The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Stormsong by C. L. Polk

Book #64 of 2021:

Stormsong by C. L. Polk (The Kingston Cycle #2)

This sequel is a decent follow-up to Witchmark, and I continue to enjoy the fantasy setting for its quasi-Edwardian trappings as well as its utter lack of homophobia and slut-shaming. Everyone maturely accepts adult relationships; the drama in this case stems from a political operative dating the reporter investigating her family’s crimes, not the fact that they’re both women or that they end up spending the night together. Their society appears to readily accommodate people in wheelchairs and those who suffer from migraines or post-traumatic stress disorder too, a bit of disability-friendly worldbuilding that’s often absent from genre fiction.

At the same time, however, there’s just not a lot of urgency to this storyline, and I don’t find our new heroine to be quite as engaging a voice as her brother, the protagonist from the previous novel. It’s also fairly late in the text before the romance seems built on anything beyond mutual physical attraction, which tends to keep me at a distance as a reader. Certain elements here feel as though they should be exciting, like a murder mystery and a cataclysmic weather event on the horizon, but it’s all buried under so much bloodless court intrigue that I’ve struggled to remain invested throughout. For all the talk of witches unjustly locked away in asylums, the main characters are too removed from that threat to experience it as viscerally as the plot really needs.

I’ll probably still check out the final volume in the trilogy — which looks to change our POV figure again — at some point, but after this one, I don’t know that it’s going to be a priority.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

Book #63 of 2021:

The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn #1)

This first Mistborn novel is every bit the modern classic that I remember, although it does have a few gender issues that author Brandon Sanderson improves upon in his later works. (Nothing too egregious, but except for our teenage heroine, this is a very male-heavy narrative that barely passes the Bechdel Test, and the threat of sexual violence looms over her and the rest of the skaa underclass, especially in the early chapters. On the other hand, I really appreciate how the second main viewpoint character, a man roughly twice her age, is firmly established as Vin’s mentor and father figure rather than a romantic prospect.)

On pretty much any level, the book is a roaring success. The worldbuilding is intricately detailed yet presented naturally without overbearing exposition, and the magic is as interesting for its systematic rules as for the fun ways that the writer devises to showcase them. The action scenes in which allomancers fight by attracting and repelling pieces of metal are downright cinematic, and Sanderson does a great job of gradually exploring how the basic principles give rise to surprising yet logical exploits. The protagonists grow steadily in competence and confidence too, and the plot of a gang of con artists attempting to overthrow their oppressive government allows for some terrific fantasy heist moments a la The Lies of Locke Lamora or Six of Crows. (So long as I’m comparing this to other genre stories I love, Vin infiltrating the corrupt nobility only to discover decent people among the ranks has strong Red Rising vibes as well.)

It’s hard to discuss and avoid spoilers, but The Final Empire also ends up interrogating and subverting the traditional trope of the prophesied Chosen One, and the author is already signaling an interest in how legends build into accepted truths over time, a theme he’ll return to throughout his career. And that’s a good metaphor for this trilogy itself, which continues to escalate its stakes and its scope across the next two volumes. This introduction feels complete on its own, but it’s merely the core of what the tale will eventually encompass, even setting aside any subsequent sequels and implied connections to the wider cosmere multiverse.

The heart, the combat, the twists, the setting, the cast, the storytelling — everything here just works for me, and I’m so excited to reencounter the further excitement ahead.

[Content warning for gore. And disclaimer: I’m Facebook friends with the author.]

★★★★★

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Book Review: American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption by Gabrielle Glaser

Book #62 of 2021:

American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption by Gabrielle Glaser

This book is centered on one (white, Jewish) family’s experience with adoption in the 1960s, but it’s also a fascinating sociological and historical account of a topic that I had previously known little about. As author Gabrielle Glaser explains, the postwar era in America was a time when sexual education was practically nonexistent, teenagers had more freedom and privacy than ever before, abortion was illegal, and contraception was often impossible for unmarried people to procure. Unsurprisingly, the ‘Baby Boom’ was made up in part by a spike in unplanned pregnancies, and many underage expectant mothers were hidden away and pressured into giving up their infants. Meanwhile, strict laws shielded the identity of adopters, such that neither the children nor their biological parents could realistically hope to reunite.

Even that summary obscures the sheer awfulness of this treatment, in which the pregnant girls were fed lies — like that a wealthy diplomat was waiting to adopt their baby, while in reality there was no recipient household lined up — and threatened with jailtime under antiquated morality statutes if they wouldn’t sign over their parental rights. Viewed as a likely bad influence on the offspring, these new mothers were cut off as quickly and cruelly as possible, then to face a dauntingly Kafkaesque bureaucracy aimed at keeping them apart forever. Only recently, as public sentiment has swung around to the importance of everyone knowing their roots, birth parents knowing the fate of their kids, and families staying together whenever they feasibly can — and as genetic testing has further smashed through the idea of maintaining that sort of secret anyway — have some of those walls started to crumble.

