The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Doctor Who: The Robot Revolution by Una McCormack

Book #185 of 2025:

Doctor Who: The Robot Revolution by Una McCormack

Una McCormack makes it look easy. She takes a fun but messy installment of Doctor Who, which on TV struggles to balance introducing the new companion and season-long plot with the immediate wacky adventure at hand — involving an ordinary nurse getting whisked away to a strange planet that shares her name and is in the middle of the titular uprising — and spins out a delightfully well-integrated tale in a warm storyteller’s tone. Some of the author’s additions feel like they were probably repurposed cuts from the original Russell T. Davies script, but either way, she delivers them with finesse. Belinda Chandra, her controlling ex Alan, and even her parents and roommates back home all gain further depths here, and we actually get to see the Fifteenth Doctor’s budding friendship with the doomed Sasha 55, rather than glossing over it in a quick line of exposition.

My favorite change from the screen version, however, comes near the end of the book, when the heroine calls out the dashing time-traveler for taking liberties like scanning her DNA without asking. That’s already a powerful moment as aired, offering the rare critique of the alien protagonist and his conventional approach that the franchise typically avoids, but it’s enhanced by the human character explicitly raising a parallel from the television subtext: how the Time Lord is just like the villain of the piece as a man who needs to learn she’s a person with her own agency and not simply a supporting accessory for whatever he alone decides to do. That thread ultimately didn’t get developed enough in the following episodes for my liking, but it’s an excellent way to establish a co-lead who’s more skeptical of the Doctor than his usual wide-eyed recruits.

Certain flaws like the convoluted time-travel logistics remain, but overall this is exactly what I’m looking for from a novelization like this — the chance for a series to tell the thing over again with greater confidence and fresh details or perspectives that were missing before. Many writers fail to meet that benchmark, but this is hands-down an improvement on the source material.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

Book #184 of 2025:

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman (Dungeon Crawler Carl #1)

I hate to be contrarian when I’ve heard such promising chatter about the title, but this 2020 series debut is an unfortunate miss for me. Although I can understand why it’s found an audience, it’s not a piece I’ve particularly enjoyed and I can’t imagine I’ll be checking out the sequels.

The genre here is that of a LitRPG or progression fantasy, meaning the plot is structured like a video game quest for the protagonist to achieve increasingly powerful spells, combat stats, and equipment. That’s not an automatic dealbreaker for me — some writers like Brandon Sanderson work in that same general range and prove captivating — but in this specific case, there’s not much else to distinguish the story. The worldbuilding is extremely generic, and the characters explicitly acknowledge that their reality functions like a sequence of dungeon levels in a program like Diablo, with the goal always to simply vanquish any immediate obstacles, gather the resulting loot, and progress further down.

The premise is roughly The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy meets The Running Man: aliens have strip-mined the earth, killing most of its inhabitants and sending the rest underground into the aforementioned arena, where the resident monster species all want to kill them and successful combatants can attract devoted patrons as their exploits are broadcast across the universe. Our hero is an everyman literally caught without his pants or shoes on, together with his ex-girlfriend’s cat who is soon magically gifted the ability to talk and begins bossing him around with her snobby princess personality (in between the two exchanging Whedonesque quips about their situation).

As that description might suggest, a big drawing point here is theoretically the snarky humor, but its execution leaves me cold. Everything carries a crude sophomoric quality that I personally find grating, as though it’s being delivered by a bro slapping you on the back over his own low-effort jokes. The narrative is regularly interrupted by player achievements like, “Boom! You’ve caused a wall-shaking explosion within the dungeon! The last time the walls shook like this was when your mom came over for a visit!” or comments like how a druidic energy aura is “a great spell to have if you’re a club kid or trying to bang a vegan.” We’re treated to a lot of such background misogyny in the text, along with fatphobia, rape culture, racism, and more. Carl bravely lets us know that he’s neither gay nor homophobic himself, but that doesn’t change how a phony sex tape between him and an enemy orc is seen as hilarious among his raiding party.

When I started this review I was intending to grudgingly concede the book’s craft and award it a passing rating of three-out-of-five stars, but as sometimes happens, the act of writing out my reactions has clarified them for me. Goodreads says that a three means “liked it,” and folks, I really didn’t.

