The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: The Alien by K. A. Applegate

Book #193 of 2021:

The Alien by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #8)

The first Animorphs book narrated by Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill is a roaring success. (Strictly speaking, his viewpoint was introduced in the previous volume, Megamorphs #1, but it feels richer here where it doesn’t have to share space with any others.) We get new terminology for items in Andalite culture from nothlit — someone stuck as an animal — to estreen — someone with fine-tuned, graceful control over the morphing process — and a major focus on Seerow’s Kindness, the Prime Directive-like principle barring Ax’s people from sharing technology with alien species.

It turns out Prince Elfangor violated that sacred custom when he gave the kids their powers back in the series debut, a reveal that immediately deepens his character and shows the benefit of revisiting those early scenes now that the canon is more established. (It might also explain why the villainous Visser Three, with access to his host body’s memories, has difficulty believing that his foes could be human.) The ultimate origins of the non-interference doctrine likewise add nuance to the noble characterization of the Andalite race, complicating our understanding of their conflict with the Yeerks. Heck, even those parasitic slugs get additional shading in this novel, thanks to a disillusioned operative who has lost the being that he loves — an indication that the enemy forces can experience that sort of emotion and might not be just uniformly evil.

Plotwise, the group is seeing the ramifications of their recent attack against the kandrona, which means grappling with the toll of their resistance efforts on the civilian population of earth. Elsewhere, the protagonist embarks on a solo mission to assassinate the visser, culminating in a request from the creature’s host to mercy-kill him while the Yeerk is out. No one is using the word “terrorist” yet, but the morality of the cause is growing steadily murkier as these difficult decisions must be faced.

Mostly, though, this is the story of Ax coming to fully side with his new friends, choosing honest loyalty to them over the far-off leaders of his homeworld who have ordered him to guard their secrets at all costs. These books don’t always make room for distinct personal arcs amid the episodic action, but the hooved hero is given a great one here in his gradual break from his government and subsequent embracing of his role as an ally to the team.

I do have to say, the humor of the young extraterrestrial getting overwhelmed by his human morph’s sense of taste is still a bit slapstick for my particular preference, so I’ve cringed anew on this reread to see him crawling across the sticky movie theater floor after those delicious brown globules that we call raisinets. But everything else in this title works wonderfully for me overall, and speaks to the ever-increasing strength of the franchise continuity.

★★★★★

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TV Review: Broadchurch, season 2

TV #54 of 2021:

Broadchurch, season 2

There are two major plots in the second run of this British crime drama, each building reasonably off the first year, which ended with a surprise arrest for the murder of little Danny Latimer. These intersect to a certain degree simply because some of the same people are involved, but they mostly proceed along separate tracks.

One new thread follows the suspect’s trial, which is tense for the amount of evidence that the defense team manages to exclude or cast in the worst possible light, gradually undermining our certainty in a forthcoming guilty verdict without going so far as to actually suggest innocence or retcon a different killer. It’s an interesting next step that’s not always shown in this sort of narrative, and continues the series focus on tracing the aftershocks of the bloody act on this small seaside community. On the other hand, the courtroom scenes tend to repeat a few dramatic notes over and over again, and there’s altogether too much time spent on the personal lives of the various lawyers.

In the opposite storyline, David Tennant’s detective character is unofficially reopening the Sandbrook case that was part of his original backstory, trying to finally nail the culprit that he’s convinced he identified but could never prove. That side of the program offers more of a conventional mystery, and is entertaining for the shadily sinister performances by Eve Myles and James D’Arcy, two actors I’ve previously only seen in somewhat sunnier roles (Torchwood’s Gwen Cooper and Agent Carter’s Edwin Jarvis, respectively).

Overall none of this quite has the impact of the initial investigation, and I feel similarly that the reveals at the end aren’t built up enough to be deduced by the viewer instead of blurted out in confession, which is a bit of disappointment. Still, it remains a solid piece of television that hasn’t yet overstayed its welcome.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Fable of the Swan by Jenna Katerin Moran

Book #192 of 2021:

Fable of the Swan by Jenna Katerin Moran

This is without a doubt one of the strangest books I’ve ever encountered. It’s weird fiction in every sense of the term, the sort of story that has to teach you how to interpret its slipstream oddities as you go along, and even at the end, I’m not sure that I understand the rules of the setting well enough to articulate them back here. (It’s also apparently connected with author Jenna Katerin Moran’s “Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine” tabletop RPG, although I don’t know how directly the properties intersect. There’s not anything/body named Chuubo in the novel.)

In broad strokes, I guess this is Young Adult fantasy. The protagonist is a nameless teenage girl, who goes to school with the descendants of frost giants and other primordial beings who have retained a fragment of their ancient family powers. Gradually, she comes to realize that her entire reality is a lie, an illusion which periodically rewrites itself to erase the elements that don’t fit, and she desperately seeks a way to break through to the True Thing underneath, which may just be absolute nothingness. This occasionally manifests in casual declarations that she’d like to destroy the world and/or kill everyone in it.

