The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell

Book #77 of 2025:

Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell

One of fantasy’s most truly distinctive protagonists anchors this delightful tale, achieving a tone that’s somewhere between Hell Followed With Us and Killing Eve. Our antiheroine narrator is an inhuman creature who begins her story by describing how she ate her way out of her father’s chest as a broodling, and has survived ever since then by devouring the people foolish enough to cross her. She can approximate a human appearance by repurposing the body parts of victims she’s ingested, and after a chance encounter in that form during a rare moment of weakness, she finds herself growing closer to a woman whom she ordinarily would have eaten without a second thought.

I really just love almost everything about this plot. The character is one of my favorite genre stock types, the neurodivergent-coded outsider who struggles to understand normal social interactions — Anya on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Ax in the Animorphs books, etc. — and the asexual sapphic romance that develops with her new acquaintance is rather sweet. There’s no explicit homophobia in this setting, but the love interest has a lot of historic and ongoing trauma from her abusive mother and siblings, so that reading is definitely present in the subtext. It’s overall a celebration of personal agency, found family, and rending your tormentors within your bloody maw, which is all pretty queer and pretty punk, I have to say.

The action stalls out and gets a little repetitive near the middle of the work, and I’d ideally have preferred to see more worldbuilding details to bring the generic surroundings to life. But those are fairly minor quibbles considering how fun and surprisingly affirmational this novel turns out to be. I give it four-and-a-half stars, rounded up.

[Content warning for body horror, incest, and gore.]

★★★★★

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Book Review: Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language by Amanda Montell

Book #76 of 2025:

Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language by Amanda Montell

As a reader with a master’s degree in linguistics who used to research and lecture within its sociolinguistics branch, there are three main things I’m looking for in a popular science title like this:

1) Does it seem like the book would be comprehensible to a layperson without any preexisting knowledge of the field?

2) Does it offer me any information I don’t already know, rather than just representing a 101 introduction to the subject?

And 3), Is it accurate, so far as I can tell from the extent that it does overlap with my prior expertise?

Luckily, this 2019 publication hits every one of those targets. The tone is entertainingly colloquial but thorough, walking us through the ways in which language variation both encodes and enacts gender identity. Author Amanda Montell also talks about the sexist cultural assumptions implicit in the terminology we use, providing easy-to-follow if occasionally risqué examples. (Why do we call certain sex acts penetrative instead of enveloping, for instance? Or why does “sissy” have negative connotations that “buddy” doesn’t, given how they derive from the equivalent gendered words for siblings?)

It’s a whirlwind sampler, touching on topics as varied as catcalling to nonbinary pronouns to conversational power dynamics to vocal fry and beyond. A lot of this does constitute the basic fundamentals of linguistics, like how definitions can change over time or how scientists need to approach language descriptively to capture actual usage without judgment rather than prescriptively to dictate right and wrong, but it’s carried off with a gentle hand to ease the audience into such concepts. I wouldn’t necessarily assign this as a textbook if I were ever teaching a socio module again — the writer isn’t an academic researcher herself, just an interested former undergrad major, and while she cites experts and mentions a few studies, there’s no comprehensive bibliography here, nor much effort to cover varieties outside standard American English — but it’s plainly not aiming to fulfill that particular function. This is instead a book intended to inform novices and get them curious about the wider discipline, and by that measure, I would consider it a success.

★★★★☆

TV Review: Classic Doctor Who, season 18

TV #20 of 2025:

Classic Doctor Who, season 18

Airing from 1980 to 1981, Tom Baker’s final season is a turbulent time for Doctor Who — and not just because it finds him finally departing the series after a still-unbroken record of seven years / 172 episodes as its star. This run also sends off his companions Romana and K9, while gradually introducing the three replacements who would go on to subsequent adventures with the Fifth Doctor. Meanwhile the villainous Master returns after four years off the program with a new face he’ll hold until it’s canceled in 1989, and behind the scenes, John Nathan-Turner has taken over as the showrunning producer, a position he’ll likewise keep for the remainder of Classic Who. One of his first big changes is a new title sequence and theme song arrangement, which immediately sets this season apart from its Fourth Doctor predecessors.

The stories themselves are uneven, but they demonstrate a marked improvement as the year goes on. After two weaker entries in THE LEISURE HIVE and MEGLOS, we get the loose “E-space Trilogy” of FULL CIRCLE, STATE OF DECAY, and WARRIORS’ GATE, which offer a rare sort of ongoing continuity for the show. While traveling outside our regular dimension there, the protagonist gains Adric as a TARDIS stowaway and says goodbye to his fellow Time Lord, who stays behind with the robot dog. After that THE KEEPER OF TRAKEN introduces Nyssa and the next Master, and LOGOPOLIS sees that enemy first try to conquer the universe and then reluctantly team up with the Doctor and his friends (including reluctant late arrival Tegan) to save it. That regeneration serial doesn’t wholly work for me — I think the ‘Watcher’ who lurks around and eventually helps usher in Peter Davison is a goofy and contradictory idea that seriously detracts from the plot — but it has enough fun parts to send the hero off accordingly.