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

★★☆☆☆

Book Review: The Man Who Died Seven Times by Yasuhiko Nishizawa

Book #183 of 2025:

The Man Who Died Seven Times by Yasuhiko Nishizawa

I’m a sucker for a good time loop story, but I’m afraid this 1995 Japanese novel, newly translated into English, doesn’t get there for me. It’s not a fault in the premise, which isn’t that absurd for this particular genre: the teenage protagonist has a strange affliction where he sometimes has to repeat the same day nine times in a row, and though it occurs at random, it happens to spring while he’s visiting his wealthy grandfather’s house and witnesses his host die of an apparent murder. When the 24-hour cycle resets, our hero must figure out what different choices he could make to save the victim, as well as determine which of his conniving relatives, each vying to be named the heir, might actually be the killer. Complicating matters is the fact that whenever he blocks one likely suspect from having an opportunity, another always seems to strike instead. And before long, he’s running out of attempts left to create the perfect timeline.

All these elements could theoretically work, but in execution the investigation goes nowhere interesting, and several big revelations of people’s backgrounds or motives are laughably silly. The tale is slow to even reach that part of the plot, however, as it first must laboriously explain the character’s abilities in an extended exposition dump. There’s also both regular incest between cousins and pedophilia — including the 16-year-old narrator having a 23-year-old love interest who doesn’t know his secret but can problematically just tell he’s more mentally mature than his age — and though that might be a cultural difference between the intended readership and myself, I’ve found it offputting in how unremarkable it’s supposed to be within the narrative. Ultimately none of these figures behave in ways that feel logical to me, and with the mystery around them a bust as well, there’s simply not much to recommend the title.

[Content warning for underage alcohol abuse.]

★★☆☆☆

Book Review: Star Wars: The Acolyte: The Crystal Crown by Tessa Gratton

Book #182 of 2025:

Star Wars: The Acolyte: The Crystal Crown by Tessa Gratton

I remain dissatisfied with Disney’s treatment of the Acolyte branch of its Star Wars universe: first canceling the flawed-but-engaging TV show after a single season that ended on several obvious cliffhangers, and then, presumably recognizing that the program had amassed a dedicated following anyway, issuing two novels that do not continue forward in the canon to reveal what happens next either, but rather fill in backstory for some of the supporting cast. This prequel is at least more interesting and competently told than the previous title Wayseeker, in part because Jecki and Yord are more entertaining characters than Vernestra and Indara. Their novel also feels like a story built specifically to showcase the younger pair, whereas its predecessor seemingly functioned as a capstone to the tangentially-related High Republic era instead.

The two Padawans — Yord hasn’t undergone his trials yet to become a Jedi Knight — take center stage here, and author Tessa Gratton captures their bickering-siblings tone well. As part of a diplomatic mission for the Order, they wind up competing in a planet’s local youth tournament that’s sort of like a non-lethal Hunger Games, which offers an adventure that’s both fun in the moment and a vehicle for personal growth towards the later selves we already know. Readers can thus revisit these fan favorites and gain insight into their development, although there’s not much to suggest the tragic end most of us are aware is coming.

But if you can set the greater shape of the franchise aside and accept the sanitized YA terms of the contest, this is a neat little Star Wars volume. It features one nonbinary human who uses they/them pronouns and a genderfluid member of a different species who shifts between she/her and he/him on occasion, which is the kind of diversity I love to see in this genre. It may not be the genuine followup to The Acolyte that audiences are still craving, but it’s a decent enough diversion. I give it three-and-a-half stars, rounded up.

★★★★☆

Book Review: Ripley’s Game by Patricia Highsmith

Book #181 of 2025:

Ripley’s Game by Patricia Highsmith (The Ripliad #3)

On a plot level, this third Tom Ripley novel plays out similarly to the first two, seeing our sociopathic protagonist get involved in yet another illegal enterprise that seems like it could have been avoided, whereupon he’s eventually driven to murder, dispose of his victims’ corpses, and then dodge the official investigation that ensues. This time he drags an innocent civilian along with him, correctly gambling that a man six years into a fatal leukemia diagnosis might be willing to kill for a payout of money to leave behind for his family after he’s gone.

