The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: The Mirror of Her Dreams by Stephen R. Donaldson

Book #41 of 2021:

The Mirror of Her Dreams by Stephen R. Donaldson (Mordant’s Need #1)

As with many of author Stephen R. Donaldson’s works, I have some complicated feelings towards the Mordant’s Need duology, and especially this first volume. In terms of worldbuilding and atmosphere, the story is top-notch. The mirror-based magical system is distinctive, and I love how almost all of this novel takes place in a single castle and its immediate environs. As a location Orison lacks the personality of a Gormenghast, but it taps into a similar gloomy claustrophobia as our heroine wanders its drafty halls bouncing off one lonely personage after another. I like how the plot consists mainly of internal court intrigue with occasional bursts of violence as well, although I can see how that creates a slower and more contemplative tale than certain readers might prefer. It’s practically Shakespearean in the king’s feigned madness and power struggles with his daughters, and that’s not the usual mode for this sort of thing.

I also understand the common frustration with Terisa Morgan as a protagonist. Her gradual arc involves learning to assert herself in a variety of ways, but she’s a very passive figure for much of this title, stubbornly refusing the actions that a typical genre hero would perform in her stead. She’s been ground down into such low self-esteem by her past that she finds it impossible to stand up and claim that mantle, and while this can be irritating if you’re expecting a classic sword-and-sorcery venture, it’s a fascinating writing choice that offers a steady share of surprises and a subtle piece of mental health representation.

It forms an important thematic link with the antihero in Donaldson’s more famous Thomas Covenant series too. The self-styled ‘Unbeliever’ is a person pulled out of our world who refuses to accept that the strange new land around him is anything but a dream, even as its inhabitants implore him to be their champion. Here, the writer repeats that paradigm of disputed faith, but he inverts the formula of disbelief. The rules of wizardry in Mordant teach that the visions in mirrors have no true existence before they are called to life, so Terisa herself, summoned to this other place from her familiar high-rise apartment, is the one doubted. Her own status as something real, not the realm’s, is dismissed as an illusion — and at least in the beginning, she doesn’t possess the strength of mind to seriously protest otherwise.

All of that is pretty compelling as a theme to explore, but it does veer into problematic territory at times. Although the heroine needs to be rather submissive for the initial narrative to work, this results in her not resisting when one of her summoners makes open predatory advances on her, first verbally and then physically. She even comes to crave his touch as a way of affirming a small measure of reality, but it’s clearly not genuine consent. This should trouble us, yet the only time that the question of rape is brought up, she somehow laughs in derision to dismiss the idea.

And frankly, it’s not clear that Terisa’s arc requires that type of mistreatment, or the sexism she’s subjected to from a few further directions, in order to be effective. I don’t think Stephen R. Donaldson is insightful enough in how he writes about sexual assault in general to justify how often he’s returned to it throughout his career — and I say that as a dedicated fan who’s read all of his books, most more than once — and the topic is particularly under-developed here. I can’t help but notice that his male characters are never dehumanized to this same degree, either.

Ultimately, then, this is a quietly engaging drama of the soul with a significant flaw running through its heart. On balance I find that combination regrettable but not fatally so, though I can’t fault anyone who weighs these factors differently. Luckily I recall that the sequel improves on this front, in addition to delivering a more straightforward epic fantasy adventure.

[Content warning for body horror.]

★★★★☆

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TV Review: Community, season 1

TV #15 of 2021:

Community, season 1

This is an interesting season to approach on a rewatch, even after so long away. Like many sitcoms, the series takes a while to settle into its rhythms and find its distinctive style, and so a lot of the earlier stuff doesn’t quite feel like the Community that I remember loving. The beginning leans pretty hard on the will-they/won’t they romance between Jeff and Britta, various insensitive bigotries of either Pierce or the school itself — racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, antisemitism, rape culture, etc. — are frequently brought up for a punchline and then brushed off with a shrug, and Chang might as well be some other character altogether compared to his later self.

The program also doesn’t start out with its eventual best quality, the ability to slip into an entirely new genre for twenty minutes at a time, lovingly sending up that fresh set of tropes yet simultaneously engaging with them honestly and maintaining the writers’ overall comic sensibility. They make it look easy, but I’m sure it’s a phenomenally difficult trick to pull off. The cafeteria mafia adventure Contemporary American Poultry, late in this debut run, is the first true example of that, followed quickly by the post-apocalyptic action thriller Modern Warfare, which remains one of the finest individual offerings of the entire show. These fantastic episodes deservedly form a major blueprint for future years (although we’d ultimately go to the paintball well too often with diminishing returns), and it’s a tiny bit tedious for a repeat viewer to sit through everything until all that clicks into place.

