The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Amari and the Night Brothers by B. B. Alston

Book #54 of 2021:

Amari and the Night Brothers by B. B. Alston (Supernatural Investigations #1)

Harry Potter comparisons can be a tad reductive and overdone, but that really is the vibe of this middle-grade adventure from debut author B. B. Alston, with a tween hero’s introduction to a hidden society of strange creatures and special powers which most of their new peers have grown up alongside. Only in this case, our protagonist is a poor black girl from Atlanta, and her first year in the program is less like the typical Hogwarts curriculum and more akin to the Triwizard Tournament challenges crossed with an internship at the bureaucratic Ministry of Magic. Even the unfolding plot, wherein Amari and her friends investigate a mystery that the adult chaperones don’t think they’re ready to handle, feels like classic Rowling.

This novel has its own charms, however, and it’s definitely no generic ripoff, despite the parallels to that famous saga. Although both titles succeed for some of the same reasons, this one provides distinctive worldbuilding flourishes and story beats, such as the main character following in her brother’s footsteps as a supernatural champion and the shadowy network of sorcerers who want to recruit her to join their ranks instead. The narrative also openly acknowledges racism as a difficulty she faces, while never growing too heavy for younger readers. That audience will likely be surprised by a few clever twists as well, and I can verify that spotting the clues in advance doesn’t spoil their effectiveness.

Overall it’s an impressive launch to the series, and one I’d recommend to fantasy lovers of any age. (I’ve got a few issues with the audiobook — for instance, the narrator not deviating from a standard American accent for a speaker whose dialogue regularly features dialectal markers like “ye lasses” — but it’s clearly the production team at fault there and not the writer or the text itself.)

★★★★☆

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Book Review: A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

Book #53 of 2021:

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

Everybody seems to be comparing this book to Madeline Miller’s Circe, and the similarities are admittedly striking between the two feminist retellings of Greek myth. But I think this title asks more of its readers in terms of bringing prior knowledge of the old stories to the experience, both to recognize how and why author Natalie Haynes has diverged from the regular canon and to fill in the gaps in her presentation of the Trojan War, its leadup, and its aftermath. Whereas Circe reads as an immersive and accessible personal narrative, A Thousand Ships is instead a tapestry made up of many brilliant strands, refitting the existing frame that we already have in our minds due to works like Homer’s The Iliad. I don’t know if it would succeed as well for anyone unfamiliar with the classics, and it’s certainly not a conventional novel structured by a coherent overarching plot. Some characters appear only in a single chapter each, and even the ones who recur across the text do not necessarily interact meaningfully with one another.

Nevertheless, it’s overall a powerful reexamination of the ancient tales surrounding Troy, adding welcome nuance to the female figures who often exist as simple virgins, mothers, and slaves in the background of the traditional accounts. These new perspectives are as richly complex as those of the menfolk, and they complicate and skewer our expected understanding of events. This isn’t the first such treatment that I’ve seen — Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad in particular comes to mind — but it stands out as a real beauty of prose and insight. And since mythology itself is a fluid field built on shifting oral histories, there’s little to mark this latest iteration as any less definitive than its predecessors.

[Content warning for rape.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: A Man Rides Through by Stephen R. Donaldson

Book #52 of 2021:

A Man Rides Through by Stephen R. Donaldson (Mordant’s Need #2)

This 1987 sequel is a significant step up in pacing and action from its already-great predecessor, but it exhibits the same disappointing levels of sexism, torture, and rape, which are not always treated with the care that such sensitive topics deserve. (And some of the politics have not aged well post-publication at all — one minor character who’s been colluding with a villain is beaten within an inch of her life by the fortress security chief, and the narrative treats her as conniving for then showing off her injuries and trying to rally public sentiment against him. Author Stephen R. Donaldson never quite seems to get that he’s presented the castellan as an abuser who should be reviled, not a tragic figure or hero. Elsewhere, the only gay person in the series — possibly in all of Donaldson’s writing, come to think of it — is a sadistic rapist, which sends another unfortunate message about what’s considered deviant.)

With these issues in mind, I can’t give this novel the full five stars that its stronger qualities would regularly merit, but at least the low points are mostly restricted to the beginning of the story and shouldn’t be too surprising or off-putting to anyone following book one. The plot reaches Game of Thrones heights of marrying thrilling combat scenes with fiendish court intrigue, and it’s a real joy to see how much the returning protagonists have grown in power and confidence since their introduction. We get to explore the wider realm via a few classic genre travel passages too, which is a nice change of pace after being confined to a single castle for nearly all of the previous volume. And the wizardry hits that sweet spot I most associate with Brandon Sanderson, where the early rules lead to startling yet logical implications and several really cool set pieces.