The mafioso enemies represent a more capable opponent than usual, but what really elevates the matter is the rich queer subtext, although to get there, we need to discuss the previous titles as well. The Talented Mr. Ripley addresses its antihero’s sexuality head-on: other characters directly accuse him of liking men, which he denies, inviting readers to determine whether he’s a reliable narrator or not. And the evidence is substantial — to quote my own review of those early adventures in Europe, the American expat displays “both a fascination for male bodies and the sort of platonic masculinity he somehow can’t perform and a hatred of women and the idea of any conventional romance or sex with them.”

In Ripley Under Ground, any queerness is considerably repressed. Though Tom’s primary relationships are all still with men, he no longer struggles with how he’s perceived by them, and he enjoys a comfortable marriage to a woman with whom he’s physically affectionate. If this story were not a sequel and its author not known to us as a lesbian, I doubt any reader would imagine the character had greater depths to his affairs beyond what’s textually on the page.

This volume, as the final panel of that triptych (although two more Ripliad entries would subsequently follow), complicates the picture further. Strictly speaking, no one voices any thought in Ripley’s Game that the titular figure might feel a romantic inclination towards his own gender. And yet he steadily persuades an upright married man into becoming his intimate acquaintance and co-conspirator, which leads the fellow’s wife to rightly view Tom as an interloper in their formerly happy home. All throughout, the luring of Jonathan is framed as a seduction, with the lamb unable to explain the appeal he sees in the more worldly con artist and his hitman job offer. And since half the text is from his perspective, in a departure for a series that has previously stuck wholly to its original POV, we understand that confusion to be genuine.

The two men are bound together by forces they can’t define and no one else can appreciate, sharing secret late-night rendezvous and private phone calls and repeatedly saving one another’s lives. Their connection is never identified as a romance — nor do I think the pair would welcome that label themselves — but the book is almost fundamentally impossible to fathom otherwise. There’s some initial trickery on Ripley’s part to make the disease prognosis seem even more serious, but by the time he agrees to become an assassin, the younger man has seen through that ruse and decided to accept the proposal anyway. He wonders what signals he gave off for Tom to have recognized him as a potential killer, which reads very much like someone in the closet panicking over a more experienced gay person clocking and flirting with them. Considered through that lens, it’s no wonder he appears helplessly drawn towards the ruthless criminal.

And does Tom Ripley care for Jonathan in return? Perhaps! He does step in and help him when the smarter play would be to stay out of events altogether, and our devious hero has never been given to overt self-reflection. At the same time, however, he’s quick to brush off the ultimate unhappy ending that spoils their frantic close association, as I suppose we’ve always known he would be.

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

★★★★☆

Some Belated Rankings

Indiana Jones was the second in a new feature I’m calling Film Franchise Fridays, where I pick a movie series and watch one picture a week until the end. Before that was Jason Bourne, and up next after the holiday will probably be The Matrix (so far all examples where I know I’ve missed at least one of the later entries). Now that I’m done, here’s my rankings of those first two sagas:

INDIANA JONES:

★★★★★ Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
★★★★★ Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
★★★★☆ Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
★★★☆☆ Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
★★☆☆☆ Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
overall rating: ★★★★☆

JASON BOURNE:

★★★★☆ The Bourne Identity (2002)
★★★☆☆ The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
★★★☆☆ Jason Bourne (2016)
★★★☆☆ The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
★★☆☆☆ The Bourne Legacy (2012)
overall rating: ★★★☆☆

Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

Movie #24 of 2025:

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

Never say never in Hollywood, but the press statements from star Harrison Ford and current Lucasfilm owner Disney have all indicated that this fifth Indiana Jones movie is meant to stand as the final entry in that long-running saga, which began four decades ago with Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). If so, it’s a fairly strong conclusion, sending the intrepid hero off on another globehopping treasure hunt that nimbly recaptures the thrills of the past.