And yet! If you can set aside your expectations or memories for what comes next, this is still a very, very funny piece of television. The Greendale setting offers up all sorts of fun weirdness, the big theme of flawed adults finding second chances is surprisingly heartwarming, and the ensemble humor is simply terrific. I really admire how the central study group can break out into a variety of separate pairings too, and how a main Jeff-Abed plot is radically different from a Shirley-Annie story, an Abed-Troy one, and so on. It helps that these people all have their own particular voices, unlike certain comedies where any joke in the dialogue could conceivably be delivered by any interchangeable mouthpiece. (And a shoutout here to Abed specifically, who already brings an energy unmatched by anyone else on TV, meta-commenting on the events around him and providing welcome neurodiversity representation.)

In the end, this may be a weaker outing for Community, but it’s a relatively strong season by any larger standard.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing by Jacob Goldstein

Book #40 of 2021:

Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing by Jacob Goldstein

Another podcast turned pop science book, this one offering a whirlwind tour of the history of money as a concept, from its earliest known appearance in ancient civilizations through today’s cutting-edge developments of cryptocurrency and MMT. Author Jacob Goldstein clearly knows his material, but he tends to breeze through it a bit too quickly for a reader like me who has difficulty with some of these abstract (and at times counterintuitive) economic theories. Although I’ve learned a few things from this title, it’s generally lacking the level of detail and patient explanation that I at least would require for all of its lessons to really sink in.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Effort by Claire Holroyde

Book #39 of 2021:

The Effort by Claire Holroyde

There are occasional glimmers of potential to this new sci-fi release that tempt me to award a 2-star rating — ‘it was ok,’ on the Goodreads scale — but the bad parts are honestly pretty bad and even the best sections aren’t great. The sex writing alone, which is thankfully brief, deserves to be singled out for inflicting the phrase “she loved the threat of his genitals glancing her buttocks” upon unsuspecting readers. There’s also a heap of casual racism, sexism, and ableism in the text, hardly any of which is critiqued or even acknowledged.

As for the story, it concerns the wholly derivative notion of a giant comet with a high likelihood of striking the earth, and the last-ditch effort of a diverse team of scientists to… do something about it. They’re launching some sort of payload at the object to avert catastrophe, but debut author Claire Holroyde never really spells out exactly what or how. When the group first assembles to work on a solution I was expecting this book to read like Andy Weir’s The Martian, but it largely avoids the level of detail that makes that title feel so grounded. If anything the writer Holroyde most resembles is Dan Brown: not in the ludicrous plotting at least, but in the insistence on having one expert character explain to another such basic concepts as FEMA, the ISS, and the expression ‘deus ex machina.’

The news of impending doom causes society to break apart in graphically violent rioting, but again it feels as though we’re missing a few key scenes actually explaining the logic here. Absent the immediacy of a plague like Station Eleven or climate event like Life As We Knew It, there’s little to justify such a drastic planetwide overhaul of civilization. (Even the nihilism of The Last Policeman in the face of a similar approaching meteor is given far more shading and definition than the version in this setting.) The narrative’s tendency to flit among various viewpoints around the world doesn’t help either, as too many of them both don’t meaningfully intersect and are not particularly engaging on their own terms.

I’m ultimately just plain flummoxed by what this novel is attempting to do, and I have serious questions for the editors who allowed it to come to print and audiobook in its present form.

[Content warning for rape.]

★☆☆☆☆

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TV Review: The Americans, season 1

TV #14 of 2021:

The Americans, season 1

I’m really enjoying this tense spy thriller, which so far has been equally about its outlandish premise of Soviet operatives in deep cover as a normal American couple and the quieter moments within their marriage (or sham thereof). There’s a natural thematic element of negotiated trust in the espionage genre, and mirroring an exploration of that in a long-running quasi-romantic partnership is a slick writing decision. I’m less sold on some of the plot mechanics throughout this debut year, like the fact that the protagonists’ new neighbor is the FBI agent unknowingly investigating their activity, but episode by episode it’s delivering a lot of fun and showing good insight into its various characters. The 80s period setting provides a distinctive vibe too, especially when the moves and counter-moves in its pulse-pounding action sequences are impacted by the limitations of the era’s technology. Overall this season represents a great start, with clear potential for the series to get even better as it settles further into itself.

[Content warning for gore and sexual assault.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty

Book #38 of 2021:

From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty

A short but interesting travelogue exploring different funerary customs around the world. From ancient practices of cannibalism to modern peoples who mummify and go on living with their deceased loved ones to body farms that study the science of human decomposition, this might not be a great choice for squeamish readers — although author Caitlin Doughty’s point throughout is that our feelings about what’s appropriate (or not) to do with the dead are largely a matter of cultural relativity.