I forgot to mention this in my last review, but I also like the small element of science-fiction that sneaks its way into this duology. It makes total sense that magical portals which can open onto different universes could bring in spaceships and laser blasters, but most fantasy adventures eschew making that leap, so it’s fun to lose the restriction here. Although the intergalactic super-soldier isn’t a major player in the battle for Mordant, his sheer presence adds wonderful texture to the distinctive worldbuilding, especially as his abilities are filtered through the local low-tech understanding.

As I hope I’ve made clear, this is not a tale for every sort of reader, and it’s frustrating to witness a talented writer going down those routes that both limit his potential audience and, in my opinion, ultimately weaken the text itself. But for folks who can stomach the cruelty and the gore, it’s a triumph on par with his better-known Thomas Covenant saga.

This title: ★★★★☆

Overall series: ★★★★☆

Volumes ranked: 2 > 1

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TV Review: Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 7

TV #20 of 2021:

Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 7

With very few exceptions, this final span of TNG plays like a program that has essentially run out of fresh ideas. There’s no real shame in that — the series already had over 150 episodes under its belt ahead of this last run, not even counting the franchise’s earlier TOS and TAS titles or the first year of Deep Space Nine, which collectively add another 120 or so — but it’s an unfortunate way to say goodbye to the era nonetheless. Certain hours are clear repeats of stronger previous plots, while others exhibit absurd low-bar concepts which may well have been rescued from the trash bin. We also get retcons aplenty, mostly in the form of crew members being visited by previously-unmentioned relatives in a naked attempt to gin up personal stakes in the writing, and a half-hearted gesture at a new relationship that only ever feels genuine in the admittedly-superb multiverse adventure “Parallels.”

As that one indicates, it’s not that everything in this batch is awful, but it is the case that most of the show’s worst outings are concentrated here. I can’t decide between such dreck as “Sub Rosa” or “Genesis” for the true bottom of the barrel, but including both those contenders amid some that are just marginally better makes watching this season a chore in a way that Star Trek has never seemed before. I am excited to return to DS9 next, and I’m hopeful this proves the low point for the entire venture and not merely Picard’s branch of it.

I do still have the spinoff movies to watch, so maybe they’ll offer the sort of closure which is largely absent for now (although I haven’t heard great things on that front). I should emphasize that I’ve generally enjoyed this version of the Enterprise and its journey through space, and I will miss characters like Data when the dust finally settles. But at the same time, I think I would look at them more positively had they departed a bit sooner.

This season: ★★☆☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Seasons ranked: 4 > 3 > 5 > 2 > 6 > 1 > 7

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Book Review: The Listerdale Mystery by Agatha Christie

Book #51 of 2021:

The Listerdale Mystery by Agatha Christie

A fine collection of short stories, although perhaps a bit too similar to one another overall. Despite the title, these are not mysteries in author Agatha Christie’s usual sense; there are no investigations or clues that a clever reader can race to put together before one of her detective figures. Instead, most of the entries here are more like action thrillers, with excitingly unpredictable twists and a heavy reliance on mistaken identity. Characters pick up the wrong car, or trousers, or telephone call, and swiftly find themselves swept into someone else’s adventure. Others are specifically asked to swap places with a doppelgänger to draw off pursuit. It’s a fun departure from the writer’s typical style, but all those variations on the common theme do begin to feel a bit rote by the volume’s end.

[Content warning for racism, antisemitism, and use of words that have since become slurs.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America by Candacy Taylor

Book #50 of 2021:

Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America by Candacy Taylor

A fascinating deep dive into The Negro Motorist Green Book, a guide that was self-published by a small press from 1936 to 1966 with lists of businesses around the country that had been verified safe for black travelers during America’s shameful era of racist Jim Crow oppression. Author Candacy Taylor offers a chilling depiction of the bigotry and violence that could be expected at a typical white-owned establishment of that period, but she mostly walks readers through a history of the text and how it changed across successive editions.

Although the narrative can sometimes feel like just a catalog of entries itself — and the writer occasionally wanders into digressions of related but off-topic social ills like racial disparities in mass incarceration — it’s a pretty thorough look at the hotels, restaurants, and more that were recommended by Victor Hugo Green and his team over the years, as well as updates on whether / how these places can still be found today. Complemented by interviews with elderly African Americans who either used the Book or were featured in its pages, this title provides a capsule of black existence that was critical for its contemporary audience yet rarely documented in the mainstream culture.

[Content warning for slurs.]

★★★★☆

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TV Review: Justified, season 2

TV #19 of 2021:

Justified, season 2

I like the idea of the Bennett hillbilly crime family — as well as Margo Martindale’s powerhouse portrayal of its cagey yet honorable clan matriarch — but the surrounding plot is messy and uneven, and a number of writing decisions leave me frustrated. I don’t mind making the protagonist more fallible, guided by emotion and personal loyalty over superhuman marshal instincts, but too often this year his bad choices end up yielding positive results, and characters who criticize him are treated like scolds. He’s too cavalier about breaking the law in pursuit of his vision of justice, and that’s an element that sits worse with a decade of cultural hindsight into patterns of police abuse.

