The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Doctor Who: Spectral Scream by Hannah Fergesen

Book #97 of 2025:

Doctor Who: Spectral Scream by Hannah Fergesen

This Doctor Who novel was released a few days before the end of the most recent season of the show, so as expected, it doesn’t take any events from the last few episodes into consideration. Instead it appears to be set sometime between 2×2 Lux and 2×6 The Interstellar Song Contest, when Belinda Chandra is traveling with the Fifteenth Doctor as he sets up vindicator beacons throughout time and space to chart a course back to her parents and nursing job on contemporary earth.

The best parts of the story come early, giving us additional insight into that character’s state of mind at this stage of her journey: anxious to return home, but gradually warming towards the Doctor and thrilling at the dangerous wonders of the universe that he’s been showing her. In my opinion, we didn’t get to see enough of that aspect of her development on-screen, and so this volume helps flesh out her transition from reluctant TARDIS passenger to full-on Time Lord companion. I also like the moment when she sees a woman across the room who looks startlingly like her neighbor Mrs. Flood, but then dismisses the resemblance and never mentions it — a cheeky way to tie in that element of the larger plot arc for the year without introducing any major spoilers or pesky continuity errors over who knew what information when.

Unfortunately, the rest of the tale that follows isn’t nearly as noteworthy. The protagonists trace a psychic call for help to a dying sentient ship, stolen and marooned a century earlier by its builders after they learned their empire was planning to use its technology for conquest. Now the surviving thieves and their descendants are in trouble, and the heroes have to scramble to outwit the imperial agents and bounty hunters who have likewise traced the signal. As I often find myself saying about this kind of media tie-in book, it’s not bad, but it’s not really taking full advantage of the chance to do something spectacular with the franchise, either.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: King of Ashes by S. A. Cosby

Book #96 of 2025:

King of Ashes by S. A. Cosby

Another excellent slice of southern crime fiction from author S. A. Cosby, this time riffing rather obviously off The Godfather: an adult son comes home and gets increasingly involved in the local criminal activity, despite people repeatedly cautioning him that he could do so much more with his college education. It’s not the family business that he’s taking over — that would be his estranged father’s crematorium that gives the novel its name — but he’s got a weak brother who’s in over his head with a few area gangsters, and the protagonist is clever and tough enough to ingratiate himself with them and begin tearing apart their organization from the inside. Meanwhile the shadow of town gossip hangs over the plot, as everyone assumes that the man’s mother, who disappeared when he was a teenager, was murdered by her husband and conveniently burned up in the very incinerator he’s now using to hide bodies for the gang.

I’ve really enjoyed this story, especially for the majority-Black characters and the rural Virginia setting (which includes a few cameo connections to some of the writer’s previous work, as a treat for returning readers). There’s a Shakespearean sort of arc here, and fewer of the gimmicky twists or heavy themes that sometimes mar this genre for me. I would call it a must-read for fans, and not a bad Cosby title to start with, either.

[Content warning for gun violence and gore.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

Book #95 of 2025:

Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

An intentionally-provocative political treatise that attempts to diagnose from the center-left why modern America seems to underperform in arenas from housing to manufacturing to scientific innovation. I would say it’s written primarily for Democratic-leaning readers who are open to intra-party criticism, as authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson are frank in their analysis that liberal movements and politicians of recent decades have — with all the best of intentions — introduced bottlenecks that are now curtailing significant progress to their own professed goals. Oftentimes, these take the form of regulations that may have outlived their usefulness, or perhaps were not considered in their aggregate effect alongside other measures. Requiring builders to file onerous amounts of paperwork before breaking ground or scientists to spend more time on grant applications than actual research ends up stifling growth, thereby alienating prospective voters and opening the door to bad-faith attacks from conservatives who allege that government as a whole is inefficient and can be adequately replaced by free-market solutions.

The cowriters believe in big government, and they extol a few cases where public works were completed rapidly on a scale that industry alone could not have achieved, like the development of successful COVID-19 vaccines or an emergency road repair in Pennsylvania following a disaster. What sets those efforts apart from most projects, they suggest, is that the normal restrictive procedures were set aside, allowing participants to more efficiently pursue their missions according to their own expertise without having to align at every step with the conventional roadmap and all its careful checkboxes.

The name of the game is abundance, because the recommendation here is that Democrats should act in such a way as to boost the supply of the things we claim to care about. Are regions like California facing a housing crisis? Get on board with the YIMBY (“yes in my backyard”) agenda and loosen local zoning requirements that make it so hard to build there. Want scientific breakthroughs like a cure for cancer? Incentivize underexplored research domains, rather than prioritizing studies that are deemed more likely to succeed but would only yield a trivial improvement over the status quo. And so on.