It’s a pop anthropology sort of book, very readable but somewhat exoticizing of its subjects and lacking much of a throughline or connective tissue between its chapters. I’ve also noticed a minor inaccuracy in an offhand reference to Jurassic Park — which is not a big deal in and of itself, but suggests that the title may not have undergone careful fact-checking as part of the editing process. Since the writer is a mortician and not a researcher or reporter by trade, that gives me a little bit of a pause at accepting everything here at face value.

I do appreciate her insider complaints on the big-business nature of death in America, and it’s eye-opening to consider some of the alternatives to the expensive coffins and other purchases regularly pushed by her industry. But overall, I think I would prefer if this volume had adopted more of a focused and internal perspective on the topics it covers.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: How Dare the Sun Rise: Memoirs of a War Child by Sandra Uwiringiyimana with Abigail Pesta

Book #37 of 2021:

How Dare the Sun Rise: Memoirs of a War Child by Sandra Uwiringiyimana with Abigail Pesta

A harrowing account of author Sandra Uwiringiyimana’s early life during the Second Congo War, in which she was forced to flee her childhood home, witnessed the murder of her younger sister in an armed massacre at their settlement camp, and was sexually assaulted by a trusted relative — all before she was twelve years old. Emigrating to the United States saved the family from immediate danger, but did little to resolve the lingering trauma that the writer continues to navigate as an adult. As she transitions into a career as a humanitarian activist, this memoir provides a valuable firsthand look at the horrors of ethnic cleansing, the refugee experience in America, and the difficulties of understanding local race relations as an outsider.

★★★★☆

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TV Review: The Good Fight, season 3

TV #13 of 2021:

The Good Fight, season 3

This series is still doing the best job of anything I’ve seen on TV at capturing the actual experience of living through the Trump presidency, and even as that era recedes behind us, it remains validating to see these protagonists grappling with the issues of family separation, alt-right violence, judicial corruption, and so forth that have likewise commanded audience attentions in real life.

With that being said, however, this third season makes some frustrating choices that don’t always utilize that throughline to its fullest potential. Diane’s joining an underground resistance saboteur group never quite feels in-character for her, especially once it requires her to compromise attorney-client privilege, and the educational Jonathan Coulton clips that pop up each episode are annoyingly twee. The new over-the-top figure of Roland Blum is a bad tonal match for the show too, although the acting there is admittedly a tour-de-force (given how much he differs from actor Michael Sheen’s performance as Aziraphale on Good Omens the same year). And of course, Maia’s storyline is way too disconnected from everyone else’s, generally seeming as though she’s off on an entirely separate program that only occasionally crosses back to rejoin her former peers.

The overall effort is hanging together better than the worst stretches of The Good Wife, so I’m not ready to give up on this spinoff just yet — but my hopes aren’t exactly high going into the fourth / latest run, which had its production unexpectedly cut down due to the coronavirus outbreak. That would be a blow for any serial drama, and it might prove fatal for one that’s already grown this wobbly.

[Content warning for rape / #MeToo, drug abuse, SWATting, and racism.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Over the Woodward Wall by A. Deborah Baker

Book #36 of 2021:

Over the Woodward Wall by A. Deborah Baker (The Up-and-Under #1)

This is a cute children’s fantasy adventure, sort of like a cross between The Phantom Tollbooth and L. Frank Baum’s classic Oz series. It’s also a bit metatextual, as “A. Deborah Baker” is a pen name for the real author Seanan McGuire, whose (rather adult) novel Middlegame mentions and quotes from Over the Woodward Wall as a fictitious text hiding secret lessons on alchemy. The writer later decided to expand those excerpts into a full book, giving this title a status similar to Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On, which famously originated as a story within a different work too. Readers don’t have to pick up the earlier volume first — and a younger audience emphatically should not — but coming at this one with an understanding of its original purpose does add something to the experience.

I initially expected to give this project a four-star rating based on how it starts, but the ultimate shape of the plot is largely a sequence of unrelated encounters, and the ending feels somewhat sudden and anticlimactic. I’m invested enough to check out the forthcoming sequel, but the present narrative doesn’t resolve quite as strongly as it begins.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd-Jones

Book #35 of 2021:

The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd-Jones

It’s always neat to see a fantasy story built on Welsh mythology, but the plot to this one is a slower and pretty generic quest narrative, and I haven’t quite found the protagonists interesting enough to justify spending so much of the novel with just the two of them journeying together. (And the reviewers who call this a friends-to-lovers arc are mistaken — the characters don’t even know each other at the start, and they are clearly set up as mutual romantic interests as soon as they first meet.) The antagonist is a fairly one-note greedy landlord too, and the atmosphere isn’t as spooky as I’d like for all the zombie revenants wandering around the countryside. I do appreciate that the hero has a chronic pain condition, and the inclusion of a friendly undead goat is an unexpected delight, but overall this book has only sporadically managed to grab my attention.

★★★☆☆

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