The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Willow Moss and the Lost Day by Dominique Valente

Book #190 of 2020:

Willow Moss and the Lost Day by Dominique Valente (Starfell #1)

A whimsical yet somewhat generic children’s fantasy novel. I’d still maybe recommend it to kids or their parents who are tired of rereading classics like The Enchanted Forest Chronicles and The Two Princesses of Bamarre, but there’s not really much in this first Starfell volume demanding its own place in that company. Although I enjoy the motivating incident of no one remembering what happened last Tuesday, I feel like that rather dissipates as a plot concern with each new introduction of someone drawing a ridiculous conclusion from their short-term amnesia. And between the stock fairy tale elements and the heavy exposition, it’s just hard to get a great sense of the protagonist’s character or the exact stakes of her world.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Doctor Who: Rose by Russell T. Davies

Book #189 of 2020:

Doctor Who: Rose by Russell T. Davies

This novelization of Doctor Who’s first Ninth Doctor episode from 2005 is made more interesting by the fact that it wasn’t written until 2018, and author / former showrunner Russell T. Davies has approached the project less as a strict retelling and more as an opportunity for some light revisionist history. Certain scenes feel as though they may have been cut from the original script due to budget or time constraints, but there are also references to things that clearly weren’t in canon yet, including brief descriptions of the Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth, and Thirteenth Doctors — plus two regenerations that are still unknown: “a tall, bald black woman wielding a flaming sword” and “a young girl or boy in a hi-tech wheelchair.” That’s cute, and a great move to make the franchise more diverse, but it can be a tad distracting too.

(Davies introduces a new minor character who is trans as well, but since he then makes repeated mention of her deadname, that’s maybe not the best sort of representation.)

Beyond simply revisiting a fun story, my favorite part of this book is probably the deeper insight into Rose Tyler’s character, particularly her chemistry with the Doctor and her thought process from the climax through the end. I wouldn’t call this an essential read by any measure, and I’m sort of confused as to the target audience, but it’s about as solid as the modern Who pilot on which it’s based.

[Content warning for graphic violence and implied sexual harassment including unsolicited adult photos.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Lord Foul’s Bane by Stephen R. Donaldson

Book #188 of 2020:

Lord Foul’s Bane by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever #1)

On the surface, this 1977 novel is a Narnia-style portal fantasy, in which a person from our reality travels to another and gets caught up in an epic quest. The lush worldbuilding is as intricate and achingly beautiful as anything in Middle-earth, and there are even some specific Tolkien parallels to be drawn (although that mostly comes across as author Stephen R. Donaldson engaging with the same archetypes, rather than emulating The Lord of the Rings directly). I love the distinctive culture and sense of history to this realm, and I think I would enjoy reading stories set there no matter what.

What really elevates the series, however, is Donaldson’s marriage of that setting to a deep psychological drama driven by his protagonist’s anguish. Thomas Covenant suffers from leprosy, a debilitating condition that cannot be cured but can merely be managed by strict self-discipline and constant monitoring of one’s body for the damage that dead nerves won’t report. Lepers can’t afford to lose themselves in delusions that would distract from self-care, and so when Covenant finds himself magically translated to the Land and healed of his illness, his only recourse is to insist that he’s dreaming and reject the role of prophesied hero that has been thrust upon him.

The “all just a dream” trope can be hacky when deployed as a conclusion, robbing the preceding events of their import, but by frontloading it as a question, Donaldson reverses that traditional equation and navigates a delicate tension. If the Land has a genuine existence and the self-styled Unbeliever doesn’t act to save it, he will have doomed its people to an awful fate. Yet if it’s instead a lie that he lets seduce him, his mental health may never recover. Although the later volumes increasingly lean towards the interpretation that everything is real after all — as does the immediacy of the world here and probably the typical reader’s expectations of the genre — the weight of Covenant’s dilemma and what it drives him to do is sharply poignant.

Most controversially, an early chapter of this first book sees the tortured antihero attack and rape a sixteen-year-old girl, whom he takes as another figment invented by his own subconscious to torment him. It’s an ugly act that he grows to repudiate and decidedly not something we’re meant to endorse, but I can understand how that’s not an element everyone is prepared to tolerate in their escapist literature. And while the assault has dire repercussions that follow, it’s somewhat problematically positioned by the text as primarily afflicting the rapist himself, rather than his victim or her community.

Ultimately Lord Foul’s Bane and the wider saga it begins explore the philosophical thesis of whether the actions we take in our dreams can be understood morally; whether hate must be resisted and beauty preserved at any cost to the soul. It’s a nuanced theme in a grand locale, full of fierce characters and dazzling magics, and it’s what makes this work a true postmodern classic.

★★★★★

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TV Review: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., season 7

TV #31 of 2020:

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., season 7

The plot logistics go somewhat off the rails by the end, but overall, this is a fun and confident sendoff to the unlikely durable Marvel property. Time travel allows the season to play in a lighter key than usual, more akin to DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, which is especially welcome after a dour penultimate run. It also grants the series a bit of a victory lap, revisiting characters and concepts from its own history and even the wider MCU. Connecting with Daniel Sousa from the long-cancelled Marvel’s Agent Carter is a particular delight, as is having a young John Garrett played by the son of his late original actor.

As with the larger show, it’s not exactly a flawless endeavor. Iain De Caestecker’s lack of availability for most episodes hinders the storytelling and weakens its most engaging personal dynamic, and the villains probably aren’t the most memorable to go out on. There are a ton of other elements from earlier years that could have come back too and don’t, which seems like a missed opportunity the more you consider the cameo possibilities and how this really was the last chance to get closure on anything that had been dropped over the course of the S.H.I.E.L.D. narrative. Still, it’s a fine conclusion for the most part, and of course a far cry from the program’s notoriously rocky early days.