My problem with this is twofold. First, it’s not always clear that the separate topics the authors raise naturally belong together under a common banner that a deregulatory platform would address. (They note at one point that our homegrown technical innovations aren’t widely adopted by domestic businesses, for instance, but the legal mechanisms to encourage that behavior seem very different from those that would cut red tape elsewhere.) Although Klein and Thompson complain that politics is dominated by lawyers who default to a legalistic mindset of perfecting process over measuring results, they appear equally guilty of asserting without much evidence that their one-size-fits-all approach would save the day.

The second issue is that the book plays coy about just what regulations should be repealed under this new paradigm. It’s easy to say en masse that today’s laws are a vestigial solution to yesterday’s troubles or that the party is too beholden to special interest groups, but what specifically needs to go? What safeguards against cronyism or environmental destruction or union-busting or bias in hiring aren’t relevant anymore, and how do we ensure that those impacts remain blunted if we get rid of the legacy infrastructure doing the blunting? Is sheer abundance worth it at the cost of accepting for example that fewer women will be hired or construction projects might be more harmful to the environment going forward?

So I’m not necessarily convinced by the argument here, despite considering myself in the YIMBY camp overall. But it’s an interesting and quick read that seems to be succeeding in its aim to start a conversation, at least if my Twitter feed is any indication.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Book #94 of 2025:

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

As fully expected, she’s done it again: author Taylor Jenkins Reid has once more delivered a triumphantly emotional novel about fictional historical celebrities, this time turning her attention to the second class of female American astronauts in the early 1980s. (Trailblazer Sally Ride is at least name-checked here, but it does seem a little weird that the invented characters are taking the place of real women like Judith Resnik, which wasn’t so much of an issue for the entertainment industries that this loose series* previously covered. Or is that how tennis fans felt towards Carrie Soto Is Back?)

Our heroine is serving as ground control CAPCOM in the opening chapter, although we learn that she’s already been up to space herself at this point. Suddenly a disaster breaks out aboard the distant shuttle, but before we can see how that resolves, the narrative rewinds a few years to recount the backstory, which winds up constituting the majority of the plot. As the unofficial subtitle on the cover suggests, it’s also a love story — and specifically a queer one, of the protagonist feeling drawn to one of her fellow cadets, having a minor gay awakening crisis, and ultimately consummating those feelings. As she did in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, the writer excels at capturing the tenor of same-sex attraction in a bygone era, when there were often no easy resources or communities at hand and the public revelation of a ‘deviant lifestyle’ could easily end a career.

In the present of 1984, which we cut back to sporadically, the object of Joan’s affections is one of the survivors still in danger on the damaged spacecraft. Structurally, this is a bit of an odd choice: we start out ignorant of what Vanessa means to her, and then remain unsure whether the two are current partners, or exes, or what until the timelines finally connect at the very end. But there’s no big twist reveal that’s kept hidden from readers, which makes that tension sit strangely for me. (This is maybe just a personal preference, but in general, I like knowing whatever a viewpoint character knows. And since the women are obviously aware of the nature of their own relationship, it reads as artificial for that not to be reflected in their thoughts.)

But the interpersonal drama leading up to the launch is great, from the romance to the struggles against sexism a la Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Calculating Stars to the various family entanglements. I especially love the protagonist’s closeness with her niece and more complicated bond with the girl’s resentful mother, her sister, which isn’t a kind of dynamic I see modeled in fiction very often. And one supporting figure who is plainly on the neurodivergent spectrum captured my heart completely, even though — realistically! — no one of the time has anywhere close to the right language to describe her.

I probably would have liked this title better without the riff on the Apollo 13 and Challenger tragedies, which honestly strikes me as somewhat distasteful, beyond the life-or-death stakes simply not being a clear fit for Reid’s usual talents. I got way more out of the cast interactions back on earth, and I really wanted to discover where their journey would go after the doom-struck mission ended. But that’s enough to award it three-and-a-half stars rounded up, I suppose.

*I didn’t spot any overt connections to Reid’s previous books, but given the common themes, I’m assuming until I hear otherwise that this one is meant to be set in the same continuity.

★★★★☆

Book Review: Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service edited by Michael Lewis

Book #93 of 2025:

Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service edited by Michael Lewis

This 2025 title — a collection of previously-published Washington Post articles — is an attempt to put a face to the American federal government and the ranks of civil servants who work on complicated problems for immeasurable benefit that most people never even know about. Like the professions of its subject matter, it’s a book that ought to be strictly nonpartisan and yet winds up feeling decidedly political due to the uninformed opposition of the right-wing pundit class and their champion, President Donald Trump. The implicit thesis seems to be that maybe those folks would realize the error of their ways if they could only see the accomplishments of our civilian workforce, though that ignores the challenge inherent in arguing with someone who isn’t interested in carefully reviewing evidence that might contradict their gut beliefs.