Baker looks pretty tired across all these episodes, however, and he spends the opening half having to share a screen with his costar Lalla Ward, who had already divorced him after their whirlwind marriage fell apart. That subtext adds a certain melancholy to the entertainment, as does the modern viewer’s knowledge that we’re building to a departure and a massive overhaul for the franchise. It’s the end of an era, but at least the moment has been prepared for.

Serials ranked from worst to best:

★★☆☆☆
MEGLOS (18×5 – 18×8)
THE LEISURE HIVE (18×1 – 18×4)

★★★☆☆
FULL CIRCLE (18×9 – 18×12)
THE KEEPER OF TRAKEN (18×21 – 18×24)

★★★★☆
WARRIORS’ GATE (18×17 – 18×20)
STATE OF DECAY (18×13 – 18×16)
LOGOPOLIS (18×25 – 18×28)

Overall rating for the season: ★★★☆☆

Book Review: Doctor Who: The Cloud Exiles & Other Stories edited by Michael Stevens

Book #75 of 2025:

Doctor Who: The Cloud Exiles & Other Stories edited by Michael Stevens

I’m going to quote from my own review of 2024’s Doctor Who: The Phaser Aliens & Other Stories — which I coincidentally listened to one year ago today — as so much of it applies to this subsequent release as well:

“A new audio production collecting six previously-published Doctor Who stories, one for each of the first half-dozen incarnations of that sci-fi franchise’s Time Lord hero. It’s an interesting snapshot of the series history, since the contents were originally written contemporaneously from 196[6] to 198[5] — and so in the earlier entries, the protagonist is sometimes called “Dr. Who” instead of “the Doctor,” his ship is sometimes just “TARDIS” without the definite article, and he’s strongly implied to be a human from Earth’s future rather than any sort of alien, because such continuity details either had yet to be solidified on-screen or were simply not a concern for the BBC editorial team at that point.

On their own merits, the tales are all fine but somewhat unremarkable. I’m at a loss as to why these particular titles have been selected for a new life in 202[5], although the cynical part of me notes that none of the original authors are known and wonders if that played a role in their curation, to minimize the payout of royalties. The audiobook features the voice talents of actors from across the classic […] show as well as the licensed Big Finish spinoffs, which I suppose is a further draw. But overall, this is a pretty insignificant and forgettable collection.”

I do think these mini-adventures are maybe slightly superior to the last batch, and they also include a 1982 bulletin from then-showrunner John Nathan-Turner talking about the production process, which is a neat little historical artifact. Still, it’s a solidly mid-tier Doctor Who offering all around.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: The Half Life of Valery K by Natasha Pulley

Book #74 of 2025:

The Half Life of Valery K by Natasha Pulley

This title is a good example of why I often struggle with historical fiction as a genre. On the one hand: author Natasha Pulley has plainly done her homework here, and she ably depicts her chosen setting, which is a clandestine Soviet research site studying nuclear fallout. Her protagonist is a fictional academic reassigned from a Siberian gulag to assist in the radiation surveys, where he encounters a callous disregard for human life and widespread fascist-style lies. Everyone is forced to agree under threat of death that the environment is perfectly safe to live and work in, even though all the scientists can privately see that it’s obviously not.

On the other hand, I don’t feel that the characters or the storyline — the parts the writer has invented, in other words — are especially memorable or believable. The hero seems gay and neurodivergent, although he lacks the language to express such things about himself, and he has an understated romance with a local KGB officer who openly acknowledges executing people who ask too many questions. No effort is made to give that love interest a redemption plot or otherwise justify his actions, and the whole thing reads as less of an inherently compelling novel and more of a thin excuse to show off what Pulley has learned about the wider subject matter. Which I suppose is fine so far as it goes, but at a certain point, I think I’d rather just read the nonfiction sources myself.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Book #73 of 2025:

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games #2)

In certain ways, I think this dystopian YA sequel improves upon its predecessor. Whereas the series debut focused — understandably! — on the setting, the characters, and the inherent brutality of the premise, this volume is more able to expand on the worldbuilding and the larger plot beyond the protagonist’s immediate struggles. The Hunger Games could have been a self-contained story, but this title intentionally sets out to explore the question of what would logically come next for a heroine who defied the authoritarian government long enough to escape its machinations with her life (and that of a friend).

