Book Review: The Predator by K. A. Applegate

Book #169 of 2021:

The Predator by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #5)

The fifth Animorphs novel gets a lot of its impact and forward momentum from a twist reveal near the end, of the sort I’m reluctant to spoil in a review despite the passage of decades. Suffice to say, we learn further details about the Yeerks’ internal power structure by meeting the high-ranking Visser One, whose presence opens up key storytelling avenues for the future. That encounter also cements Marco’s commitment to the fight, after he’s spent much of this volume planning to quit altogether.

And it’s hard to fault him for entertaining that thought, given how the book contains one of the more grisly and horrific early morphing experiences. Yes, it’s the infamous ant scene, wherein the young teens who are already struggling to resist the empty hivemind of their insect bodies as they travel through a tiny wall tunnel suddenly confront members of an enemy colony who attack in a swarm and begin ripping them limb from limb. (One of those moments when I have to again exclaim: they marketed these books to us as children!) It’s shocking in its brutality and humbling in its reminder of the small-scale warfare happening in the natural world around us, and it clearly weighs on the whole team afterwards. The trauma is getting to them, so it’s no surprise that at least one of the characters is starting to question if the mission to fend off the alien invasion is even worth it.

With that being said, I have mixed feelings on Marco as a narrator. I understand that his glib humor is a defense mechanism, and I have sympathy for his home life, where he’s had to become somewhat responsible for his own dad, stuck in a depressive spiral following the presumed death at sea of the boy’s mother. But he’s not always the most reflective and insightful about these things, so I tend to like him better through the eyes of his friends. Marco plots have a tendency to skew toward the ludicrous too, as in the opening chapter here when he morphs into a gorilla to stop a neighborhood mugging. He’s also our viewpoint later to Ax’s troubles with the human form, repeating parts of words that the extraterrestrial is not used to speaking aloud and going wild with his new sense of taste, grabbing bites off everyone’s trays in the local food court. There’s a slapstick quality to those scenes that feels a little out of place, which the protagonist’s sardonic commentary only amplifies.

Still, the title ends on an upswing of action, and is overall another strong look at the cost these kids are paying for stepping up to defend humanity. That adds a definite gravity to the affair, which will grow bleaker yet in the days ahead regardless of this hero’s jokes.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Long Lost by Jacqueline West

Book #168 of 2021:

Long Lost by Jacqueline West

This middle-grade ghost story is not particularly spooky, perhaps because the overtly paranormal stuff doesn’t really start until midway through. Mostly, the eleven-year-old protagonist is chafing at her family’s recent move (to benefit her older sister’s prospective Olympic skating career) and getting hooked on a mysterious library book that isn’t listed in the database and keeps vanishing from wherever she puts it down. Luckily, the personal dynamics are pretty engaging on their own, and author Jacqueline West does a fine job making each girl’s grievances with the other seem reasonable and sympathetic.

Still, the unfolding plot never quite kicks into the higher gear that I want from it, and I think either more spirits or fewer might have strengthened the text by giving it a clearer direction. The nested novel excerpts also aren’t as gripping as they could have been, which makes it harder to believe that the heroine would become so obsessed with finding the lost ending and the real local history behind it. Ultimately there’s not a whole lot that this title does wrong, just a number of cases where it seems to exhibit varying degrees of untapped potential.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America by John Lewis

Book #167 of 2021:

Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America by John Lewis

In this 2012* publication, author John Lewis shares the guiding principles that he has found particularly effective in his work as a Freedom Rider in the Civil Rights Era and later a progressive Representative in the US Congress. The idea is to provide a framework for future activists, and although that prescriptive approach can sometimes seem a ‘kids these days’ complaint about people doing things differently than he has, it’s overall a helpful and inspiring account. Even while quibbling with some of the writer’s claims — is faith in a higher power really necessary for a justice movement? — it’s hard to come away from the book without a feeling of respect and gratitude for his accomplishments here and elsewhere.

*I read the 2017 edition, which includes a few references that clearly postdate the original, like the Obergefell v. Hodges court case, the Women’s March, and Dr. David Dao getting forcibly dragged off his overbooked United flight. Yet the text has not always been updated accordingly, with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture for instance still being described as opening soon. I can’t speak to what all has been changed or not between the two versions.

[Content warning for racist violence.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie

Book #166 of 2021:

Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot #15)

Four detectives attend a dinner party thrown by a man bragging that he will also invite four murderers he knows who have gotten away with their crimes. At the end of the night, the host himself is dead and the investigators unite to solve the case. The main star is author Agatha Christie’s customary figure of Hercule Poirot, joined now by three characters who had previously not featured in his series: Colonel Race of The Man in the Brown Suit, Superintendent Battle of The Secret of Chimneys and The Seven Dials Mystery, and novelist Ariadne Oliver of Parker Pyne Investigates.

In all honesty, the crossover turns out to be a bit lackluster, and while the self-insert writer proxy allows for some fun sly digs at that profession, neither police inspector shines as much as in their respective standalone adventures. A lot of the story is given over to researching the past killings instead of the present one, and the solution to the latter hinges on a few dubious psychological assumptions and analysis of the suspects’ behavior during a pivotal game of bridge. The plot takes a couple unexpected twists near the end, but overall this team-up seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity.