So this project is sort of fatally flawed from the start, but it’s also a lot shorter than I would like. It takes the form of eight deep-dive case studies from various reporters, with little effort to capture the scope of the service at large. The best chapters are the first and last, penned by editor Michael Lewis himself, respectively telling us about a coal mine safety researcher and an FDA bureaucrat working to collect and disseminate cases of rare infectious diseases not profitable enough for industry clinical trials, so that successful treatments aren’t lost in the obscurity of random doctor notes. The pieces from his fellow writers are generally interesting too, but they collectively cover a tiny fraction of what our tax dollars pay for, and there’s obviously a great deal of selection bias in which individuals have been deemed worthy to write about. (I’m a federal contractor myself, a role that’s practically invisible within these pages.) The end result is a text I’ve found educational yet unsatisfying all the same, especially as a theoretical counterargument to any DOGE-like plans to radically downsize the bureaucratic payroll.

★★★☆☆

TV Review: Leverage: Redemption, season 3

TV #30 of 2025:

Leverage: Redemption, season 3

Another fine but generally unremarkable run of this legacy sequel, which by now has thoroughly cemented its tone as a zanier version of the original parent show. The disguises for the cons are broader and the villains a lot more gullible, which means that the heroes rarely seem sufficiently challenged as their plans go off without a hitch. Those Robin Hood schemes remain satisfying to see carried out, but less so than they might be if delivered against a truly competent three-dimensional antagonist.

I’m still not sure anyone really needed this series, but I suppose it’s interesting how the Leverage model is adapting to modern technologies like deepfakes and AI bots (albeit as tools of the good guys, which is maybe a little problematic). The characters can create elaborate documentation for their cover IDs at the click of a button, and the marks get taken in completely with seemingly no suspicions or ability to independently corroborate anything — which again makes things pretty easy for the heist crew.

There aren’t many major plot or character arcs this season, and I continue to think that the program would be stronger with a consistent cast from week to week, rather than Aldis Hodge dropping in every once in a while. (There’s a very funny moment when Parker starts to ask if the group counts as a polycule only to be interrupted by a smash cut to the credits, but it would have landed even better in an episode with Hardison.) Noah Wyle is downgraded to a recurring guest star this year too, presumably due to his commitments on The Pitt.

But at the end of the day, shows like this represent nice comfort watches where the sneering wealthy abusers always get their comeuppance, and there’s value in that regardless of how I feel the execution could be improved.

[Content warning for gun violence and gaslighting.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Agents of Light and Darkness by Simon R. Green

Book #92 of 2025:

Agents of Light and Darkness by Simon R. Green (Nightside #2)

[Note: this is a modified version of my review from 2018.]

This urban fantasy series still has issues like an oversexualization of its female characters, but this second novel is better than I remembered and a vast improvement over the debut. If the previous volume feels a bit like a TV pilot, laboriously introducing the players and the overall setting at the expense of the immediate story at hand, this one is a solid sophomore episode, establishing / reinforcing the general procedural beats that we should expect going forward in a way that doesn’t just repeat what’s come before. So our detective protagonist again gets a case from a client keeping secrets from him, and he again follows a fairly straightforward path from clue to clue until he finds his quarry, but author Simon R. Green’s command of the plot seems more confident this time, and he’s able to squeeze in some meaningful character growth and advancement of the larger arc about Taylor’s mysterious inhuman mother as well. I’ll take it!

The tone remains something like Raymond-Chandler-meets-Welcome-to-Night-Vale, but it’s settled into more offbeat irreverence than pure noir nihilism, and the worldbuilding offers a steady stream of clever invention and weird pulpy action. The premise of this specific installment is that everyone in the Nightside is trying to track down the “Unholy Grail” that Judas drank from at the Last Supper, while angels from both Heaven and Hell — basically indistinguishable, which is the sort of subtle but pointed detail I appreciate — tear the place apart to find it first. The hero’s also been hired to look for the powerful artifact, with return appearances from his sometimes-allies Shotgun Suzie and Razor Eddie, and the nature of the angelic host prevents him from utilizing his supernatural abilities, which is a nice handicap that forces him to rely more on his reputation and bluffing. I like the twist in the eventual resolution, too.

As that paragraph and my warnings below might suggest, I recognize that this is not a title for every kind of reader out there. But if you can get on board with its particular vibe, the ensuing adventure is a lot of fun and a promising sign for the remaining sequels ahead.

[Content warning for gun violence, suicide, gore, incest, rape, child sexual abuse, and abortion.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall

Book #91 of 2025:

All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall

Theoretically, this is gentle post-apocalyptic fiction in the Station Eleven tradition, tracking a small family unit as they lose their home to the rising floodwaters and attempt to find refuge elsewhere. Our teenage heroine has only dim memories of life before the fall of civilization, but she’s spent the years since then living in a makeshift community in and atop the former American Museum of Natural History in New York City. When a devastating new hurricane arrives, the survivors are forced to flee even that scant shelter and make their way through an empty but dangerous remnant of the urban area.

