The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Snuff by Terry Pratchett

Book #43 of 2021:

Snuff by Terry Pratchett (Discworld #39)

Another fine comic adventure, but not quite up to author Terry Pratchett’s best work, which makes it all the more regrettable that this is where we leave the stalwart Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. The writer finished just one or two further Discworld novels before his death, and based on this title (the latest I’ve read), it does not appear that he was actively planning to conclude the series or resolve any of its loose story and character arcs.

The main problem with this volume is that its conceit of Vimes on holiday is rather aimless. Of course there ends up being some nearby criminal activity that the watchman senses and feels drawn to investigate, but for a good portion of the text, the only real concern is how his urban-honed instincts rub up against the countryside way of life. Both a light Jane Austen homage and the eventual check-in with the protagonist’s subordinates back home seem somewhat perfunctory, not to mention largely disconnected from what becomes his new case.

It’s still a drolly amusing tale for the most part — especially if you like jokes about small children and their interest in feces — and one that manages to treat its heavier topics like discrimination and slavery with the care they deserve. But it lacks the heart and clever plotting that the setting has achieved elsewhere, and is overall a poorer note for the Watch to go out on.

[Content warning for reference to statutory rape.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

Book #42 of 2021:

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

I like the idea of setting this story in a near-future dystopia where climate change has led to mass extinctions, but the overall project is a bit of a misfire for me. I’m deeply uninterested in the narrator’s mysterious past, which comes out in dribs and drabs over the course of the novel yet seems built around a few would-be twists that are predictable from page one. Playing coy with the reader thus becomes an exercise in tedium, especially given how much the flashbacks concern our protagonist’s gross romance with her pushy older professor. The action in the present is slightly more engaging as she joins the crew of one of the last fishing vessels to follow the migratory path of a flock to their quarry, but I still just haven’t really enjoyed spending time with this character and all her sordid secrets.

Also: this is petty, but if you’re going to write about ornithologists, perhaps consider recruiting one to proofread your text. I’m not an expert and can’t speak to most of this book’s contents on the matter, but I do know it’s categorically false that mother birds reject any eggs or hatchlings that happen to be touched by people. Having a scientist claim otherwise in the closing denouement robs it of any meager power the tale might have managed to achieve.

[Content warning for mental illness, sexual assault, stillbirth, suicide, and gore.]

★★☆☆☆

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TV Review: The Stand

TV #16 of 2021:

The Stand

There’s a promising start to this recent adaptation of Stephen King’s post-apocalyptic epic, which adopts a bold new nonlinear approach to introduce its main characters both surviving the immediate downfall of society across America and establishing a new settlement in the remains of Boulder. Remixing the narrative in that fashion allows the program to skip past a few slower stretches and establish the larger plot stakes far sooner than in the original text, which instead opts to expand its scope gradually over the course of many chapters.

Unfortunately, the very parts that are dropped turn out to be pretty necessary for fleshing out these protagonists as people, and the show quickly falls into the habit of delivering faithful but empty spectacle with little room for agentive and reflective choices on anyone’s part. It also takes the late-stage Game of Thrones technique of showing a departure and then an arrival, with no patience for the journey in-between that offers so much rich development in the book. King has described The Stand as his version of The Lord of the Rings, and on the page it shares those lengthy passages of travel companions growing closer mile after weary mile. On screen, few if any of the relationships ring with the same depths.

Inherited weaknesses like the magical negro trope go unaddressed as well, a fact which is disappointing for a property with the benefit of four decades of hindsight. The series makes an attempt at better representation around the edges — Larry Underwood is now black; Ralph Brentner is now Ray — but it drastically cuts down the already-slim importance of neurodivergent figures Tom Cullen and the still-poorly-named Trashcan Man, in addition to casting neurotypical performers to play them. Similarly, the deaf and mute Nick Andros is portrayed by an actor who is neither, and often seems like an afterthought to the script. And the enemy setting of New Vegas has been transformed from a fascistic dystopia into a gaudy sex carnival, thereby blunting its power and reinforcing a dated message that queerness is deviant — a moral not to be found in the 1978 source novel!

The cast members generally do a decent job with the material they’re provided, and the early hours bring the horror of a global pandemic to life in a way that would be striking even if we weren’t experiencing a milder one ourselves at the time of release — a coincidence given how far in advance this project was greenlit and filmed, but certainly one that adds further poignance to the scenes of deathbeds and crowded hospitals. Although this is far from the most effective iteration of The Stand overall, such moments go a long way towards reminding viewers why the story has endured.

[Content warning for rape and gore.]

★★☆☆☆

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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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