The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams

Book #96 of 2021:

The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams

This story starts off on the wrong foot — taking the first 4% to wax rhapsodic about the soul of dictionaries before we even meet a single character — and somehow grows worse from there. It’s a split timeline, with one lexicographer protagonist in Victorian times inventing words to sneak into the volume he works for (whilst inexplicably faking a lisp), and the other in the modern day tasked with rooting out those false entries for the latest edition. Neither has any great motivation for any of their actions, nor any particular stakes in the event of failure. Then hardly anything happens, a few would-be twists land with a thud, and in the end, nothing really gets resolved and the two halves of the narrative never intersect on any meaningful level of plot or theme.

Sometimes I can tell that a book is not a good fit for me right away, but still spot some potential and carry on in the hopes that I’ll settle into it as I go. In this case, I’m a bona fide word nerd who loves archaic and obscure etymologies and thinks a novel built around a hunt for mountweazels could be fun! But my optimism is dashed at every turn by the execution here, turning what might have been merely a subpar reading experience into a frankly disastrous one.

[Content warning for bomb threats and homophobia.]

★☆☆☆☆

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Book Review: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Book #95 of 2021:

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

This novel offers a beautiful assortment of character studies, although it feels less like a single coherent plot and instead an intricate mosaic of interrelated lives. Central to the web of connections are two light-skinned black girls, identical twins who seem inseparable until the day one decides to run away and reinvent herself as white. From that point their paths — and those of their eventual children — diverge, only to weave back together in surprising fashion later on.

Author Brit Bennett paints an immersive and intimate picture of mid-century southern African American existence, her narrative ultimately spanning from the 1950s to the 1990s and exploring the concept and costs of ‘passing’ as a trans issue as well as a racial one. I don’t love how, as with many such intergenerational sagas, we end up skimming through some of the years, and the fractured nature of the storytelling results in certain figures exiting the tale when I still want to follow them and see where they go next. But leaving a reader longing for more is hardly a major flaw, and the work as a whole is a remarkable achievement.

[Content warning for racism including slurs, colorism, transphobia, and domestic abuse.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Mysterious Disappearance of Aidan S. (as told to his brother) by David Levithan

Book #94 of 2021:

The Mysterious Disappearance of Aidan S. (as told to his brother) by David Levithan

I love a nice postmodern portal fantasy, and this middle-grade novel spins a premise I don’t think I’ve seen before, where the focus is not on a child who vanishes into another world, but on a sibling who hears that story upon their return. By rooting us to that perspective, author David Levithan is able to both explore a distinctive constellation of emotions and maintain a tense ambiguity over whether the journey happened at all. (The ending eventually does resolve that question, but I feel the majority of the text is stronger for keeping either option plausible for so long.)

I also like how the disbelieving parents and other characters clearly express their worry that the protagonist’s brother is hiding or suppressing some earthbound traumatic experience to account for the week he’s been missing, rather than simply being unable to accept his report of green skies and unicorns and therefore angry that he’s lying. That adds a depth not often granted to adults in this sort of narrative, and further pushes against the default genre assumption that magic is real by reminding us how we’d likely react to someone in our own life spinning such a tale.

A quick read but a good one, with some neat normalized / non-stigmatized gay and trans representation on the margins for its middle-school audience. Definitely recommended!

[Content warning for bullying.]

★★★★☆

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TV Review: Star Wars Rebels, season 1

TV #32 of 2021:

Star Wars Rebels, season 1

This cartoon is definitely kid-friendly, but it offers a lot to older Star Wars fans as well, and largely avoids the sort of slapstick humor and wacky episode premises that could be so grating in The Clone Wars. As the first TV show in the franchise produced after Disney acquired the intellectual property in 2012, I’d say that bodes well for the seasons ahead. This debut year is already keeping a tight focus on its core characters, and although so far they seem only half-interested in being the titular rebels — and half in carrying out the kind of smuggling operations that can help themselves and the little guys of the galaxy at the Empire’s expense — it seems clear that the overall plot arc will involve the Alliance forming around them. Perhaps because I’m rewatching Firefly right now, I also keep seeing parallels between those two crews and the general ethos of storytelling that they represent, which speaks to how quickly the shipboard dynamic here has gelled.