The answer here is crackdowns. The Capitol under President Snow — actually a character now, making terrifying personal threats instead of just lurking as a sinister background figure — restricts its subjugated population even further than before, while at the same time inadvertently fanning the rebellious spirit that Katniss has helped inspire. (It’s very Star Wars, how the repressive regime sows the seeds of its own defeat.) That movement of a popular uprising wasn’t really hinted at in the original installment with its narrow goal of survival, but it’s a reasonable consequence and an engaging development overall.

But then there’s the Quarter Quell. I don’t want to dismiss this concept entirely, because there’s an element here that works in the gamemakers changing the rules to force the survivors of the last Hunger Games back into the arena. On paper, that’s positioned as a way for the antagonists to both retaliate against the recent victors and try to crush widespread dissent, but in practice, it feels like author Suzanne Collins repeating herself. This novel is so much more interesting in its first half, as a Hunger Games book without the Games, than following that sudden twist. While I appreciate that it’s not deployed right away and the deadly competition only takes up about the last third of the text, it does make that ending into something of a rehash. It doesn’t help that the new tournament is less dramatic in its rigid clockwork hazards and its lack of enemy personalities, either.

The ultimate conclusion of the piece is rather underwhelming, too. It’s not quite unsupported, but it’s conveyed as a flat exposition dump, and it hinges structurally on the viewpoint narrator being kept out of the loop all along for no clear reason except to similarly hide things from the reader. That’s a disappointment at a stage where the work has already been losing steam, and it’s why (in addition to some hokey love triangle nonsense) I’ve gone with a three-star rating on this reread, despite the promising start.

[Content warning for gun violence, police brutality, torture, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Traitor by John Peel

Book #72 of 2025:

Traitor by John Peel (2099 #3)

Another quick but propulsive adventure, bringing us to the halfway point of this middle-grade sci-fi series from 1999-2000. Our main hero Tristan begins this installment in police custody (thanks to innocently sharing identical DNA to his terrorist clone twin), and after dodging an attack from his mysterious enemies, he swiftly finds himself put on trial and then sentenced to life imprisonment at the secure facility in Antarctica. There, of course, he meets up with Genia, and it isn’t long before the two teenage hackers have teamed up and managed to escape. Meanwhile, the cop who arrested him is looking into a mole in her organization — the titular traitor, I guess — and the various villains are up to their respective schemes. Tristan’s ex-girlfriend is also still convinced that he’s guilty, which leads to her linking up with a criminal underworld element intent on getting her revenge.

It all moves with a zippy confidence, and the action bounces nicely around the different viewpoint characters, who by now feel linked even when off pursuing their own separate affairs. The one exception is the new protagonist Jame, who was introduced for a short scene in the previous volume without much explanation beyond his presence on the Mars colony. He’s now revealed to be a third clone brother, further strengthening the proto-Orphan Black vibes, but because he hasn’t really interacted with anyone else we care about, his storyline doesn’t seem quite as relevant just yet, though it’s certainly horrifying to see him witness corrupt security officers opening fire on an unarmed crowd.

Although the novel doesn’t offer as many fun worldbuilding details of life a century hence, it advances the overall plot while never slowing down for a minute. That’s worth another four-star rating, in my opinion.

★★★★☆

Book Review: The Winter Prince by Elizabeth E. Wein

Book #71 of 2025:

The Winter Prince by Elizabeth E. Wein (The Lion Hunters #1)

This 1993 novel offers a limited yet engaging retelling of the Arthurian legend, centering on the king’s illegitimate son Medraut (or Mordred, as he’s known in other versions). The primary innovation, which I don’t believe I’ve encountered elsewhere, is that there is a legitimate heir to the throne as well, and the protagonist’s mix of jealousy and love for his sickly younger brother presents a complicated emotional fabric against which their tale is wrought. Another major element is the character’s twisted relationship with his mother, who is also his father’s sister, and how she abuses him physically, emotionally, and sexually in turn. These patterns of incest and assault understandably wreak havoc on his mental wellbeing, while likewise leading him to act in similar ways towards his own half-siblings.

It’s ultimately only a partial iteration of the familiar King Arthur plot, missing many of the standard elements like Merlin or the Round Table and ending before matters have come to a head with the kingdom’s downfall. But that’s because it’s instead the story of a lonely young man who can’t help lashing out at the people he cares for, and how he struggles to be better than the woman who hurt him so deeply and confusingly. (The prose style emphasizes this dynamic by presenting the narrative in the first-person perspective from him, addressed towards his ‘godmother’ in the second-person: you did these things to me.) Betrayal has always been a theme of the Camelot mythos, but rarely have I seen it taken up in quite so directly a fashion.

It’s overall a great read with heavy Farseer vibes, and I’ll probably continue on with the Lion Hunters series, although I understand that the next volume involves a time jump and a different lead. But author Elizabeth E. Wein has earned my trust on the strength of this one, and certainly left me curious about what else she has in store.

