to escape their enemies the Howlers (and to graft the dying essence of their Pemalite creators into wolf DNA to create dogs, the sort of goofy worldbuilding detail that I absolutely adore). None of these alien species have been previously mentioned, and so to some extent, this novel functions to widen the scope of the fictional universe, forming a more complex continuity by introducing threads that can and will reappear later on. Erek himself is positioned as a new ally for the group, able to feed them information and suggest future missions, another valuable plot engine now available for the sequels to draw upon.

Once the introductions are past, the main task here is to retrieve the latest K. A. Applegate macguffin, an extraterrestrial jewel which would enable the Yeerks to take over every computer on the planet. (Again: I love it.) There’s a personal angle to the threat too, since Marco’s dad has recently begun contracting with the company working on that project. And the action is great, with the gem held behind a security system that requires elaborate heist-movie shenanigans to bypass, including a fun new bat morph whose echolocation allows for a kind of vision that won’t set off the light detectors.

What really elevates the book, however, is the Animorphs grappling with the pacifism of their metal friend and his people, both as an inherent moral position and as something they do or don’t have the right to interfere with by providing the tool to overcome that programming and join in the fight against the parasitic invaders. Cassie, playing her customary role as conscience to the team, is particularly concerned throughout this discussion, to the point where I almost wish she were narrating instead, despite my enjoyment of the current protagonist’s wisecracking. Of all the teens, she’s by far the most aware of how much blood is on their hands, and of how the trajectory of this war is only making them more dangerously ruthless as time goes on. It’s hard enough for her to sleep at night already, even without the extra weight of ending millennia of Chee nonviolence added to her soul.

As usual, this is heavy material for the middle-grade age of the intended audience — not necessarily inappropriate, just uncommon — and the traumatized robot weeping at the end is one of those images that has lingered at the back of my mind for decades now. It’s probably a bit exposition-loaded overall, but it’s an excellent expansion of the narrative canvas as we bring the first phase of the larger tale to a close.

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

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Born Queen by Greg Keyes

Book #204 of 2021:

The Born Queen by Greg Keyes (The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone #4)

This high fantasy quartet never quite regains the propulsive rush of its initial entry, and there are a few too many dramatic reversals and reveals in the lengthy climax of this last novel for each to land with the impact that it might otherwise individually deserve. Still, author Greg Keyes has found some really neat ways to twist the mythology and magical rules of the setting, and if the human heart of the characters gets a little lost in the shuffle at times, on balance I’d say it’s almost worth it for how he manages to bring forward figures from the epic past that he’s built up over the course of the series. (That would be like if Isildur had become a major player in the battle of Helm’s Deep, or Aegon the Conqueror were summoned to assist his descendant Daenerys. The only story in this genre that I’ve seen try anything near as daring is The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.)

All told I have to concede that this volume is probably the weakest of its sequence, but it delivers a satisfying conclusion to all the various plot threads amid the same pulse-pounding action, political intrigue, and rich worldbuilding that have made these books so fun overall. I’m glad they generally hold up as well as I had suspected for this reread — despite this one ultimately flagging a bit — and I remain fairly puzzled that they’re so obscure today.

[Content warning for gore and rape including threat to children.]

This volume: ★★★☆☆

Overall series: ★★★★☆

Volumes ranked: 1 > 3 > 2 > 4

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Movie Review: Star Trek Generations (1994)

Movie #4 of 2021:

Star Trek Generations (1994)

Filmed and released shortly after the final season of The Next Generation, this film reprises that show’s main cast along with William Shatner (and briefly, James Doohan’s Scotty and Walter Koenig’s Chekov) from the original Star Trek series, to officially pass the cinematic torch over from TOS to TNG. It’s reasonably successful on that front, although Captain Kirk himself features only in the first and last half-hour, and his eventual teaming up with his successor Picard doesn’t feel as monumental as it likely should. Mostly this seems like an overly-long episode of the later program, which still bites off more than it can chew and lacks adequate script space for all the core players.