The program is further strengthened by a few smart design choices, which again improve upon the previous series. Gone is the blocky animation style, and in its place is a look that evokes the classic film trilogy. (Zeb’s species is literally based on early concept art for Chewbacca!) The John Williams musical cues are there too, and even the setting, five years before the original movie, really makes the venture feel like the familiar Star Wars that we know and love. Plus as a viewer, I’m just so much more invested in that era than I’ve ever been in the Republic of the prequels.

This initial run features a fair bit of setup and mysteries teased for later, but it generally breezes past as a fun way to get acquainted with these new protagonists and their moment in history. And while neither of the big continuity reveals in the finale quite surprises me, they both reinforce how solid a foundation this has been and suggest an even brighter future yet to come.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Things My Son Needs to Know about the World by Fredrik Backman

Book #93 of 2021:

Things My Son Needs to Know about the World by Fredrik Backman

Author Fredrik Backman’s collection of parental / life wisdom, ostensibly addressed to his one-year-old, is certainly funny, but it lacks the heart and insight that I’m used to from his novels. It also relies on a few tired gender stereotypes throughout, with anecdotes that generally cast himself as the clueless but fun manchild and his wife as the more straitlaced partner who knows her way around things like picking the right sort of diaper at the store which somehow baffle him. As a book it’s short enough that it doesn’t exactly overstay its welcome, but it’s so rambling in that limited space that it doesn’t make a great case for itself either. I’ll definitely be sticking to this writer’s fiction from now on.

[Content warning for gun violence.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick

Book #92 of 2021:

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick

A fascinating personal glimpse into life under the repressive regime of North Korea, drawing on deep interviews with escaped citizens as well as journalist Barbara Demick’s general experience in the region. This 2009 book — focusing mainly on the two preceding decades, especially the transition from the rule of founder Kim Il-sung to his son Kim Jong-il upon the former’s death in 1994 — reminds me of Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns, which in depicting the American era of Jim Crow and the Great Migration similarly presents a small group of subjects at length to illuminate the larger trends that have emerged during the author’s research process. It’s astonishing to realize this level of impoverishment and absolute government control (via rigid indoctrination, panopticon, and secret police) can exist in a contemporary society, and remarkable to hear how people managed to survive and ultimately break away to become refugees in a wider world they’d been lied to about for their entire lives.

Much of this information has been new to me, and the writer does an excellent job at sketching her participants in details of shocking clarity. I’ve found it worthwhile both as a biographical account of these individuals and as a primer on their nation, and it provides valuable context for understanding the conflicts there that regularly make international news. It’s upsetting yet informative, and Demick ends on a note that has certainly proved prescient with time: that the totalitarian state shows no signs of collapse, despite what anyone might wish or assume to the contrary.

[Content warning for suicide, cannibalism, gaslighting, and sexism.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

Book #91 of 2021:

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert (The Hazel Wood #1)

Quite a lot in this YA portal fantasy doesn’t work for me, but I think it mostly comes down to the characters. Alice, our protagonist — yes, this is largely a riff on Alice in Wonderland — is just so angry and irrational throughout, and I never get the sense that anything is particularly justifying that authorial choice, even after we learn more about her origins and her mysterious family history. There’s also a dweeby love interest who seems to like her better whenever she snaps at him, and a supporting cast of nonentities who generally exist to either lurk menacingly or babble ominous yet unhelpful riddles at the girl.

Plotwise, she spends over half the book simply trying to enter the strange land from her grandmother’s writing, and once there, she finds a hazy and generic fairytale kingdom that’s nowhere near as dark and twisted as its reputation would suggest. Indeed, the excerpts or retellings of those stories that Althea shared about the place are by far the most effective part of this novel, and there’s a frustrating disconnect when the heroine finally gets to witness them firsthand. I really struggle to stay invested in the stakes of her journey, which makes it harder to ignore the contrivances and inconsistencies that pepper the text as well.

Author Melissa Albert occasionally manages some distinctive flourishes around the edges of this project, but on the whole, I’m pretty underwhelmed.

[Content for racism, sexism, domestic abuse, and gore.]

★★☆☆☆

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Patreon Reminder

Taking a quick pause from my usual posting schedule — I’ve hit an average of one new book review per day for the first 90 days of this year! — to remind folks that I have a Patreon set up for anyone who’d like to support my reviews on a recurring monthly basis. There are reward tiers for more generous donors as well:

Bronze — $1 or more per month

Thank you for your support! I rely on my library for books whenever I can, but by donating at this level you’re helping to offset the cost of acquiring titles they don’t have.