★★★★☆

Book Review: Lyorn by Steven Brust

Book #70 of 2025:

Lyorn by Steven Brust (Vlad Taltos #17)

And just like that, I’m all caught up with Vlad Taltos (though not its sister series, the Khaavren Romances). This 2024 title is the latest to be released, with reportedly only two additional sequels left to go. It’s another perfectly pleasant adventure with the wily ex-Jhereg, and although I wouldn’t label it among his best, it’s certainly a far cry from the occasional clunkers at the opposite end of the spectrum.

The last two volumes were both prequels, but this one finally revisits the aftermath of #14 Hawk to explore what will happen to the protagonist next, now that the longstanding bounty on his head has been lifted. As it turns out, in clearing away that problem he made enough of an enemy out of the local sorceress guild that he’s on the run from them instead… which is a pretty frustrating development! We’ve swapped the identity of the specific villainous organization that’s after him, but the standard shape of the ensuing plot remains the same. It feels like this story of Vlad avoiding and outwitting his pursuers could have occurred ten novels earlier with minimal rewrites.

Here, the former assassin is hiding out from his current foes at a nearby theater company, because those all have protective spells he can shelter under, apparently. It’s a thin excuse for author Steven Brust to bounce the character off a few acting types, culminating in a scheme where he’s forced to take the stage himself for equally silly reasons. While it’s undeniably endearing to see this stone-cold killer get suddenly nervous about his upcoming performance, and the writer is plainly having a blast digging into that side of him, it all seems like an unnecessary diversion, especially this close to the looming finale. A few short scenes from outside the antihero’s perspective and extracts from the history text he’s reading strike me as a misstep too; they represent a noticeable divergence in style without clear payoff and probably could have been incorporated into the narrative in a smoother way.

Oh — and I’d like to lodge a complaint regarding the audiobook production, though that won’t be reflected in my rating of the book. The publisher switched narrators starting with the previous release, and while I don’t blame newcomer Kevin Stillwell for not sounding identical to the original Bernard Setaro Clark, it’s still jarring to hear some of the different accent and pronunciation choices following fifteen books with the first guy. Did no one care about maintaining the continuity there? This particular novel also starts each chapter with a musical theater song transparently / lovingly adapted from one in our world (“I am the very model of a Fourteenth Cycle dramaturge,” etc.), which ought to be a hoot — except that Stillwell’s producer makes the indefensible decision to have him declaim them all like epic poetry, with no sense of rhythm or proper tune. That renders the pieces tedious and often unrecognizable, when they properly should be one of the more entertaining elements of the work.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Star Wars: The Mask of Fear by Alexander Freed

Book #69 of 2025:

Star Wars: The Mask of Fear by Alexander Freed (Reign of the Empire #1)

Just in time for the second season of Andor, here’s another recent Star Wars title that grapples seriously with the idea of life and resistance in an era of growing fascism. In this case, it’s the early days of the Galactic Empire, and Senators Mon Mothma and Bail Organa are struggling to find ways to wield their power productively to keep the new emperor in check. She’s making alliances and whipping votes on an upcoming bill that would outwardly formalize structures supporting the government but subtly guard against its abuses, while he’s following a trail to prove that certain evidence of Jedi treachery that was used to justify their massacre has been fabricated. Meanwhile, Saw Gerrera is taking the first steps that will lead him from anti-Separatist freedom fighter on his home planet — broadly allied with the Republic that preceded the Empire — to genuine terrorist in the rebellion against Palpatine’s order.

Not all of the plot threads herein are equally strong; we also spend a lot of time with some intelligence agents and an augmented assassin whose storylines I don’t personally find as interesting. But this is mostly a book about Mon, and her experiences feel sharply drawn and keenly relevant, in a real-world moment when due process and court orders are being ignored by the nativist faction in office and all traditional checks and balances seem to be failing. (Reality is obviously not science-fiction, and any such exact parallels would be reductionist to an absurd degree. But that atmosphere of a steady slide into authoritarianism strikes me as terrifyingly familiar, even more so than the explicit tyranny on Andor.)

Despite her privilege among the elected elite, our heroine feels powerless to stem the overreaches of the regime and its increasing restrictions on personal liberty. Her own safety is far from secure, as she’s investigated and even temporarily imprisoned by a police force that no longer recognizes her authority over them. This is ultimately the tale of her own radicalization as well, and the start of the circuitous path towards being a Rebel leader like Saw as she grows disillusioned with the notion that legislation alone can meaningfully curtail a tyrant who doesn’t agree to be bound by its terms. I look forward to seeing where the remainder of this trilogy takes that story next.

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

★★★★☆