The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: The Smallest Lights in the Universe: A Memoir by Sara Seager

Book #245 of 2020:

The Smallest Lights in the Universe: A Memoir by Sara Seager

This title is a firsthand account of author Sara Seager’s experiences with death — primarily that of her young husband to cancer, but also those of her father, a dog, and two cats — as well as a look at her career as an astrophysicist trying to mathematically detect habitable planets in the far reaches of space. At times, these threads echo each other powerfully, with the writer talking about loss and grief in terms of the subtle gravitational effects by things unseen. But too often, it feels as though there are job chapters and there are family chapters, without any particular effort to stitch them together into a cohesive whole.

Seager keeps readers at a bit of a distance too, mentioning people or activities who are important to her personal life but seldom providing enough details to make us understand the appeal. When she does elaborate, it’s sometimes even worse — as when her partner names a dog after his favorite Ayn Rand character, then later renames the pet so that they can bestow the original name on a daughter instead. It sure seems like the author intends that anecdote to endear us to the man, but for me it’s downright horrifying.

(It’s possible my alienation here stems in part from the fact that Seager is autistic, but that’s not an issue I’ve encountered with other writers or friends who are on the spectrum.)

I’ve found myself more interested in her professional sphere, which she presents as disappointingly cutthroat, petty, and sexist rather than the high-minded science one might expect. It’s not altogether inspiring, but the breakthroughs are neat to learn about from an expert, and I probably would have liked the book better had it focused solely on that.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Red Hood by Elana K. Arnold

Book #244 of 2020:

Red Hood by Elana K. Arnold

A dark and gory feminist tale, perfect for the chilly weather and dimmer evenings we’re getting now at the tail end of the year. It’s a loose retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, where the girl in the woods is a teenager going home to her grandmother’s house after a homecoming dance, and when she manages to kill the wolf that attacks her, its corpse transforms into the naked body of a boy from school. And he’s not the only one out there.

What follows is a brutal look at male violence and entitlement, made stronger by the late reveal that even in a supernatural setting, not all of the villains are werewolves. Some threats stay stubbornly human in form, and so are harder to dispatch. (There are good men here too, just to clarify, but they’re not the focus of the story.)

Although not initially sold on the second-person point-of-view — or the graphic descriptions of sex and menstruation — I’ve ended up drawn in by the immediacy of the text and author Elana K. Arnold’s clear talent for poetical prose. Certain readers may object that the novel is a celebration of vigilante justice, but as the protagonist herself says: “It’s not that we need more wolf hunters. It’s that we need men to stop becoming wolves.” The very fact that I wasn’t sure this book was for me practically demanded that I sit with that discomfort and keep reading, and I’m ultimately quite glad I did.

[Content warning for sexism, domestic abuse, death of a parent, MRA/incel rhetoric, slut-shaming, and sexual assault/rape.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko

Book #243 of 2020:

Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko (Raybearer #1)

A lovely piece of #ownvoices YA fantasy, with an all-black cast and imaginative worldbuilding loosely inspired by West African mythology. Debut author Jordan Ifueko is clearly breaking from the eurocentric genre norm here, but she also seems to have ventured further afield from the Orisha folklore that’s popped up in recent similar projects like Akata Witch, Children of Blood and Bone, or Kingdom of Souls, giving the novel an even more distinctive feel.

Every magic-user in this setting has their own rare gift, and the heroine’s ability to read and erase other people’s memories by touch allows for some interesting applications throughout the story without ever growing overpowered. Plotwise, she’s been sent to infiltrate a prince’s high council at the command of her cruel and distant mother, a woman whose antagonistic stance is complicated by certain revelations about her backstory that eventually come to light. Joining up in a linked cadre of sorcerers to support the emperor’s heir, the girl must decide her true loyalties and resist the compulsions that friend and foe alike seek to lay on her.

There are a lot of surprises in this book, both in the form of unusual developments and in terms of tired tropes that the writer neatly avoids. (A potential love triangle, for instance, is quickly shut down because one character is actually asexual and the other two only have eyes for one another.) I’ve had a blast reading this, and I’m almost disappointed that I checked it out as a new release and now have to wait so long for the sequel.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

Book #242 of 2020:

Night Watch by Terry Pratchett (Discworld #29)

This wasn’t my first Discworld title, but for a long time, it was the only one I had read in the subseries about the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. It’s the volume I’ve reread the most as well, so I can attest that it works just fine for a reader without any particular background knowledge of the characters or setting. (In fact, returning to it now after having finally checked out the previous Watch books, I’m almost disappointed to find how little they add to my appreciation or understanding of events — other than to marvel at how author Terry Pratchett has improved upon his already-considerable talents and avoided all his usual faults.)

