The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Star Wars: Dooku: Jedi Lost by Cavan Scott

Book #23 of 2020:

Star Wars: Dooku: Jedi Lost by Cavan Scott

The treacherous Count Dooku feels like a bit of an afterthought in the Star Wars prequel movies, but I’m glad I took a chance on this recent full-cast audiobook fleshing out his backstory. It’s easy for franchise media tie-ins to come off as uninspired cash grabs, but this one definitely makes its protagonist more complex and sympathetic in his new role of antihero. It’s also the best example I’ve seen for why the Jedi Order wanted initiates to join young and cut all ties to their loved ones, with Dooku’s downfall along those lines better motivated than Anakin Skywalker’s in the films they share.

As the earliest story yet in Disney’s new canon for the popular space saga, this novel does somewhat squander a golden opportunity to push the boundaries on worldbuilding (which may be due to corporate oversight rather than author Cavan Scott per se). Yet overall, it’s a tight little character study that greatly enriches our understanding of its title figure.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Lalani of the Distant Sea by Erin Entrada Kelly

Book #22 of 2020:

Lalani of the Distant Sea by Erin Entrada Kelly

I like the idea behind this wandering maritime adventure — think The Voyage of the Dawn Treader crossed with Disney’s Moana, roughly — but I feel like it would have been stronger if the point-of-view had stuck with the title heroine throughout the novel, rather than darting around among a supporting cast and a variety of fantastical creatures. The structure is also a little strange, as twelve-year-old Lalani technically leaves her island village home three different times, which tends to reduce the narrative tension overall.

Or maybe I just need to stop reading (or at least overthinking) middle-grade fiction, as I keep nitpicking issues that likely wouldn’t bother someone closer to the age of the typical protagonist. This is a solid story with some fun worldbuilding inspired by traditional Filipino folklore, and my particular critiques may not be relevant for other readers.

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: The Good Place, season 4

TV #1 of 2020:

The Good Place, season 4

This heartfelt sitcom about trying to become a better person in the afterlife never quite surpassed its stellar first season, but it’s remained a surprisingly hilarious exploration of moral philosophy and a great showcase for the sort of tender character development creator Michael Schur perfected on Parks and Recreation. Right up through its final episodes, it’s also been absolutely unafraid to blow up its own premise and redefine the plot — which could be maddening to try and discuss without spoilers, and made it basically impossible to watch casually or out-of-order, but also renders that final sendoff so much more meaningful.

Every television finale is something of a goodbye to a set of characters and their world, but I’ve rarely seen one with the grace to express that idea so eloquently as this. We were lucky to have The Good Place for as long as we did, and to see it off before it stagnated. I can’t wait to find out where Schur and this talented cast go from here.

This season: ★★★★★

Overall series: ★★★★★

Seasons ranked: 1 > 4 > 2 > 3

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Book Review: Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor

Book #21 of 2020:

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor (Akata Witch #1)

This middle-grade series debut has some terrific #ownvoices African-inspired fantasy worldbuilding, but it lags behind in matching that with any significant narrative development or character arcs. So much of the novel consists of either pure exposition about the setting or else the protagonist doing the same things as everyone else there, with little to distinguish why we’re following her journey in particular. I won’t belabor the many, many Harry Potter plot parallels, but one of the successes of that saga is that it centers its hero with personal stakes, such that we immediately feel the story couldn’t possibly be about one of his classmates instead. This book sets a great stage, but it never really gets me invested in what happens next.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Unquenchable Fire by Rachel Pollack

Book #20 of 2020:

Unquenchable Fire by Rachel Pollack

This is a supremely odd book, and I’m honestly not sure whether I like it or not. The incomplete and elliptical reveals to its slipstream worldbuilding offer ambiguities that feel worth lingering over, but they also keep the reader at a certain distance from fully engaging with the struggles of the heroine. On the other hand, we don’t need to understand everything about that woman’s society to see how little she wants her mystical pregnancy, or how frustrated she is with the powers forcing her life along this path. (There’s no rape per se in the story — the protagonist just wakes up pregnant after an exceptionally vivid dream — but the incident is framed as a clear violation of bodily consent, and it’s a decent exploration of that subject in a heightened genre way.)

Author Rachel Pollack also includes some interesting ideas about how religious and political movements calcify from their starting principles into meaningless ritual, although again this might be stronger with a clearer sense of the particular setting. I can’t decide if I’m more entertained or frustrated by the text overall, but it’s certainly like little else I’ve read before.