Early on in the tale, the heroine’s first boyfriend rips her heart out. That’s not a metaphor — he literally reaches inside her chest while kissing her, extracts her core essence in the form of a bloody and jagged mechanical key, and uses it to fuel his magic. All that’s left is an emotionless husk of an automaton, unrecognizable to most of her friends, who nevertheless continues to walk around, talk, and narrate for us. I think there’s a possible interpretation of the text where events like that are seen as simply a stylized way to describe heightened juvenile emotions, but as written, it’s all on the level: anyone can turn people into the raw materials for sorcery, presuming they have the stomach for the violation and the gore. Our narrator does so at several points herself as she attempts to force open the gates keeping existence from the void, even after getting her own personhood restored to her.

It’s all very off-putting, especially at the beginning, before readers have any idea what’s going on. It doesn’t help that the writer sometimes drops into an archaic and formalized poetic register, with run-on sentences, faux-biblical diction, and odd resumptive pronouns: “Like fields of grain they then were they, unending miles of them, teeming seamless seas of them, cold-hearted people they the kingdom of Death they were, the people born of it there they, arising there they or previously preceding, if such they’d ever done: arising, originating, flowing forth from some an unknown origin they who were them their kingdom in the dark.” I mean… what is one to do with that, really?

In the final analysis I’m not entirely convinced this is my kind of narrative, and I honestly might have put it down if it hadn’t been selected for me to read and review by a generous Gold-tier donor on my Patreon page. Aside from the overall weirdness noted above, there are definite weaknesses to the plot, including a fairly passive main character and worldbuilding that’s so open and undefined that no new development is ever particularly surprising. At the same time, though, I find that I can’t stop turning it over in my mind, and it is certainly unlike anything else I can remember reading. It’s extremely funny too, with punchlines that wouldn’t necessarily work in a more grounded title. The balance of frustration to entertainment probably varies among different audiences, but I’m mostly impressed by how distinctive it is, and that’s ultimately worth a high critical rating in my view.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Blood Knight by Greg Keyes

Book #191 of 2021:

The Blood Knight by Greg Keyes (The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone #3)

Another strong fantasy adventure, following the returning heroes — by this point fairly scattered across the realm — as they navigate civil war, political intrigue, and unjust imprisonment amid the prophesied apocalypse still unfolding all around them. It’s the bleakest hour yet for this world, but author Greg Keyes never totally succumbs to the ‘grimdark’ ethos marking much of the modern genre. Even with the villain’s cruelty reaching new heights, the forces opposing him gain in might and capability as well, with their moments of triumph rendered all the more exciting for the steep odds against any ultimate victory in the larger scenario.

The narrative also remains interested in exploring the mysteries of the local history and lore that have been built up before now, and there are a few reveals on that front that are particularly satisfying. I don’t normally consider Brandon Sanderson a touchstone for this series, but I think this volume resembles his work in the magical systems that have deeper rules than is clear at first glance, with wickedly cool implications that surface fully only some time later. (And there’s at least one additional surprise coming in the final novel, from what I can remember.)

A few too many characters fall in love over the course of this book, which makes it harder to invest in any of their romances, but for the most part, it’s a thrill ride through and through. The action is excellent and the overall worldbuilding continues to impress, with cultural flourishes that speak to the writer’s background in academic anthropology. He’s really created an immersive environment for this tale, and I’m eager to revisit the culmination of everything ahead.

[Content warning for torture and rape.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Making Money by Terry Pratchett

Book #190 of 2021:

Making Money by Terry Pratchett (Discworld #36)

I still don’t feel as though reformed con man Moist von Lipwig is a particularly engaging protagonist, and a lot of the plot beats to this attempt to turn around the archaic Ankh-Morpork banking industry seem too similar to his previous efforts at the post office, right down to the average citizen’s mistrust and confusion over moving away from a gold standard. Don’t get me wrong — this is a competently funny Terry Pratchett project, with plenty of individually comic scenes and pointed satire at various economic concepts. I also appreciate the continued presence of a featureless clay golem who’s a woman because she says she is and the ensuing pushback against transphobic assumptions about sex and gender. But after seeing the heights of the Discworld series in volumes like Night Watch or Monstrous Regiment, the looser storyline and lack of an emotional core here isn’t nearly so impressive.

[Content warning for fatphobia.]

★★★☆☆

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

Book #189 of 2021:

Jews Versus Aliens edited by Lavie Tidhar and Rebecca Levene

I’m sadly underwhelmed by this #ownvoices short story collection, most of which falls far shy of its potential to tell exciting science-fiction from a specifically Jewish perspective. Of the ten entries herein, I’d give a few of them passing grades — “Antaius Floating in the Heavens Among the Stars” by Andrea Phillips, “The Reluctant Jew” by Rachel Swirsky, and “Excision” by Naomi Alderman, all coincidentally about aliens drawn to convert to Judaism but that pull their punches somewhat as coherent narratives — and just one anything higher, Rosanne Rabinowitz’s excellent take on Russian resistance fighters using obscure Kabbalistic rites to summon extra-dimensional allies, “The Matter of Meroz.”