The core of this story is a Back to the Future sort of plot, in which Commander Sam Vimes pursues a serial killer through a magical storm that sends the two of them into Sam’s own past, when he was a rookie officer and the city-state was on the verge of revolt. It’s great for the time-travel shenanigans of our protagonist striving in disguise to keep history on track, but also for the distinctive atmosphere simmering with tensions from a paranoid ruler, his corrupt secret police, and the ensuing social unrest. Pratchett owes a debt to revolutionary tales like Les Miserables, but he makes this version all his own via his trademark wit and clear affection for the soul of his creations.

I think the reason I love this novel so much is that Vimes is fundamentally a hero with clarity of right and wrong in a murky and uncertain moment where many are tempted to descend to their worst impulses. He has the benefit of coming from a later era, but he’s still a beacon for the people around him and a model for what peacekeeping should be. (The scenes of him training up his fellow guards, I now realize, are a lot like Raoden rallying the Elantrians towards good civic leadership in another favorite of mine.) I’m so moved by this effort to improve a small corner of the world, and so caught up in the personal struggle not to despair over the things that nevertheless can’t be saved.

If you’ve never read any Discworld before, or simply haven’t gotten to this one yet, I definitely recommend picking it up.

★★★★★

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TV Review: The Office, season 4

TV #42 of 2020:

The Office, season 4

This is a deceptively light season of the classic workplace sitcom, with few of the plot shake-ups that have marked previous years. But there is still the structure of Ryan’s time at corporate bookending this particular run, and some new romantic developments offer intriguing forward momentum that likewise keeps the status quo from ever growing too stale.

Most importantly — thirteen-year-old spoiler alert — Jim and Pam are finally dating! And although many TV will-they-won’t-they dynamics lose their spark once they solidify into a relationship, these two officemates are honestly just so cute and fun to see together at last. Admittedly we’re given precious little of their actual private life, but the energy they now bring to work is endearingly adorable (as well as simply a nice change from their earlier angst).

On the downside, all these extra-long episodes can tend to drag a bit, and there probably aren’t too many individual series-best outings here besides the wonderfully awful piece of cringe comedy that is “Dinner Party.” Yet it’s nevertheless another great slice of a great program that — for now, at least — shows no sign of slowing down.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Our Time Is Now by Stacey Abrams

Book #241 of 2020:

Our Time Is Now by Stacey Abrams

Author Stacey Abrams witnessed unprecedented levels of voter suppression in her 2018 campaign for Georgia governor (in which her opponent was the state official doing most of the suppressing), and even the slight fraction that she presents here should be infuriating to anyone who believes in true democracy. But this book is less of a campaign post-mortem like Hillary Clinton’s What Happened, and more of a broad look at the many ways that people in twenty-first century America can still be denied their constitutional right to vote, a process that systematically affects minority voters at a highly disproportionate rate. From subjective determination of matching signatures to last-minute polling location changes to purges of infrequent voters to inadequate resources creating long lines and ballot shortages and so much more, Abrams walks us through the thicket of manufactured obstacles to full enfranchisement that allows a shrinking demographic to hold onto political power at all costs.

The writer splits her time in this work between detailing such obstructions (and related processes like gerrymandering) and offering smart policy solutions to address them. There’s a benefit just in bringing sunlight to some of these shady practices, but Abrams also illustrates how state and federal laws could be bolstered to protect against such abuse, and to increase access to voting more generally. There are vanishingly few instances of voter fraud — illegally casting a ballot in someone else’s name — but millions of cases where citizens have had their vote denied for any number of petty reasons. Although this sort of argument often falls along partisan lines, Abrams lays out a passionate and principled case for why we should all want as broad an electorate as possible for a fully representative voice in steering our country.

★★★★☆

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TV Review: The Good Wife, season 7

TV #41 of 2020:

The Good Wife, season 7

The penultimate run of this legal drama petered out by the end, but this final year is somehow another big step down. On a scene-by-scene basis The Good Wife continues to bear a surface resemblance to the show it used to be, but the characterizations and interpersonal dynamics are almost entirely gone. It’s not just that no one in the cast really seems like who they’ve been for the past six years — they don’t even have consistent motivations from hour to hour anymore. Plot drives whatever momentary stances these people now claim, and it’s not even a terribly interesting season plot in the first place.

Or as I put it back in 2016:

“The last two seasons saw the writers lose all sense of who their characters were, with loyalties and convictions shifting from episode to episode. It became really hard to seriously invest in the drama, since every character except maybe the main one became more or less a perpetual blank slate. The acting on the show remained top-notch, including season seven’s new additions of Cush Jumbo and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, but the writing just wasn’t there for them. Plotwise too, this season had a lot of issues where things were initially explored but then dropped and never picked back up again.”

It’s a pretty disappointing end to what was a legitimately great series in its prime, and a terrible setup for its spin-off sequel The Good Fight, which I still haven’t seen. (I particularly wonder how Jumbo’s role of Lucca Quinn fares in that transition, given her lack of any coherent characterization on this parent program.) I unfortunately maintain what I wrote in my recent review for season 6: that 6×11 is probably the best stopping point, saving the viewer from so much empty gesturing that follows from there.