Drawing on deeply personal interviews of a mother in this position and the son she was forced to abandon, Glaser presents a heartbreaking tale of lives that went decades feeling unwhole as both parties sought in vain to reconnect. She left regular messages at the agency that had taken him, updating them on relatives’ medical issues and begging for his new name and contact information. (They wrote down the notes and never passed them along.) He combed through available records looking for a hint of his origins, going off the few scraps that his adoptive parents had been told. (Those turned out to be falsehoods as well, painting a glamorous picture of busy professionals who didn’t have time for a child, not high school sweethearts who married soon after losing him.) It’s infuriating to read despite the eventual closure, and definitely made me hold my own daughter tight.

But it’s a moment we can’t look away from or allow to ever repeat, and this writer has done a valuable service in researching and publicizing the story.

[Content warning for domestic abuse, racism, antisemitism, and mention of sexual assault.]

★★★★☆

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TV Review: Star Wars: The Clone Wars, season 7

TV #22 of 2021:

Star Wars: The Clone Wars, season 7

If only this last run of the animated Star Wars prequel could be limited to its final four episodes, I think I would give it my first five-star rating of the series. That sequence represents a powerful prelude to the tragedy of Revenge of the Sith, absolutely drenched in atmospheric dread and dramatic irony, and although it pays off a few long-standing character arcs for returning viewers, I’d honestly recommend it to any fan even if that’s all you ever see of The Clone Wars. The action sequences and visual spectacle easily rival the big-screen films, and I’m somewhat astonished at how this often-goofy cartoon has been able to step up like that.

(I assume the difference is due at least in part to a change in corporate leadership, which should bode well for the sequel titles Rebels and Resistance — neither of which I’ve watched yet but which both aired entirely in between seasons 6 and 7 of this one, under Disney oversight. I’ll be happy if they can approach anywhere near the strength of this finale, especially in the treatment of protagonist Ahsoka Tano, who has seemingly grown more capable and endearing with each appearance and reaches new heights here at the close of her origin story.)

Before that point, unfortunately, there are eight installments this year that are roughly in line with the program’s typical output, albeit with graphics that greatly improve upon the customary stylized boxy design. I understand some of these were already in progress when production was shut down on the truncated sixth season, with their assets later incorporated into this batch rather than being discarded altogether. But such a behind-the-scenes explanation doesn’t make the early hours all that engaging to actually sit through, and while they are hardly the show’s worst, there’s a wide gulf between solidly inoffensive filler and legitimate quality storytelling.

That ending, though. I still have chills.

This season: ★★★★☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

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

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Book Review: Among the Beasts & Briars by Ashley Poston

Book #61 of 2021:

Among the Beasts & Briars by Ashley Poston

This story has it all: a generic fantasy setting, under-explained and inconsistent magic, a random and meandering plot, weirdly colloquial dialogue, and juvenile characters — both protagonists and antagonists alike — with no credible motivation driving their actions. Also quasi-bestiality, after the heroine’s pet fox is transformed into a handsome human love interest by the power in her blood when he bites her hand. Ratings are subjective and I don’t fault anyone who gets more out of this YA tale than I have, but I’ve spent most of the novel underwhelmed and expecting to give it two-out-of-five stars, only to be let down further by the listless and perfunctory ending.

I take full blame for not realizing that this is from the same writer as Heart of Iron, a sci-fi work that similarly never clicks for me. I’m sure author Ashley Poston has her fans, but I wouldn’t have picked this up if I’d recognized the name, and I’m going to try to avoid repeating that mistake in the future. Her style is just clearly not a great match for me as a reader.

★☆☆☆☆

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Book Review: The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey

Book #60 of 2021:

The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey

This novel raises a few interesting dilemmas of futuristic technology, although it waits so long to establish its sci-fi premise that I think I should probably be circumspect in this review. (I will say that the marketing description of ‘Westworld meets Killing Eve‘ is almost ludicrously off-base. It’s more of a Bluebeard story than anything else.) But I have a little bit of trouble suspending my disbelief over some of the unexplained science, and given the shape of the plot that eventually emerges, I’m surprised that the narrative isn’t tenser and faster-paced. The protagonist takes risks, yet the dangers generally seem limited to someone discovering a secret that might result in an awkward conversation at worst. It’s fine as a character study, but never as exciting as I’d like it to be.

[Content warning for gaslighting and domestic violence.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Doctor Who: The Novel of the Film by Gary Russell

Book #59 of 2021:

Doctor Who: The Novel of the Film by Gary Russell

For the most part, this is a pretty straightforward novelization of the 1996 Doctor Who movie, which isn’t great, but certainly has its share of goofy charm. (It was produced after the original program was cancelled in 1989, and was intended to relaunch the show if contemporary audiences approved. They didn’t, and so the franchise stayed off the air until the modern reboot in 2005.) Availability notwithstanding, I think I’d recommend the film over this book if you need to pick just one, as I’m not convinced the story’s quirky earnestness always translates well to the page.

