The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann

Book #197 of 2025:

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann

An interesting nonfiction account of a 1740s maritime disaster, in which the British vessel HMS Wager was shipwrecked in the South Pacific, near modern Chile. The incident occurred during the so-called “War of Jenkins’ Ear” conflict with Spain — a prelude to the larger War of the Austrian Succession — and is one of those curious historical affairs that was apparently widely discussed at the time but subsequently fell out of common knowledge (until Killers of the Flower Moon author David Grann repopularized it with this 2023 bestseller, at least).

I think the writer does a good job of synthesizing the available primary documents to discuss the lead-up to the wreck and the months that the sailors spent on a nearby island, including the rising tensions and eventual mutiny against the captain there. I could see this title being a valuable resource for anyone crafting their own fictional spin on such an ordeal, as it ably captures the limitations facing the men: not only in their immediate predicament, but also in the general context of the era, when shipbuilding and mid-voyage repairs were still evolving arts and diseases like scurvy and typhoid weren’t remotely understood. As Grann notes, their desperate struggle to eke out an existence was practically another Robinson Crusoe story, and it was received in exactly those terms once the survivors made it home and began spreading the tale.

Regrettably, that part of the book feels a little thin to me, despite presumably having a greater volume of documentation to draw upon. One of the distinguishing features of the Wager business, after all, is that the mutineers arrived back in England two years before the commanding officer they’d marooned, and thus were able to seize that window to publicize their version of events, casting themselves in the best possible light and him as a deranged murderer. Later on when it was likewise shared, the thrust of his own perspective obviously contradicted theirs, and I would love to hear more about a) the evidence for and against each side and b) how the dispute was seen among contemporary audiences. Unfortunately, those topics are not really addressed to any significant degree herein.

[Content warning for racism, cannibalism, gun violence, animal cruelty, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Doctor Who: Transit by Ben Aaronovitch

Book #196 of 2025:

Doctor Who: Transit by Ben Aaronovitch (Virgin New Adventures #10)

This cyberpunk / cosmic horror mashup is big on worldbuilding texture but light on plot and character work. The worst thing about it, though, stems from its place in the Doctor Who Virgin New Adventures series, as the first installment with Professor Bernice Summerfield as the Doctor’s traveling companion. Benny featured prominently in the last volume, which introduced her on planet Heaven and then culminated in her joining the TARDIS while Ace stayed behind, but we still don’t really know her as an active protagonist or partner for the Seventh Doctor yet. Theoretically this novel should be all about establishing that characterization and relationship, showcasing the two of them working closely together to define the strengths and conflicts that the new heroine brings to the arrangement.

Instead, the characters are separated almost immediately, and the archaeologist is absent for the majority of the text. When she finally resurfaces, she’s been possessed by the extradimensional villain, and so isn’t exactly functioning as herself, anyway. In addition to shortchanging the reader’s investment in the woman, this writing choice also limits the impact of the Doctor’s struggle over how to defeat the sentient virus-monster without killing her, since there’s no real lived-in dynamic there to imbue the dilemma with any significant stakes for him.

It’s not all bad. In the professor’s absence we get a de-facto assistant in Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart — an adopted distant descendent of the Brig — who’s a capable augmented supersoldier as well as a genius. (She develops her own form of time-travel at the end of this adventure, and apparently returns in a few sequels somewhere down the line.) And the setting is pretty fun too, concerning the titular future mass transportation system that connects human civilization across our region of space but accidentally opens the door for the aforementioned incursion from beyond this reality. It’s the sort of wild genre blend that Doctor Who tends to do well, populated with somewhat-interchangeable residents with colorful names like Credit Card and Dogface. I especially like the mindbending climax of the tale, whereupon our Time Lord hero ventures into the antagonist’s home dimension and has to visualize the mental subroutines that he’s both using and fighting against to ultimately save the day.

Overall I think this would be a stronger piece if it had happened later on in its saga, and/or if Bernice had been incorporated more fully into the story. But I suppose it’s solid enough for what it is.