This season: ★★☆☆☆

Overall series: ★★★★☆

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

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Book Review: The Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kowal

Book #240 of 2020:

The Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kowal (Lady Astronaut #2)

This alternative history sequel furthers the accelerated timeline for space travel after the natural disaster of the original novel, with most of its new plot concerning a 1960s first voyage to Mars. That’s fun to see play out via Apollo-level technology, and fans of The Martian will likely enjoy how the crew must scramble to solve various crises with minimal resources so far from earth. There’s not much rising action across the journey, yet the rhythms of life on-board the shuttle are deeply captivating.

In fact, the main appeal of this mid-century setting is the way author Mary Robinette Kowal continues to incorporate the social tensions of the era, such as the realistic discrimination faced by her astronauts of color throughout the trip. I especially appreciate how our white heroine objects to this treatment but cannot resolve it — and how her well-meaning sympathies get called out when she too makes mistakes. It’s a great model for responsive allyship, and is impressive for how seamlessly it fits into the overall narrative.

As in the previous volume, the protagonist’s Judaism is also positioned as an integral aspect of her characterization, and I laughed out loud at the entirely-plausible mention of rabbis debating how she could best observe shabbat off-planet. The non-Jewish writer occasionally gets a slight detail wrong, but in general she’s approached the topic with the same care as she has all the technical specs, helping to elevate the mechanics of the storyline with a fully fleshed-out and lived-in personality.

[Content/spoiler warning for gun violence, human remains, excrement, anxiety, death of a spouse, death of a gay character, and misgendering. The last one gives me the most pause, as the transgender person is only identified in an afterword establishing they’ve been mischaracterized for the whole book due to the third-person limited perspective. Although my rating reflects that I do really like this title, I’m very dissatisfied by the handling of that particular element.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Last Coyote by Michael Connelly

Book #239 of 2020:

The Last Coyote by Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch #4)

I know it was only a matter of time before Detective Harry Bosch would get around to the cold case of his mother’s murder, but most of the investigation here plays out too straightforwardly to keep my full interest. The lack of real fireworks also makes it harder to ignore the blatant ‘copaganda’ always lurking at the background of this series, in which audiences are invited to cheer a protagonist who is prone to violent outbursts, regularly breaks the law himself, and disparages oversight measures like Internal Affairs that are intended to hold police officers to the slightest shred of accountability. Sometimes these stories downplay or even meaningfully critique that element of the text, but there’s little such nuance in this volume.

Now, author Michael Connelly can still deliver the necessary plot beats just fine, and I admit that the last few twists in this novel legitimately catch me by surprise. I also like Bosch’s new mantra for victims’ justice that “everybody counts or nobody counts,” which clarifies a lot of his overall motivation and approach to his job. But if you’re just looking for the highlights, I don’t know that this outing is particularly essential.

[Content warning for fatphobia, sexism, and mention of rape.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: American Hippo by Sarah Gailey

Book #238 of 2020:

American Hippo by Sarah Gailey

This volume collects two novellas that were previously published independently — but which I hadn’t read before — along with a pair of new short stories in the same setting. Together they present an alternate history of a nineteenth-century America populated by hippopotami, occupying roughly the combined ecological niches of cows (bred for meat), horses (ridden as transport), and alligators (a deadly feral threat). Author Sarah Gailey nimbly threads the needle with this concept, embracing the goofy fun of cowboys on hippo-back while also emphasizing the gruesome danger of these beasts. That they do so with protagonists who are largely people of color and #ownvoices queer further strengthens the storytelling, but the main appeal of this western is obviously right there in the title.

Gailey also mentions in their foreword that this fascinating what-if is less speculative than it might appear — that there really was a congressional bill put forward to import hippos into the Louisiana bayou around that time, although it regrettably failed to progress into actual policy. The writer highlights Jon Mooallem’s nonfiction account of the subject for Atavist Magazine, which I also recommend; it includes the fantastic lament, “In retrospect, it’s hard to even pinpoint a moment when America said no to hippopotamuses. There were just too many moments when it failed to say yes.” This collection dares to imagine we said yes to the hippo after all, and it’s a boldness that rings throughout the text.

As far as the fiction goes, I prefer the heist-like Six of Crows shenanigans in River of Teeth to its angrier follow-up Taste of Marrow, which keeps the gang somewhat artificially separated for far too long. The shorter entries, each prequels, fit in nicely with the series but don’t really carry significant stakes of their own. And overall, I think these tales would probably be improved by a few extra scenes clarifying the backstories of various characters and the relationships between them, which feel sketched-in to begin with and don’t always receive any additional shading later on. But the book is simply too delightful to harp on those issues at length, and I am hungry hungry for a sequel.

[Content warning for gore, misgendering, implied racism and fatphobia, and child separation and endangerment.]

★★★★☆

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