I’ve also just never cared much for Boyd Crowder, who has now been promoted to a series regular. Depending on the episode, he’s either being pitched as a reformed bigot or one who was merely faking his prior extremism to amass power in the region, and neither of these characterizations is particularly justified (sorry) by the evidence. I get the impulse to position this figure as an antihero foil to Raylan, but it feels incoherent to write him pushing back against an acquaintance’s antisemitism in one scene and then have the camera linger on his swastika tattoo in another.

Finally, although the colorful Elmore Leonard-inspired dialogue remains fun, this deep into the show it’s starting to seem a little one-note. In my recent review of Community’s first season, I praised how every line clearly arises from a specific character voice, and while a sitcom’s rhythms are obviously quite different from those in a drama, that’s emphatically not the case here. Taken out of context, there’s nothing distinguishing which quote comes from which cast member, and that makes for a less interesting atmosphere, especially as the initial novelty of the dialect wears off.

Overall this is still a program with a lot of potential and generally competent storytelling, but it isn’t showing the growth I would expect in this sophomore outing.

[Content warning for gun violence and racism and homophobia including slurs.]

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: The Queen’s Gambit

TV #18 of 2021:

The Queen’s Gambit

An outstanding character study and period piece, offering the same sort of lush mid-twentieth-century design details that bring the era to life on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. The main focus here, however, is on our complicated protagonist, a brilliant but lonely young prodigy struggling to understand the world around her and make her way in a male-dominated field. (So… rather a lot like Midge Maisel, come to think of it.) She is gifted but self-sabotaging, and an early addiction to drugs and alcohol creates a further tension and a challenge for the heroine to believe she can perform her best when not under the influence.

Although unaddressed on-screen — realistically for a girl of that time — Beth also reads as likely autistic to me, and her distance from everyone she meets is achingly palpable. Indeed, one of the great joys of the series is seeing her form genuine connections with people who appreciate and support her even when she appears unable to express how much that means. Even if not on the spectrum, she is an outcast who builds a nontraditional approximation of family for herself, and that’s a narrative pattern I’ll always cherish.

This is a show about chess too, but it’s very much in the genre of classic sports stories like Rocky or Friday Night Lights where you can follow the action and the emotion of the players without necessarily knowing or caring for the game in question. But those viewers who do will find an added layer of appreciation for all the training, matches, and strategy sessions which go into a professional career, and may well feel a yearning to dust off their old boards themselves.

It’s a one-season title that seems unlikely to be renewed, for while there are plot avenues that a sequel could theoretically pursue, the resolution to the central figure’s arc ends on a basically perfect note. I haven’t yet checked out the 1983 novel this is based on — and I’d love to hear how Netflix was convinced to adapt it almost four decades later — but it certainly represents a complete and self-contained story as is.

[Content warning for death of a parent.]

★★★★★

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Book Review: You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson

Book #49 of 2021:

You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson

This is a really cute #ownvoices queer love story, and while it’s a little hard to suspend my disbelief that a race for prom queen could be this intense — or that the nerdy protagonist is pinning all of her scholarship hopes for college on an unlikely victory — the romance that blossoms with one of her competitors is well worth the investment. I’m glad too that although there is ample teenage drama here, it never rises to the cutthroat level of strategic betrayal that we might expect from the premise. The heroine’s perspective as one of the only black students in her small-town Indiana high school is also valuable, and rich with insights clearly drawn from author Leah Johnson’s experiences dealing with that sort of marginalization. I could nitpick on some of the finer plot details of this novel, but overall it offers a degree of YA wish fulfilment that makes me smile too much to care.

[Content warning for racism, homophobia, transphobia, panic attacks, and death of a parent.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease by Charles Kenny

Book #48 of 2021:

The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease by Charles Kenny

An informative yet somewhat dry overview of the history of pandemics, focusing less on the science of disease origin, spread, and containment / cure, and more on the human policy response (or lack thereof). I’d recommend this 2021 title as a quick primer for readers seeking an introduction to the global context of COVID-19 or a general understanding of how earlier societies have faced similar crises, but it’s lacking the level of granular detail that would make for a definitive text on the subject.

I also think author Charles Kenny plays a little too safe with discussions of the current coronavirus and other recent outbreaks, highlighting certain management decisions as effective or not without ever naming the actors involved. He cites studies finding that most 2020 border control / travel ban edicts only pushed the local infection timeline out zero to two weeks, for instance, but doesn’t mention which politicians or parties favored that move and which saw it — apparently correctly — as empty xenophobic posturing. This reads as an attempt to stay apolitical, but it’s silly when contemporary audiences can read through the lines and will be frustrating in the future when that necessary degree of background knowledge is reduced. You can’t really be neutral when evaluating which actions or source ideologies actually work as intended, and the effort here feels disingenuous.

[Content warning for discussion of racism and antisemitism, including pogroms.]

★★★☆☆

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