[Content warning for gun violence, torture, body horror, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

2025 TV

This year I finished 57* seasons of television, which is about on par with recent years. (I watched 53 in 2024.) Overall my favorites were:

1. Andor, season 2
2. Ripley, season 1
3. The Sopranos, season 5
4. The Sopranos, season 1
5. Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, season 1
6. The Sopranos, season 2
7. Reservation Dogs, season 1
8. The Bear, season 1
9. Black Mirror, season 7
10. Galavant, season 2

*12 Monkeys, season 2 will probably bring me to 58 before the year is up, but I can already tell that that one won’t make the cut.

2025 Movies

This year I watched 26 movies, which is a lot more than I usually do! (I watched 17 in 2024.) That increase was due in part to my new Film Franchise Fridays routine, where I’ve so far watched all of the Jason Bourne, Indiana Jones, and Bill & Ted movies. Overall my favorites were:

1. Sinners (2025)
2. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
3. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
4. V for Vendetta (2005)
5. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)
6. The Bourne Identity (2002)
7. Thunderbolts* (2025)
8. Babylon 5: Thirdspace (1998)
9. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
10. Babylon 5: The Lost Tales (2007)

(I’ll update this if I watch something else in the next week, but at this point, I’m not expecting to.)

Book Review: Tailored Realities by Brandon Sanderson

Book #195 of 2025:

Tailored Realities by Brandon Sanderson

[Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with this author.]

This is Brandon Sanderson’s second collection of short fiction, following Arcanum Unbounded in 2016. That earlier volume collected all the writer’s smaller works in his expansive Cosmere setting, while this one contains the opposite: ten tales expressly not set in that particular fantasy multiverse. Instead they lean more towards science-fiction (and, oddly enough, detective stories), with several entries concerning virtual Matrix/Holodeck-like constructs that give the project its title.

Most of these contents were already available elsewhere, either as standalone novellas or in mixed-author anthologies or magazines. I know I’d previously read at least half of them myself — Snapshot, Perfect State, Defending Elysium (prequel to the Skyward series), Firstborn, and Mitosis (midquel to the Reckoners series) — and none of them were examples I’d highlight as among Sanderson’s best, although Snapshot and Mitosis are probably my favorites of the options here. In his defense, the book spans a full quarter-century of his writing career, dating back to some of his earliest published pieces, and you can tell how he’s improved as a storyteller over time. Still, that doesn’t make this exercise itself any stronger, and I’m a little confused about the criteria for inclusion, since other non-Cosmere curiosities like the Infinity Blade tie-ins have been left out.

I’m not going to review all ten of the stories individually, and I do think they’re interesting from a Sanderson fandom perspective to see him trying out new ideas, no matter how unsuccessfully. But overall, it’s a bit grim for my tastes. There’s a lot of gun violence and gore, including multiple suicides, and a tendency to overexplain the worldbuilding mechanisms rather than just step back and let the plots and characters flow. It’s a quintessential three-star read for me, unfortunately.

★★★☆☆

Bill & Ted movies, ranked

1. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)
2. Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)
3. Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)

Overall rating: ★★★☆☆

Previously on Film Franchise Fridays:

★★★★☆ Indiana Jones
★★★☆☆ Jason Bourne

Movie Review: Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)

Movie #27 of 2025:

Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)

A fun but muddled legacy sequel, picking up with the titular dudes several decades after their previous adventures. Overall I would say this movie is better than I expected it to be, and easily stronger than Bogus Journey (1991). It just could have benefited from another few script passes to smooth and improve certain story items.

First, the totally righteous: Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves slip seamlessly back into their old roles of the affably dim Californians, as does Hal Landon Jr. as Ted’s dad. (William Sadler and Amy Stoch reprise their respective characters of Death and Missy too, but their performances don’t feel as specifically keyed-in to me. I do love the joke that she’s now romantically involved with Ted’s little brother, though, having previously served as each hero’s stepmother in turn.) Meanwhile newcomers Jack Haven and Samara Weaving are a nice addition as the next generation of music-loving slackers, with the former doing a particularly great job of channeling the mannerisms of their father Ted. In contrast, Kristen Schaal doesn’t really do anything to sell herself as Rufus’s daughter and not any other random do-gooder from his era.