In practice, I’ve had a hard time with this novel, both in relating to the characters and in understanding the setting around them. There are hints of deeper characterization, like the protagonist’s possible neurodivergence or her sister’s discomfort with expressing her gender, but nothing that’s really fleshed out enough to make them register as distinctive personalities for me. The geography is confusing as well, to the point where I’m never clear on which places are supposed to be waterlogged or what’s still accessible by foot. And finally, I just want more worldbuilding here in general — greater indications of how the culture would have shifted once all the familiar institutions crumbled apart. It sometimes feels like author Eiren Caffall is so focused on alluding to our contemporary problems like climate change that she neglects to describe the very future she’s cautioning us about.

All of that adds up to a story with solid potential that doesn’t quite land in a satisfying fashion, at least in my opinion. It’s good enough to get a three-star rating on the Goodreads scale, but ultimately a pretty generic example of its genre.

[Content warning for gun violence, racism, rape, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: The Glassblower by Victoria Goddard

Book #90 of 2025:

The Glassblower by Victoria Goddard (The Glassblower Diptych #1)

“This was another story beginning, the tale unfurling beneath her feet with every breath she took, every question on her tongue.”

That line comes at 97% of the way through this slim novella in author Victoria Goddard’s sprawling Nine Worlds fantasy saga, which is sort of the problem here — it’s clearly just the start of an adventure, rather than a satisfyingly self-contained installment. It follows the heroine Scheherezade in between her appearance in the short story collection In the Realms of Gold — in which she escaped her abusive husband in the ancient Persian Empire — and the novel Till Human Voices Wake Us, which is set in modern London. This particular tale finds the storyteller in 18th-century Venice, having recently returned to our world after a jaunt in fairyland that took only a year for her but saw centuries pass back home.

There she meets a stranger who is presumably her once and future friend the Lord of Ysthar, though he isn’t explicitly identified as such and she doesn’t seem to recognize him from their last encounter. The two of them flee together from danger and consider sharing their respective pasts… and then the title ends.

Goddard’s writing is lovely and gentle as ever, but this is one of many novellas she’s now released that feel like they would have been stronger at greater length. It may help fill in the gaps in one little section of her grand series narrative, but it’s merely a tease in any immediate plot terms and isn’t even substantial enough to register as a solid character study. At least there’s a promised sequel coming, at some point.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams

Book #89 of 2025:

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams

I first heard about this book through the news that Facebook had unsuccessfully sued to prevent its publication, which of course cemented my desire to read the thing. It’s easy to see why the company’s not happy, too: this memoir from a former executive paints a pretty damning picture of the internal culture there, from their complicity in war crimes and authoritarian power grabs around the world to sexual harassment from named leaders like Sheryl Sandberg of “Lean In” fame. Author Sarah Wynn-Williams takes us on her personal journey from a true believer in the technology platform’s potential to connect the world (who got the job in 2011 by pitching the need for an international policy role) through to her growing disillusionment and eventual dismissal in 2017 after filing abuse complaints against her boss Joel Kaplan.

“Move fast and break things” is now infamous in tech circles as a corporate motto coined by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, but this piece underlines the implicit corollary of that philosophy, which is that such pioneers are often making everything up as they go along, without enough input from experts or consideration given to the real human impact of their actions. Wynn-Williams describes many times when either she or the legal department had to intervene to stop a plan that was blatantly illegal, as well as a general attitude among leadership that they didn’t have to comply with any local laws in the markets where they operated. Then as the drive for growth consumed the company, there was a push to abandon all principles to accede to requests from governments that might otherwise block the product, with Facebook facilitating Chinese censorship, allowing bad actors to continue spreading misinformation of the sort that got Donald Trump elected in 2016, and intentionally ignoring a genocidal movement in Myanmar that was organized via its user groups. The writer wasn’t as directly involved with the advertising wing, but she also shares disturbing findings about how they were using personal data around this time, such as marketing beauty products to teenage girls who had recently uploaded and then deleted a selfie.

A lot of this reporting has been previously covered elsewhere, but there’s value in hearing it firsthand from an insider’s tell-all. Wynn-Williams presumably has an axe to grind, and she’s obviously presenting herself in the best light as a conscientious reformer who couldn’t make headway against the cutthroat forces at her workplace, but she’s convincing in her argument that stronger guardrails could have mitigated a lot of the damage. The story she weaves involves both the corporation’s strategic missteps and their continued mistreatment of her as a person — pressured to work from a hospital bed and during her maternity leave, even — and while some of her non-professional anecdotes seem extraneous, the overall portrait is grim.

[Content warning for racism, rape, pregnancy complications, and gore.]

★★★★☆