The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Dark Age by Pierce Brown

Book #6 of 2020:

Dark Age by Pierce Brown (Red Rising #5)

Although I don’t much care for the endless combat scenes in this latest Red Rising sequel, the project grows on me as it goes along, and it’s definitely worth picking up for anyone still invested in the future of this sci-fi saga. I also appreciate that its plot threads intersect more directly than those of the sprawling previous volume — a few chapters do still feel placed somewhat arbitrarily, but the work as a whole seems far more like one cohesive story. Author Pierce Brown’s audacious imagination is on full display throughout, and he remains a writer in the George R. R. Martin tradition, unafraid to kill off major players and radically reorient our understanding of narrative trajectory.

But Brown also makes this book live up to its title, putting nearly every character through the wringer both physically and emotionally whether they ultimately survive or not. (He may have gone a little overboard on the surprise returns of figures originally thought dead, too.) It’s a well-written novel, but so bleak that it’s seldom an altogether enjoyable read and probably my least favorite of the series thus far.

[Content warning for gore / body horror, torture, sexual assault, incest, and infanticide.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Book Jumper by Mechthild Gläser

Book #5 of 2020:

The Book Jumper by Mechthild Gläser

I appreciate that this novel about people who can enter novels is more emotionally grounded than the zany Thursday Next series of that same premise, but I have too many lingering questions about the rules of its magic and the motivation behind certain events to truly love it. (There’s also some uncomfortable classism built into the unacknowledged fact that the realms of bookworld seem limited to the classic western canon, with no explanation for why Dracula, Jane Eyre, The Jungle Book, and so on are not joined by the myriad millions of other published stories.)

And it’s neat that someone is stealing elements of fiction like the rose from The Little Prince and the cyclone from The Wizard of Oz, but this plot sort of fizzles out for me as it goes along due to the unclear worldbuilding issues mentioned above. I think if the central concept were more original or expansive — or the characters more interesting — I might have been hooked. Yet this is hardly the only book about book-jumping, and it really suffers by comparison to those others. It’s not awful, but all things considered, I guess I’d rather just reread Inkheart.

[EDIT: I almost never do this, but the longer I think about this novel the more dissatisfied I grow about its lack of resolution to the plot and character issues it raises, so I’ve lowered my rating from three stars to two.]

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Loki: Where Mischief Lies by Mackenzi Lee

Book #4 of 2020:

Loki: Where Mischief Lies by Mackenzi Lee

A fun YA take on Marvel’s Norse-inspired Loki figure, informed by but not especially beholden to his characterization in previous stories. I didn’t spot anything in this novel that’s out of line with the established canon of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, even though it hasn’t been advertised as being in that exact continuity. And author Mackenzi Lee has definitely seized the opportunity to grant the trickster a more fluid relationship with gender than we’ve yet seen on screen, as her version of the Asgardian wears heels and nail polish, shapeshifts into female forms, and has both a man and a woman for love interests (although he is only shown getting physical with the latter).

The narrative isn’t especially complicated — and borrows somewhat from the earth exile plot of the first Thor movie, just back in the nineteenth century now — but I like how Lee writes young Loki as an earnest person of questionable moral instincts, rather than an explicit villain or lifeless antihero. There’s time for him to grow into the treachery of his adult self, but it’s easier to root for a protagonist who’s not yet so cold-blooded. I’m reminded of Leigh Bardugo’s Wonder Woman: Warbringer, which does a similarly great job of aging down a popular superhero comic in translation to this genre.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Trust Exercise by Susan Choi

Book #3 of 2020:

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi

This National Book Award winner is a very literary novel, with an experimental perspective shift midway-through reminiscent of similar recent works like Fates and Furies or Fleishman Is in Trouble. All are stories that I appreciate but don’t really love — for although I enjoy the meta-conversation of narrator reliability and admire the writerly craft behind it, it’s easy for an author to lose track of the heart of her characters this way and for the cleverness to act as a gimmick that provokes questions without much solid information to meet them.

Here, Pulitzer finalist Susan Choi spins an interesting (and timely) tale about teens in a prestigious theatre program, their brilliant yet predatory teacher, and how their high school experience continues to affect them later in life. As a former stage kid myself, I definitely chuckled and winced in recognition several times throughout this read. But there are ultimately just too many unknowns for my tastes, and I get even less from the short section following a new protagonist at the end, which only seems there to emphasize that people can’t always get satisfactory answers to the puzzles that haunt them. That’s thematically tidy, but somewhat frustrating all the same.

[Content warning for rape, rape culture, and gun violence.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Good Luck Girls by Charlotte Nicole Davis

Book #2 of 2020:

The Good Luck Girls by Charlotte Nicole Davis (The Good Luck Girls #1)

I’d like to see more worldbuilding details and more distinctions between two of the supporting characters, but overall this is a rip-roaring YA fantasy western with a mainly female and POC cast. Five teen girls run away from the brothel where they are indentured servants, and their quest for freedom hits many classic genre tropes, from stagecoach robbery to train-hopping and more. The bloodthirsty spirits that prowl the land by night remind me of Brandon Sanderson’s Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell, and the action is exciting enough to paper over a few minor debut novel foibles. This feels like a complete story in its own right, but I’m definitely interested in coming back for the announced sequel.