[I read and reviewed this title at a Patreon donor’s request. Want to nominate your own books for me to read and review (or otherwise support my writing)? Sign up for a small monthly donation today at https://patreon.com/lesserjoke!]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson

Book #19 of 2020:

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson

As a fantasy and superhero buff, I have no issues with this novel’s premise of twins who erupt in flames when their emotions get out of control. And I accept the bond that develops between them and their new caretaker. But I just cannot fathom her motivations as a character, especially in how she understands her relationship with the children’s mother, with whom she shares a long history. The latter figure is so transparently cruel that it feels like the narrative needs some sort of reckoning, but it just never gets there. As a result the protagonist (and by extension the whole project) falls rather flat for me, and the book ultimately lives up to its title.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

Book #18 of 2020:

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine (Teixcalaan #1)

Overall a delightful piece of diplomatic-anthropological science-fiction, like the Imperial Radch trilogy mixed with The Traitor Baru Cormorant and just a dash of Altered Carbon. When her people’s ambassador to a conquering space empire suddenly dies, our protagonist is sent off to the capital city-planet with an old backup copy of his memories in her head, there to take over the post and investigate his death. I would have liked a little more emotional depth to the characters, but the worldbuilding is interesting and the culture-clash comedy of manners is a lovely note alongside the court intrigue. The total effect didn’t capture my heart like I thought it would early on, but it’s still a very strong debut with some nice LGBT representation on the margins.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow

Book #17 of 2020:

Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow

Ronan Farrow is one of the journalists who helped to finally build a public case against Harvey Weinstein’s serial predation of women in Hollywood, and I initially wasn’t sure that I needed to read his account of it, having already finished Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s book She Said on the same topic. As it turns out, however, the twin volumes complement one another more than they overlap, and Farrow’s experience of being repeatedly stymied by the mogul’s allies at NBC is radically different from the supportive work environment the two reporters found at the New York Times. He also covers his former coworker Matt Lauer’s own pattern of sexual harassment, whereas the other authors expand their remit to discuss the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination instead.

Whether read alone or in conjunction with She Said, this text is harrowing in its bleak depiction of powerful men wielding influence to hide their abusive behavior, yet inspiring in its end result of dogged investigation ultimately bringing them down. As with Kantor and Twohey’s version, there’s a real All the President’s Men feeling to the extraordinary lengths Weinstein and his ilk resort to for a cover-up, not to mention the sense of danger and fragility surrounding the reporting until all the pieces are in place. Farrow is open about his own complicated family history throughout, which only adds to the urgency of stopping his subject before he can victimize anyone else.

[Content warning for graphic descriptions of assault and rape.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones

Book #16 of 2020:

Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones (Chrestomanci #1)

The start of a long-overdue reread to this fantasy series that I loved as a child, pre-Harry Potter. (And indeed, there are some definite similarities between Harry and this novel’s hero even beyond their distinct Britishness, from the wide-eyed entrance into a world of magic to the overbearing family each boy will eventually eclipse.) This particular volume is not the earliest in chronology, but it was the first to be written / published and is probably still the best introduction to the core concept of Chrestomanci, that absentminded civil servant who happens to be the most powerful wizard alive. I like how author Diana Wynne Jones writes him almost like an Agatha Christie detective — or the Doctor on Doctor Who — as someone easy to dismiss as a bumbling oaf until the sharpness of his mind finally springs into action.

With that being said, this debut has never been my favorite of the books, as its young protagonist spends a little too long as a passive pushover for his abusive older sister. I’m glad he’s a more minor figure in the other stories, rather than the sole focus throughout. This initial plot also relies rather heavily on people keeping needless secrets from one another when an open conversation could quickly clear everything up, and although I’m swept away by the possibilities of the multiverse setting, we don’t really get to see too much of it just yet. But the overall character dynamics and the ideas Jones introduces are just as great as I remember.

[Content warning for a few unfortunate features that mark the 1977 publication date, from corporal punishment of schoolchildren to authorial fatphobia and one line so egregiously racist that I really hope it’s been edited out of later editions.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: A Beginning at the End by Mike Chen

Book #15 of 2020:

A Beginning at the End by Mike Chen

True to its title, this post-apocalyptic novel opens after the point when many stories of its genre have finished: with humanity decimated by plague, but its societies generally through the transitional chaos and now beginning to rebuild. It’s also a time of fresh starts for our three protagonists, each of whom is trying to recover from the experiences of the past and find a new normal.

All of that is neat and fairly original, and I appreciate that the setting is only mildly dystopian. And I’m always down for a narrative about healing from trauma, even though, as in this case, the pacing tends to be rather slow. But the plot relies on a great deal of coincidence, and I have trouble parsing the character logic throughout this book, right from the early moment when two strangers strike up a conversation while stuck in an elevator — which they’ve for some reason knowingly taken during a period of rolling blackouts. (That’s not the most egregious example, but it’s perhaps the easiest to mention without dancing around spoilers.) A late romantic development feels unearned and undercuts a nice platonic friendship, too.

Ultimately I guess I like what author Mike Chen is aiming for here, but I don’t feel especially satisfied with the result.

★★★☆☆

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