This season: ★★★★☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

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

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Book Review: Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Book #187 of 2020:

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Although this free-verse memoir captures some great impressionistic snapshots of author Jacqueline Woodson growing up amid the dawning Civil Rights movement, it’s overall a tad short and disjointed for my tastes. I’d still recommend the title for younger readers, especially those interested in a black child’s perspective of that era, but I think I prefer a more cohesive personal narrative in this sort of project myself. Woodson is clearly a talented writer, though, so I’ll have to check out some of her longer prose at some point to see if I like that any better.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Destroy All Monsters by Sam J. Miller

Book #186 of 2020:

Destroy All Monsters by Sam J. Miller

This novel plays with some interesting ideas, but it’s developed too loosely to be very effective. The two teenage protagonists, both repressing a certain trauma from when they were kids, are literally now living in different worlds: her in something like our reality and him in a parallel fantasy land. Versions of one another (and of the rest of the characters) show up in each one’s story, so that the Solomon chapters have him and his pet dinosaur interacting with “Princess Ash,” and the Ashley chapters feature her childhood friend Solomon as a homeless runaway. The twin tracks somewhat bleed through over time, but for the most part they’re separate and just hitting similar plot beats.

The biggest issue here is the vague worldbuilding, both in terms of how the paired narratives are supposed to connect and of the magical setting in particular. There are few specific details bringing Darkside City to life — which could be okay if we were meant to understand it as a delusion, but that doesn’t seem to be what author Sam J. Miller is going for. As a place that’s real and meaningful for its inhabitants, it’s too poorly fleshed-out for the stakes to ever register.

There’s also a weird recurring element of antisemitism in Ash’s storyline, always called out by the heroine but pretty strange for a book with no major Jewish figures. (Solomon’s absent mom is described as Orthodox, as is a classmate acquaintance, but we’re given no indication that he himself is, in either dimension.) As with a lot of the muddiness to the title, it’s not clear why this exact bigotry comes up so much, and although I believe the writer is Jewish, this is not an #ownvoices project, and it tends to situate Jews as merely the props for a gentile ally’s indignation.

[Content warning for incest and sexual assault of a child.]

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Book #185 of 2020:

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

It takes a while for me to warm up to this novel about an English butler looking back on his life, and I still wouldn’t say I love it by the end. Yet I have come to appreciate author Kazuo Ishiguro’s skill at conveying the oblique truths behind the postures asserted by his aging narrator, even if that does little to endear me to the figure himself (who feels a degree of shame over his association with a Nazi sympathizer, for instance, but never quite admits the man’s faults or condemns them). The plot is slow and rather dull, and although I realize from the book’s critical reputation that I’m in the distinct minority here, I find the constant stiff-upper-lip shtick to be nothing but wearisome. It’s a decent character study, but hardly a riveting read.

I do like this title marginally more than the writer’s equally beloved Never Let Me Go — which bored me to tears — but I think I’m through with Ishiguro after this.

[Content warning for antisemitic apologism, racist slurs, and mention of blackface.]

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: Star Wars: The Clone Wars, season 1

TV #30 of 2020:

Star Wars: The Clone Wars, season 1

This first season of the CGI show is a definite improvement over the 2008 feature film, and I appreciate the travelogue aspect of showing off different Star Wars settings. Still, it seems pretty nonessential to the canon so far, beyond the rare glimpses of Anakin and Padmé’s secret love affair. I realize this program is aimed at a younger audience than the live-action movies, and that the continuity is somewhat boxed in by Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, yet the narrative stakes just aren’t doing much to grab my attention. If anything, I feel like I’m more on the side of the Separatist droids, since the writing seldom bothers to articulate why their leaving the Republic would be such a bad thing.

Heck, I’m not even sure where my sympathies are intended to lie here. The prequel trilogy is clearly pitched around the downfall of Anakin Skywalker so that viewers will perceive him as a tragic figure rather than a typical protagonist, but I don’t really get the same feeling from his cartoon version. For now, at least, he seems flattened into a standard hero role by the series, and that’s boring and weird even if probably more kid-friendly. Much as I can’t tell the difference between all the clone soldiers, I’m having trouble investing in the doomed Jedi without a clearer sense to this part of his arc.

[Content warning for a fictional slur that’s uncomfortably close to a real one.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh

Book #183 of 2020:

Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh

At first, this novel seems like it will be a simple whodunnit, perhaps even a Miss Marple pastiche, with its 72-year-old heroine making inquiries among the residents of her small town. The case stems from an unsigned note she’s found in the woods nearby: “Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her body.” Adding to the mystery, there is no actual corpse accompanying the paper.

Instead of really investigating, however, Vesta begins imagining details from the dead woman’s life, sinking into elaborate fantasies she comes to half-believe, which gradually reveal elements of her own history and that of her late husband in turn. As with the depressive narrator of author Ottessa Moshfegh’s earlier My Year of Rest and Relaxation, the widow can be very frustrating to read as she circles around and around in her head, stubbornly refusing to ever get up and act like a conventional protagonist.

This is a book I admire for its craft more than I actually enjoy seeing its (meager) events unfold. It’s a wrenching depiction of creeping senility, yet also a blistering satire of the Nero Wolfe school of fictional detectives who confidently make wild deductions absent any real evidence. I credit the writer for provoking an emotional reaction from me, but that rarely goes deeper than rank exasperation.

[Content / spoiler warning for fatphobia, slut-shaming, domestic abuse, animal cruelty, and death of a dog.]

★★★☆☆

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