That leaves the majority of the submissions as distinctly subpar, unfortunately. There are lazy stereotypes, half-baked and unimaginative plots, and a surprising degree of garbled mysticism that only skims the surface of our faith tradition and its particular customs. If I assign each tale a rating of 1-to-5 stars and calculate an average, the book comes out to a score of 2.5 overall. I feel comfortable with rounding that up to a 3 on the basis of how much I appreciate that a title like this has been published at all, but I honestly can’t say that I’d recommend it for anybody to read straight through.

[Content warning for racism and antisemitism including pogroms.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith

Book #188 of 2021:

Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith

The hook to this mid-twentieth-century novel, the loose basis for the classic Hitchcock film, is straightforward yet fiendishly clever: two men who have never met before happen to be sharing a train car, where they start discussing the loved ones they can’t stand — one’s estranged wife and the other’s domineering father. The son suggests killing the pair by swapping murders, each performing his assigned deed when the party with the actual motive has an airtight alibi. Our hero is horrified by the idea, and even more so after his spouse indeed turns up dead and his ghoulish acquaintance resurfaces to pressure him into holding up his end of their supposed arrangement.

So far, so good. The ensuing plot, however, is a little frustrating. The notion of enlisting an out-of-town stranger as triggerman is certainly devious (especially given the state of police forensics at the time), but its success hinges on the partners forever maintaining a discrete distance. Instead, they are foolishly sloppy again and again, leaving an obvious trail of phone calls, letters, and public meetings which all speak to their continuing connection. That’s not necessarily bad writing, but it’s a level of character incompetence that makes it harder to root for either their would-be perfect crime(s) to remain unsolved or for the detective on the case to finally figure everything out.

I also have mixed feelings about how debut author Patricia Highsmith queer-codes the antagonist and describes his growing attachment towards his counterpart in quasi-romantic terms (as she’d later do for the titular Talented Mr. Ripley as well). It’s more complex than simply reading homosexuality as a marker of wicked deviance, particularly since the novelist was a lesbian herself, but it’s a troubling pattern regardless.

[Content warning for racial slurs.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Andalite’s Gift by K. A. Applegate

Book #187 of 2021:

The Andalite’s Gift by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs Megamorphs #1)

The first Animorphs release outside of the main series is this ‘Megamorphs’ title, which is supersized both in literal page count and in including all six potential narrators, rather than just one. (Even Ax the resident alien gets a voice, right before anchoring his own full novel next.) There are probably a greater number of different animal morphs than usual too, although I haven’t exactly been counting along that dimension.

Theoretically this should also be a bigger and wilder adventure than the typical team missions, but it’s here that the story falters for me. The threat of a tornado-like creature that can hunt down and capture anyone who uses the morphing technology never quite justifies the blockbuster treatment, and a subplot involving a temporarily amnesiac Rachel is as eye-rollingly trite and conveniently resolved as it sounds. Subsequent companion books would embrace the weirder possibilities of this franchise to explore extraterrestrial worlds, time travel, and beyond, but this initial experiment plays out as a somewhat unremarkable side event instead.

It’s not all bad per se, and in fact, we get some action sequences like Marco jumping off a Yeerk ship and having to quickly make his way from a gorilla into a more suitable form while plummeting towards the ground that are downright thrilling. But nothing in this volume seems to matter for the ongoing narrative — I wouldn’t be surprised if many readers inadvertently miss it between #7 and #8 — and the territory it stakes out feels grander than what author K. A. Applegate ultimately does within that space.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Mothers by Brit Bennett

Book #186 of 2021:

The Mothers by Brit Bennett

This novel strikes me as a great example of how talented writing and character work can elevate old tropes beyond their familiar patterns. When I try to summarize the plot — a 17-year-old hides her romance with a college guy and subsequent abortion from her best friend, who later goes on to marry him — it sounds a bit tired and dramatically overwrought. But in debut author Brit Bennett’s hands, the people in this love triangle feel fleshed-out and compelling, particularly in their evolving dynamics with one another and their complicated relationships to the mothers and other maternal figures in their lives. The nearly-all-black cast lends a further air of distinction and authenticity to the story, and the Greek chorus of church ladies voicing the latest community gossip between chapters is a welcome frame of meta-narrative. Although the ending of the book is a bit open for my tastes, I’ve really enjoyed most everything leading up to that point.

[Content warning for suicide, death of a parent, domestic abuse, sexual assault, incest, and racism.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life by Steve Martin

Book #185 of 2021:

Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life by Steve Martin

The most surprising thing about this 2007 memoir by comedian Steve Martin is that it’s not particularly funny. I don’t mean that the author is attempting jokes which fall flat, merely that it’s a fairly serious reflection on his early career, featuring some classic on-stage gags but no new punchlines to present that personal history in an amusing fashion. Instead we get a dry account of his evolving comic sensibility, and how leaning into anti-humor, physicality, and a projected confidence that the material is good even when the audience isn’t laughing helped catapult him to national success. That’s interesting enough as a thesis, but it’s not nearly as entertaining as I would have expected from this writer.

[Content warning for domestic abuse.]

★★★☆☆

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