[Content warning for racism, sexism, sex trafficking of minors, and implied rape, although nothing explicit appears on the page.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan

Book #1 of 2020:

The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson and the Olympians #4)

Overall this is another fun Percy Jackson adventure, but there are a few issues that are bugging me about the series at large. Four volumes in, it still feels like author Rick Riordan is retelling ancient Greek myths more than he’s using them as a backdrop for his own stories. In every book, we’re introduced to more gods or other figures of antiquity who basically just introduce themselves, recount or reenact what they’re famous for, and then exit the scene. There are definite glimmers of originality throughout, but it’s mostly just that steady repackaging of the classics. And that’s certainly fine for introducing younger readers to mythology, but it’s not as interesting as I would like.

I also don’t feel as though I really know these characters, despite having read four books about them by now. Like Harry Potter, each subsequent novel takes place one year later, so the twelve-year-olds we meet in The Lightning Thief are now almost fifteen and entering high school. But whereas readers stick with Harry and his friends for months at a time, each Percy Jackson quest only spans about a week or so, after which we leave him for another year — with no real indication of what he does with his life in between. That’s a problem for my investing in the young demigod as a protagonist.

(I’m also not happy with how the addition of a romantic element in this book mainly manifests as three different girls having feelings for our hero, although at least he seems largely oblivious to their attention. It’s all subtextual enough for now that I can probably set this aside and see how the sequels handle the matter, but I’m starting to get a boring self-insert vibe from Percy.)

All of which is to say: this is a solid middle-grade fantasy, and probably even a cut above much of the genre. The narrator remains funny and easy to root for, and the inclusion of old tales like Theseus and Daedalus makes the project fairly educational. But I first bought into this series in recognition of its potential for greatness, and it just hasn’t gotten there yet for me.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Sittaford Mystery by Agatha Christie

Book #250 of 2019:

The Sittaford Mystery by Agatha Christie

I like this Agatha Christie novel (also published as The Murder at Hazelmoor) for its plucky heroine and atmospheric wintry setting, but it’s perhaps not the best read for someone seeking a rewarding puzzle. Although I generally don’t mind when I can’t figure out the solution to a mystery plot, especially from this author, this one feels particularly loaded with coincidental red herrings and light on the clues that actually lead to the culprit. It’s not egregious enough to be frustrating, yet not all that satisfying as a piece of detective work either.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton

Book #249 of 2019:

The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton

I think I was younger than its 14-year-old hero myself the last time that I read this novel, but it holds up pretty well from an adult perspective. Ponyboy is the quintessential good kid caught up in a bad situation, and the slim volume is both an excellent character study and a fully-formed story in not very many pages. (Certain prolix modern writers, especially of Young Adult literature, could stand to take some notes.)

The Outsiders has also proven remarkably timeless — author S. E. Hinton’s matter-of-fact prose is just as accessible today, and give or take a few pop culture references, low prices, and absent cell phones, it could easily be set in the current era as well. There’s something that feels universal about these tight-knit cliques and family struggles, and the theme of wanting to be seen as a person beyond a stereotype hits home no matter who or when you are.

I do have some cautions for a 21st-century reader, however. I know the book was written by a white teen in 1967, but where are all the people of color? The poor greasers and the wealthy socs in this unnamed city each refer to one another as white trash, yet as finely-drawn as that class struggle is, it seems bizarre to give no further indication of any racial axis to the social landscape. The protagonist and his closest friend also uncritically praise the ‘Southern plantation gentlemen’ of Gone with the Wind, which raises questions about exactly who and what they’re celebrating.

Nevertheless, the work is a classic of Americana for a reason. I’m glad that it’s still being assigned in schools, and that it remains a powerful distillation of the teenage experience.

[Content warning for minor gang violence, roughly on par with West Side Story.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley

Book #248 of 2019:

The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley

Another novel that hooks me on its premise but somewhat loses me in the execution. I love the idea of teleporting soldiers coming unstuck along their personal timelines, experiencing their combat missions all out of order. It’s a genre twist on the jumbled chronologies in classic works like Slaughterhouse-Five or Catch-22, with a similar implicit critique of the notion of sanity during wartime. And I like how those visions of the future reveal just how dishonest the commanding officers are being back in the past.

But the narrator doesn’t have much interiority, making it hard to know what she’s* thinking as she goes throughout this nonlinear war. And since her conversations with other characters are strained due to ever-present recording devices, any information we can pick up there is similarly oblique. I’d recommend this book for fans of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy who prioritize atmospheric paranoia over concrete evidence — or for readers who enjoy military sci-fi battle scenes and don’t mind whether a larger story makes sense or not — but anyone who values knowing exactly what’s happening in a narrative will probably be frustrated as I’ve been.

*Our protagonist is technically never referred to by gendered pronouns or given a physical description, but there are indications that she’s likely a woman, so that’s what I’ve adopted for this review.

[Content warning for suicide, torture, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Star Wars: Force Collector by Kevin Shinick

Book #247 of 2019:

Star Wars: Force Collector by Kevin Shinick

Theoretically, there could be a decent story told about a Force-sensitive youth retracing the path of the earlier Star Wars movies and setting up the sequel trilogy. But this attempt unfortunately misses the mark for me. The characters are flat and juvenile, the overarching plot is pretty minimal, and there’s no sense of any serious motivation driving its events — the protagonist literally just wants to handle historical artifacts to prompt visions that will teach him about the Jedi.

Weaknesses of the text aside, I also don’t get why this novel was published as part of Disney’s “Journey to The Rise of Skywalker” line. The book takes place prior to The Force Awakens, and it mostly seems designed to include early looks at Jakku, Maz Kanata, and elements from the new Galaxy’s Edge theme park area. Although I haven’t yet seen Episode IX, nothing here feels like it will be particularly relevant to that film.

★★☆☆☆

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