[Content warning for racism including slurs.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Light of the Midnight Stars by Rena Rossner

Book #165 of 2021:

The Light of the Midnight Stars by Rena Rossner

The mini-genre of Jewish fantasy / fabulism has been booming lately, which is wonderful for #ownvoices representation and a chance to see myself in such stories, but also means readers can afford to be a little more discerning about what’s on offer. And this novel, unfortunately, doesn’t quite soar with the best of its lot for me. I love the idea that the traditional prayers of Judaism can enact real magic from healing to pyromancy to shapeshifting and beyond, but have difficulty relating to the three sisters who are our protagonists. Their perspectives are too similar to one another — as are their respective lovers — and the occasional reminder that they’re around bat mitzvah age makes it harder for me to stomach or understand the focus on sex and marriage, despite the fourteenth-century Hungarian setting. I’m not really clicking with the conceit of everyone repeatedly retelling events from their lives as thinly-disguised fairy tales, either.

There are still enough good qualities in this book for me to award it three-out-of-five stars. An outburst of pogrom violence at the midpoint is well-rendered in its awful brutality, and I like that author Rena Rossner finds room for a queer romance later on in the text, no matter how fraught it must be for those times. But overall I haven’t enjoyed this title as much as the writer’s previous work The Sisters of the Winter Wood or other recent examples of Judaic speculative fiction.

[Content warning for rape and live burial.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Briar King by Greg Keyes

Book #164 of 2021:

The Briar King by Greg Keyes (The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone #1)

This early 2000s fantasy series is a real hidden gem, one that I’ve always been surprised isn’t more popular. I wouldn’t call it a ripoff of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, but that feels like the best object for comparison, due to its similarly sprawling narrative and the worldbuilding that starts as a genre-standard medieval Europe flavor but then goes into intricate and distinctive depths of history and culture that seem to inform every moment of the story. The result is an immersive reading experience, and is particularly fun for how author Greg Keyes uses his academic background in anthropology to showcase slight regional variations in traditions and construct elaborate historical sound changes that become plot-relevant as characters research and translate ancient texts. (Also amusing: part of the backstory of this setting is that Virginia Dare and the lost colony of Roanoke ended up here, two thousand years before the main events.)

In this first title, there’s a dawning apocalypse that has been prophesied, and certain people are beginning to see the signs and/or fall into the machinations of others who are more aware. With around a dozen protagonists across the course of the novel it would be difficult to succinctly summarize everyone’s arc, but I enjoy how the writer brings them together and sends them apart in sometimes-surprising fashion. Three particular favorites: the monk and linguist who uncovers most of the critical lore for us, the initially spoiled young princess forced by hardship to grow up fast in a Malta Vestrit kind of way, and the dashing duelist as concerned with perfecting his fencing and wooing his intended as with the larger danger that stumbles upon him. I’m impressed as well by how everything builds to a natural crisis point for the climax of this book, given the disparate strands that need to unfold to reach it.

TV networks looking to adapt the next Game of Thrones would be wise to check out this quartet, especially since it was completely finished back in 2008 and contains far less misogyny and rape. (There are a few threats of sexual violence and a minor figure who mentions being abused as a child, but nowhere near Westeros levels of such atrocity on the page.) And if you’re one of the many readers who have missed it until now, the four volumes are probably waiting on your library shelf anytime you’re ready.

[Content warning for torture, gore, underage sexuality, and potentially problematic romantic age gaps of 15F/19M and 19F/43M.]

★★★★★

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Movie Review: In the Heights (2021)

Movie #2 of 2021:

In the Heights (2021)

A fun but perhaps overly-long adaptation of the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical about the Latinx neighborhood of Washington Heights in NYC. Like the stageplay, it’s the story of people who are scraping by just above poverty and how they must weigh the idea of leaving for opportunities elsewhere against the loss of community that would ensue. The movie is further packed with colorful visual details and gains a lot of impact for being actually filmed on location where it’s set, with sound design that incorporates aspects of that environment into the music in neat ways.

I do miss a few of the songs that are absent, however, and I’m wondering if the 2.5-hour runtime could have been tightened up at all (either to make room for them or simply to improve the overall pacing). The timeline is a little confusing too, especially with the rearrangement of the remaining tracks and the bizarre new flash-forward framing device. And there are some inherited weaknesses from the original script — the self-insert protagonist is a bit of a jerk to his romantic interest, for instance, and it’s not clear what he sees in her beyond looks — as well as casting that’s been called out for colorism, presenting a predominantly light-skinned group of characters in contrast to the actual demographics of the titular barrio.

I don’t want to detract from the better qualities of the film, which is clearly a labor of love to the local heritage and culture of the area. As with the Broadway soundtrack, the tunes are catchy and the lyrics exhibit clever rhyming built in part on distinctive code-switching not found in many such productions. I’d recommend watching it if you enjoy showtunes and aren’t familiar with the play. But this particular version is unlikely to go down as a favorite.