The crisis this time is some underexplained disaster that’s going to rip apart the universe if Bill and Ted don’t create one song to unify the world before a ticking-clock deadline, which is an acceptable enough retcon from their band’s music generally inspiring a distant utopia. I like how they and their daughters go about it in two different ways, too: the girls by gathering historical musicians similar to the original Excellent Adventure (1989), and the men by attempting to pick up the track from their own future selves. The latter path sees the protagonists finding darker and darker fates as they progress fruitlessly forward in time, and the movie seems like it’s setting up a realization that they’re wrong to do so — that it is in fact cheating to jump ahead to the finished version, whereas Billie and Thea are putting in the true creative effort from which great art can be born.

Unfortunately, the film never quite manages to articulate that. Instead, a robot assassin kills most of the characters, sending them straight to hell. I sort of get where this is coming from — Bogus Journey is a full half of the initial franchise, so I suppose this piece does need to engage with its themes to a degree — but it’s an unnecessary narrative swerve with uncomfortable implications. (When Bill and Ted died in the last installment, they wandered around seeing a wide range of possible afterlife destinations. Why are their children immediately sentenced to labor for eternity under the watchful eye of demons in the pit? This 2020 title may not have the homophobic slurs of its predecessors, but it goes out of its way to punish the two people who appear to flout traditional gender expectations, and that’s something we should definitely question.)

The ending, in addition to bringing them all back to life without explanation, then has the team distribute musical instruments to literally every person throughout time and space to join in their jam session. A quick voiceover from the ladies reveals, “And so, it wasn’t so much the song that made the difference. It was everyone playing it together.” Which… again could be fine in theory with a little workshopping, but doesn’t entirely flow from what we’ve been told beforehand, and doesn’t benefit here from the immediate smash-cut to the credits right afterwards. It’s clearly meant to be a feel-good moment, but it’s too unsupported to land the way the screenwriters intended.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy

Book #194 of 2025:

The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy (Daughters of the Empty Throne #1)

I’m not blown away by the generic fantasy setting or the one-dimensional villainous motivations here, but as a personal story rooted in its protagonist’s gender identity, it’s certainly a more distinctive entry in the genre. Sixteen-year-old Lorel is someone who would likely identify as transgender in our world — as does #ownvoices author Margaret Killjoy — having long ago realized that she’s a girl despite everyone else continuing to call her a boy. When her best friend confesses that she’d rather join up to become a knight than enter the coven of witches her mother had promised her to, our heroine eagerly borrows some dresses to swap places with her, so that she’s the one who goes off to learn magic with the women instead.

The character’s euphoria over finally getting to present and be seen as feminine is heartwarming, and though she initially keeps her true background hidden, she eventually learns that her newfound sisters are a pretty accepting bunch. She’s not the first of their number to be drawn from outside the conventional ranks, and there are even advanced spells that could allow her to alter her form via shapeshifting, if she ever chooses to do so. It’s a clear parallel to surgical and hormonal options for trans people in real life, right down to the fact that certain folks see the act as empowering and desirable while others don’t feel a need for it themselves. The debate doesn’t have a universal answer, nor do we get the sense as readers that one is remotely required.

If this novel has a fault, it’s perhaps a bit safe, even for YA. There’s no homophobia in the land, as the teen’s own bisexuality and her father’s marriage to another man are both treated as unremarkable, and although transphobia clearly does exist, she manages to find such a welcoming community that it doesn’t provide much plot friction either. Instead we get the simple growing pains of making new friends and worrying needlessly about how they’ll react to her secret, while the antagonists are destroying the area’s natural resources in a shortsighted power grab (which I have to assume is meant as a metaphor for climate change).

Overall I’m going to give the title a rating of three-and-a-half stars, rounded up, because I do think the narrator’s perspective is well-rendered and I can imagine this being an important read for younger audiences. Still, I’m undecided if I’ll continue on with the forthcoming sequels or not.