Silver — $5 or more per month

Donate at this level to nominate books for me! Every month, I’ll take the current suggestions made by Silver donors and select one title to read and review.

Gold — $25 or more per month

Donate at this level and you can directly pick a book for me to read and review every single month!

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Thanks for following, reading, and commenting whether you can subscribe to the Patreon or not! If you’d like to join, you can click one of the links above or go straight to the Silver nominating page for April 2021 here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/49470689

Book Review: True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee by Abraham Riesman

Book #90 of 2021:

True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee by Abraham Riesman

Drawing on years of archive research and interviews with Stan Lee’s closest associates, this new biography is probably the definitive account of the Marvel Comics editor-turned-Hollywood cameo superstar. It also complicates if not contradicts a lot of our established ideas about the man, right down to the claim that he invented many of his company’s most famous and beloved properties. (Illustrators Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko contend that their hands-off boss often had minimal input over his underlings’ creations, while Disney understandably favors the interpretation that all contracts stemming from his assertion of copyright are legitimate, but there isn’t much solid evidence on either side.)

Journalist Abraham Riesman does not flat-out conclude that the genesis of Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and the like owed little to Lee’s mind, but he presents reasonable arguments to that effect and a mountain of other circumstances where his subject clearly twisted the truth to suit his ends. Most previous biographers and chroniclers of comic history seem to have generally taken the legend at his word on everything, but Riesman is a diligent fact-checker who turns up case after case of verifiable falsehoods throughout the editor’s long career. He also stresses that these stories are important for understanding how Stan saw himself and wanted to be seen by others, and so should not be simply dismissed as lies. In many ways, the biggest fiction that he sold to mass audiences was the packaged character of Stan Lee.

Overall, this is a thorough and holistic piece of reporting, spanning from the Romanian Jewish roots of Lee’s family and how he came to reject that aspect of his life — a topic that does not appear to have attracted much serious attention before this work — all through the rising fame to a bitter end amid allegations of betrayal, fraud, and elder abuse. It’s perhaps not a great book for those who revere this giant of the industry, but it is certainly an eye-opening experience for anyone who doesn’t mind having their illusions shattered.

[Content warning for racism, sexism, and antisemitism including violence and slurs.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson

Book #89 of 2021:

The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn #3)

This closing volume to the original Mistborn trilogy is another outstanding adventure by the standards of the epic fantasy genre at large, but I think it’s perhaps just a minor step down from the first two books. The malevolent force called Ruin and his vampiric power of hemalurgy get a great showcase in the battle for the fate of the world, and it’s thrilling how the reader’s new knowledge of them recasts and lends greater depth to previous events as well — to say nothing of the clear connections with the wider cosmere canon. Yet at the same time, the novel spends a little too much energy on explaining all these revelations, which sometimes makes it feel more like a very interesting encyclopedia entry or writer Q&A than a specific plot we’re following in the moment. It doesn’t help that the big allomantic action sequences are starting to seem a bit rote by this point either, now that the protagonists are so skilled that they’re regularly ripping through entire armies with ease.

When the characters emerge from the lore surprises and combat scenes, they’re as engaging as ever, and I particularly love both Spook’s heroic arc and the respect and care with which author Brandon Sanderson approaches Sazed’s depression. (He improves further on matters of mental health representation in his later series The Stormlight Archive, but I had forgotten or never realized the early appearance here.) And the worldbuilding remains an incredible achievement that adds an immersive lived-in quality to everything, even while the show-versus-tell balance of this element is growing somewhat skewed.

Finally, the text absolutely nails the apocalyptic atmosphere of this climactic showdown, gradually raising the stakes of the threat until we can truly believe that all life on Scadrial might be wiped out. And thanks to the skill that Sanderson has brought to establishing this setting and the fierce personalities who populate it, that’s a danger with real bite throughout. Although I may take issue with some of the pacing, it’s hard to argue against the overall effectiveness of this finale as a capstone and sendoff to the phenomenal story he’s been telling all along.

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

This title: ★★★★☆

Overall series: ★★★★★

Volumes ranked: 1 > 2 > 3

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