[Content warning for racial profiling and threat of deportation.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Message by K. A. Applegate

Book #163 of 2021:

The Message by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #4)

Cassie’s first Animorphs novel is an absolute delight. Plotwise, it pushes the narrative further than any volume since the premiere, adding in one final teammate to join the group of morphing teens. (I’ll avoid spoilers beyond that here, but this new ally will be a very fun and different presence for the squad going forward.) We learn a few cool worldbuilding details about various alien species, and see that dolphins and whales in this setting are self-aware and communicative to some extent as well.

The book highlights its narrator as a protagonist quite nicely, showing her love of animals and focus on ethical action. Her personal arc in this title involves struggling to endorse a mission that could get her friends killed, but she also pauses to wonder if their powers are as abusive to the natural order of the environment as those of their Yeerk enemies — which they emphatically aren’t, but she’s the only one who even thinks to explore that question.

The heroine’s unique perspective manifests in subtler ways, too. There’s still an element of body horror to these adventures, with a certain description of an underwater Taxxon death being particularly and memorably gruesome, but the shapeshifting itself is presented more glowingly. We’ve repeatedly been told that Cassie is the most graceful morpher, and seeing the process unfolding through her eyes as a tender dance between forms helps cement that fact. Her emotional intelligence likewise keys her into the interpersonal dynamics around her, with her ability to see past Marco’s gruff and joking exterior giving him his best showcase yet. And of course, Jake’s romantic interest in the girl is now confirmed to be mutual, deepening reader investment in them both.

Race is never exactly at the forefront of this series to my recollection, but it’s really great that the writing regularly mentions Cassie is black and the covers depict her with an accurate model — neither of which seems like a guarantee in the whitewashing world of 90s publishing. Her budding romance with a white guy / de-facto team leader is also important and quietly radical for young adult literature of its time.

Overall, I have no complaints!

★★★★★

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Book Review: Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett

Book #162 of 2021:

Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett (Discworld #31)

A tremendously funny and poignant story of a young woman who disguises herself as a lad to enlist in her nation’s army. Author Terry Pratchett strikes a fine balance between showing the camaraderie and bravery of soldiers on the one hand — the reasons someone might find that life appealing — and the bleak inanity of military regulations and war itself on the other. He also shows his fantasy Discworld setting becoming a bit more open-minded towards people in Polly’s situation, many of whom have only been lacking the courage to speak out about the gender roles and restrictive religious teachings they privately disfavor.

It’s pretty much a standalone volume within its series, with a few fun cameos from existing characters but little that would prevent a new reader from fully following along. And although it contains some minor fatphobia and a greater deal of sexism than I think the writer intends, plus the sort of cross-dressing plot whose essentialist view of anatomy leaves minimal room for a trans experience, the book overall presents a welcome message of questioning tradition, finding your own path, and accepting those who are different from you. If that sounds like a mixed bag, well, it is — but that’s Pratchett in a nutshell, really, as able to punch down at marginalized groups as up at systems of oppression. Yet for this particular outing at least, the comic thrust lands mostly in the right direction.

★★★★☆

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TV Review: Dawson’s Creek, season 4

TV #50 of 2021:

Dawson’s Creek, season 4

Although I still don’t love Dawson Leery as a character, this is easily the least infuriating he’s ever been. The writers have toned down his self-centered and jealous nature in a way that can read as belated maturity in the high school senior, and they even manage to make his new romance with a previously-unmentioned childhood crush as unproblematic and believable as possible, given the four-year age gap. (It’s a bit weird anyway, but I appreciate that the weirdness is addressed and taken seriously on-screen.)

Mostly, though, this season is handed over to Joey and Pacey, whose tumultuous relationship is compellingly heartbreaking throughout. Initially, it seems like this is simply a tragic story of the flaws and differences that will break them apart, but the scripts go to great lengths to illustrate how good for each other they can be as well. We really get to understand the attraction from both sides on a deeper level than the sheer pretty magnetism of the cast, while also sympathizing to an extent when difficulties arise. I’m reminded of the Logan/Veronica dynamic on Veronica Mars, another fiery teenage passion that could be alternately tender or acerbic depending on whether the big personalities were in-sync as they faced their respective challenges.

This is the first time the series has allowed its female lead to remain in a steady partnership and not just transition quickly from someone’s fancy to their ex, a welcome development that grants her more agency as a full protagonist. Elsewhere, the whole friend group is struggling with adult decisions of what the future holds beyond graduation — and in fact, I don’t have a strong sense of where the show goes next, after all the different destinations suggested here. That’s an exciting, albeit fraught, place for a coming-of-age narrative to leave off.

On the weaker side, Drue is the latest antagonist with a bizarre fixation on tormenting our heroes, and Mr. Brooks is similarly too rude for too long for me to care much about his section of the plot either. But otherwise, the interpersonal elements are terrifically solid across this run, elevating it significantly above anything the program had accomplished before.

[Content warning for drug overdose, euthanasia, and homophobic violence.]

★★★★☆

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