★★★★☆

Book Review: Star Wars: The Last Order by Kwame Mbalia

Book #193 of 2025:

Star Wars: The Last Order by Kwame Mbalia

This Star Wars title has definite potential, but it unfortunately doesn’t live up to it in my opinion. The action unfolds across three different timelines, one of which at least should have automatic appeal for any fan — it’s canonically the latest story yet in this setting, as the first novel to take place following the 2019 movie The Rise of Skywalker. How disappointing, then, that that era turns out to be little beyond a framing device, with only the barest sketch of a post-Exegol galaxy revealed to us. (I assume Disney holds more blame there than author Kwame Mbalia, but recognizing that does nothing to make the work any stronger. It’s been six years, folks!)

The other two sequences are told in flashback, flimsily justified by the mission that the Resistance protagonists are on in the present. Here we see film heroes Finn and Jannah when they were still loyal First Order soldiers, although the established canon requires that they never met back then. Thus FN-2187 and TZ-1719’s plot threads don’t intersect directly, resulting in another structural weakness for the book. Each considered as a standalone novella wouldn’t be so bad, and they cover similar thematic territory as the separate troopers both grow disillusioned with their situation and the amorality of their superior officers, but overall this is the sort of prequel that contains few surprises. Events play out basically as we would expect them to, bringing the young man to near the headspace he was in for The Force Awakens (2015) and expanding on the woman’s own defection that she mentioned in Rise. It’s all competent enough, and I’m glad the corporation entrusted these Black characters to a bestselling Black writer, but the end result is hardly a showstopper.

[Content warning for gun violence and child kidnapping / exploitation.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: The Boy Who Followed Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

Book #192 of 2025:

The Boy Who Followed Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (The Ripliad #4)

Two observations I made earlier in this series continue to prove fruitful in shaping my understanding of Mr. Thomas Ripley: that his adventures can be as ludicrous as those of Dexter Morgan on TV, and that he’s best read as a gay character, despite that element being largely relegated to the subtext. Take this penultimate installment, in which a sixteen-year-old stranger seeks out our familiar antihero. The boy has recently killed his own father, and having seen Ripley’s name in the news as an exonerated but likely-guilty murderer, he feels a sense of kinship that leads him to Tom’s doorstep. That’s absolutely a Dexter plot, linking the protagonist up with a fellow killer so that their knowledge of each other’s secrets guarantees a mutually-assured destruction, and yet it seems rather obvious here that the characters’ shared connection could be an unspoken queerness instead of / in addition to their violent crimes.

After all, Tom does take the teenager under his wing, and although nothing physical passes between them, a charge of grooming wouldn’t be entirely off-base. The older man is very interested in Frank’s love life — like the fact that he couldn’t perform the one time he tried to have sex with his girlfriend — and his admiration of the teen verges on both romantic and sensual. They visit multiple gay bars and drag shows in the cosmopolitan city of West Berlin, remarking how free and comfortable they feel there, and Ripley at one point even dresses up as a woman himself to gain the upper hand on a few ruffians. Author Patricia Highsmith’s own sexuality was an open secret that her private letters later confirmed, and it’s true that she never explicitly says that either of these individuals is gay. But she does have Ripley’s wife — of whom he reflects that “the infrequency of their making love […was] convenient too, for him. He couldn’t have borne a woman who made demands several times a week: that really would have turned him off, maybe at once and permanently” — directly ask him whether their young houseguest is a homosexual (to which he calmly replies, “Not that I can see. Do you think so?”).

If this is a romance, it’s clearly a problematic one given the couple’s wildly different ages and levels of worldliness, but we don’t need to belabor the point or pass contemporary judgement on a fictional [non-]relationship from 1980. The more damning criticism here is that the book is just kind of boring. A kidnapping / Taken subplot briefly introduces some excitement near the middle, giving the hero his expected chance to increase his body count yet again, but it’s almost perfunctory in how tacked-on it feels and how strangely everyone has to act in order for it to work (like the lad’s mother letting Ripley collect $2 million from her banks for the ransom payment — more than $8 million in today’s dollars — when she doesn’t know him at all). Mostly the two rogues are simply enjoying one another’s company while being unable to quite express the matter, which isn’t a wholly terrible time in this writer’s hands but does still make for the dullest Ripliad story yet.

[Content warning for gun violence, suicide, and gore.]

★★★☆☆