The plot is pretty bizarre, too. I actually enjoy the opening sequence, as it manages to be funny, poignant, and exciting in turn while also setting up an engaging mystery for the rest of the movie to tackle. But we then jump forward 78 years to the Enterprise-D crew, at which point things begin to break down. Malcolm McDowell turns in some fine scenery-chewing as the villainous Dr. Soran, but his dastardly scheme is inscrutably abstract, planning to kill millions on his way back to the timeless Nexus where he can experience pure joy. The precise mechanics of that dimension are left unclear, especially once we learn that Jean-Luc can apparently time-travel out of it whenever he wants. The more I write about this concept the worse it sounds, so let me just stop there and reiterate that it’s a shade of technobabble nonsense that isn’t remotely satisfying on either a story or a character level.

Nevertheless, the title provides a few neat flourishes throughout, both in continuity ties to the TV version and in bold new elements that couldn’t have been done with the small-screen budget. The comedy of Data’s emotional chip is perhaps too broad, but it’s a fun contrast to his usual self and an interesting key for actor Brent Spiner to develop. There’s built-in pathos for the farewell to the earlier era, even if the actual send-off to its leading man ends up a tad underwhelming. I can’t imagine any part of this working for unfamiliar audiences, yet I don’t know that that’s a reasonable expectation for a mid-franchise release of this nature anyway. It’s ultimately a solid enough outing for what it’s aiming to do, and that gets a passing grade from me.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Survivor by Octavia E. Butler

Book #203 of 2021:

Survivor by Octavia E. Butler (Patternist #4)

Author Octavia E. Butler famously came to hate this volume in her Patternist series, letting it fall out of publication in 1981 (a sentiment still honored four decades on by whoever now holds the copyright). It’s never been officially released as an ebook or audiobook, and extant copies of its few print editions are understandably difficult to track down. I’m glad I’ve been able to procure it via interlibrary loan, as the cheapest purchase price on Amazon right now looks to be around $750.

And that’s a shame, because it’s really an excellent piece of classic sci-fi that I think I prefer to most of the writer’s output. She apparently felt it was too derivative, calling it “my Star Trek novel” and expressing regret that the aliens were so humanoid that they could easily cross-breed with humans. (It’s hard not to see the weirdness of extraterrestrial sex in her subsequent Xenogenesis trilogy as a conscious do-over of that.) Race too feels less relevant than it often does in her writing; although the protagonist is situated as an outsider, a feral child born of a black father and Asian mother and later adopted by white missionaries, and the other species exhibits a caste system based on their bioluminescent fur color, these issues aren’t as near the forefront as they typically are for Butler.

Mostly, it’s a story of settlers on a distant planet, caught up in a territorial war between two native factions who each have their own secrets and cultural misunderstandings. We get a little bit of clunky exposition linking the narrative to the plague which was starting to overrun the earth in book #3 Clay’s Ark (written following this) and the community of psychics featured in #2 Mind of My Mind (written earlier), and I suppose it’s possible that elements of Survivor will go on to feature in #5 Patternmaster (written first, and the only one I haven’t yet read). In general, however, this plot seems to stand on its own as an offshoot of the rest, with the novella A Necessary Being that was published posthumously as part of the Unexpected Stories collection functioning as a direct prequel.

Hopefully that’s clear enough, at least for the dedicated fans who are probably the main readers of this title nowadays. The tale itself is full of action and intrigue, with major vibes of anthropological genre fiction like Ursula K. Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle. As in any Octavia Butler work, there’s a focus on questions of assimilation after conquest and how people can make agentive choices to preserve their identity and sense of self even while under the coercion of a greater power. The characters sometimes take a backseat to those ideas, but overall their whole world is inviting and exciting alike. What a pity its creator didn’t ultimately agree.

[Content warning for rape and domestic abuse.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

Book #202 of 2021:

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell (Simon Snow #3)

The new Simon Snow sequel is another loose entry in a series that reads ever more like fanfiction of someone else’s work. The previous volume at least had its great American road trip providing a basic sort of structure, but this one offers even less of a coherent plot. Back in England, the protagonists are still generally aiming to find some stability after their school years and defeat of the villain in the original backstory, and that splits them into three main storylines here: the former wizard Simon and his vampire boyfriend Baz working on their relationship and investigating a magical faith healer, Penelope and Shepard researching a way out of his demonic contract, and Agatha looking into a wandering herd of goats that may or may not be an omen of doom. These threads never really connect with each other or feel particularly urgent in their own right, and while the character interactions remain fun, I’m not necessarily convinced that that’s enough to justify author Rainbow Rowell’s latest return to the setting.

★★★☆☆

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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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