I’m also a little disappointed that author Gary Russell hasn’t seized more of an opportunity with this project to expand on the source material and add his own wrinkles to the series canon as he’s done elsewhere, although that may not have been possible / allowed, given how the two titles were released simultaneously and how his foreword says he was working off a script with limited knowledge of final visuals — or apparently of casting, based on the inaccuracy of certain character descriptions. I’ll be interested to hear whether the new edition of this novel coming out soon corrects any of that, or if things like Grace’s strawberry blonde hair will remain curious continuity errors that again mark it as the non-definitive take.

At its best this volume is only as strong as the uneven work it’s adapting, and that strain is particularly apparent in the climax, which is effectively an incoherent spectacle of flashing lights and technobabble in either version. But for fans with an existing fondness for actor Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor, I suppose it’s a fun enough way to revisit his debut.

[Content warning for racism and gun violence.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Removed by Brandon Hobson

Book #58 of 2021:

The Removed by Brandon Hobson

This is a very fractured narrative, theoretically exploring the pain of a Native American family whose son was shot and killed by the police, but with a distance of 15 years from that event and minimal overt connections across the four protagonist POVs, which stymies the effect for me as a reader. The most emotionally grounded storyline is that of the mother watching as a new foster child seems to improve her husband’s slip into Alzheimer’s, but their surviving son and daughter are varying degrees of uncomfortable to witness — he’s a drug addict caught up in a weird magical realist journey after a suicide attempt; she’s a sex-obsessed stalker who both experiences and perpetrates domestic abuse. All have complicated relationships to the past, but do not share meaningful interactions with one another in the present.

The final narrator is a Cherokee folk hero whose tales are sometimes referenced by the other characters, and his chapters offer a hazily poetic blend of myth and memory that leads to a few striking vignettes but again doesn’t tie back much to any larger plot. The whole venture is clearly rooted in #ownvoices experience and history, and when I posted on Goodreads that I was struggling to get into the book, author Brandon Hobson sent me a message saying, “Sorry you’re not liking it. It began out of thinking about violence against Natives and dealing with trauma.” And that comes through in the finished draft, but it’s overall more disjointed and lacking in resolution than I would prefer in a novel.

[Content warning for racism, pedophilia, sexual assault, and homophobic slurs.]

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Noumenon by Marina J. Lostetter

Book #57 of 2021:

Noumenon by Marina J. Lostetter (Noumenon #1)

I’ve enjoyed much of this novel’s middle sections, but the beginning is boilerplate sci-fi, and I’m not quite satisfied by the rather abrupt and open ending. It’s the story of an interstellar fleet launched to investigate a strange object detected in deep space, a journey that will take more than a century at relativistic speeds and almost ten times as long for the population left on earth — plus the same on the voyage back. The hook here is that each chapter leaps forward to a new generation, and the ship culture undergoes some interesting fluctuations and mission creep over that span, especially once they lose contact with the homeworld. I’m reminded of titles like A Canticle for Leibowitz or The Years of Rice and Salt, which similarly build up and discard multiple eras across the length of their narratives. All crew members in this tale are clones as well, inviting the reader to consider nature-versus-nurture issues as identical gene blueprints surface as successive figures throughout the text.

There’s a lot to dig into and appreciate in that premise, but not every individual protagonist and subplot is equally engaging, and the larger thematic thrust of the work is somewhat hazy for me. I expect the sequels will continue jumping further into the future and eventually reveal more about the alien artifact and its creators, but without the continuity of characters beyond the onboard A.I., I’m not sure I’m invested enough in that storyline to stick with the series and find out.

[Content warning for slavery and mention of rape.]

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★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Trunk Music by Michael Connelly

Book #56 of 2021:

Trunk Music by Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch #5)

Like the other titles in its series, this is a reasonably solid procedural crime thriller — albeit a little heavy on coincidences, such as the protagonist encountering an old flame / new potential suspect while pursuing a lead in a different city or later spotting another person of interest while on vacation somewhere else again. As with a lot of the ‘copaganda’ genre, it’s also far too charitable towards police misconduct, most egregiously here in the detectives ignoring arrestees asking for their lawyers and joking that the problem in the Rodney King brutality case was the presence of a camera. Even Bosch himself takes part in some of this, and his response to the homophobia, sexism, and racism (including slurs) in the department around him is similarly disappointing, generally confined to looking vaguely disapproving but offering no outward comment. It may be realistic, and as timely now as upon publication in 1997, but I want better from my fictional heroes.

The plot, which stems from the investigation of a corpse discovered in the trunk of an abandoned car, has a few twists to it, although I think I’m mostly surprised to discover that the TV adaptation of this storyline turns a minor figure from the novel into the ultimate culprit and vice versa. But it’s fine even without that wrinkle, and while it may not be the best showcase for the setting or the characters overall, readers this deep in the franchise should know what to expect and will probably leave satisfied. There’s enough development in Harry’s personal life to suggest not skipping this one, too.

[Content warning for gun violence and mention of child rape.]

★★★☆☆

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