This is in fact a story about time travel in many ways, opening with an extended sequence set near the end of World War II — the period of the original trilogy — that uses de-aging technology to restore the lead actor to a pretty good approximation of his youthful appearance. While there he clashes with a new villain played by Mads Mikkelsen over the latest maguffin antiquity, a mathematical calculation device invented by Archimedes that some believe can enable literal transport across history. Later in the film’s most eye-popping spectacle, the object does just that, hurtling the characters backwards to the Siege of Syracuse in 214 BCE (which might be ludicrous in a more grounded franchise, but I’d argue is no stranger than certain other scenarios the archaeologist has encountered over the years). And in between, this is the tale of a man out of step with his era, looking back on regrets near the end of his life as he’s forced to battle enemies he’d once thought vanquished.

A lot of this works for me! Phoebe Waller-Bridge as the adventurer’s goddaughter is a particular delight, and the Nazis continue to be the ideal antagonists for this series, with their supremacist ideology forming a natural contrast to the archaeology professor’s rugged determination to recover ancient artifacts for the public eye. While the primary action is set in 1969, the decision to incorporate the supposedly-reformed scientists in Operation Paperclip is a terrific way to keep that German faction relevant — and a welcome improvement over the awkward attempt to refashion the Soviet Union as the resident bad guys in the previous title. Sallah and Marion are nice to see again too, although the explanation that Shia LaBeouf’s Mutt has died between movies seems unnecessarily rude.

The plot logic could be tightened up in a few places, and I feel only slightly more warmly towards Teddy as a junior sidekick than I did for Short Round, but overall this is an above-average genre piece. It may be nowhere near the classic of Raiders or Last Crusade (1989), but I’m very comfortable calling it the next-best installment after those.

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

★★★★☆

Book Review: The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny by Simon R. Green

Book #180 of 2025:

The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny by Simon R. Green (Nightside #10)

One of the weaker entries in this 2000s urban fantasy series, which is unfortunate, since it also directly sets up the endgame and includes the deaths of some fairly major recurring characters. But plotwise, this is a mess. These books are never very long to begin with, and this installment features an extended early case of the protagonist escorting a fugitive elf across the city that doesn’t especially connect with the remainder of the tale. After that resolves he’s hired to find an old ally who vanished back in volume six, while his frenemy Walker keeps trying to convince him to take over his job as what passes for an authority figure in the Nightside.

Individual moments here work okay, but the writing is as repetitive as ever, which is increasingly noticeable this deep into the saga, and none of the action scenes or worldbuilding descriptions stand out as particular creative highlights. With only two novels remaining, it’s a shame this title doesn’t make a stronger impression or significantly challenge our hero, who’s been in any number of more desperate scrapes before now. But at least it clears the board of a few issues we don’t need to revisit again, I guess.

[Content warning for drug abuse and gore.]

★★☆☆☆

TV Review: 12 Monkeys, season 1

TV #55 of 2025:

12 Monkeys, season 1

There’s a fun Fringe vibe running through the first year of this Syfy program, and not only because Kirk Acevedo is around in a supporting role. Like that earlier show, it also offers a story that deepens as it goes along and starts digging into the personal stakes for certain characters, rather than relying on the worldsaving heroics alone to sell the drama. The focus is still on using time travel to prevent a virus from destroying human civilization, but by the end of this season it’s clear that one particular person is motivated by having lost a child in the fall, while another is working for the other side to maintain the timeline and keep their own family from being erased. That’s a conflict that resonates and doesn’t offer easy answers, to the overall improvement of the series.

12 Monkeys is a 2015 reboot of the 1995 film of the same name, in which a man from a plague-ravaged future seemingly travels back in time and gets locked up in a mental hospital, but it sheds the manic Terry Gilliam energy and ambiguities over the protagonist’s sanity. This version of Cole is obviously on-the-level, though his superiors aren’t necessarily giving him the full picture, and his own ordeal as an institutional patient doesn’t last very long. He’s mostly teaming up with a modern CDC doctor to undo the outbreak before it occurs, and getting increasingly frustrated as their successful missions aren’t changing anything back in his home era. The plot is twisty, sometimes beyond the point of believability, but it’s definitely the kind of tale that’s more satisfying to look back on once the pieces have fallen into place than it always manages to be in the moment.

I don’t think the finale sticks the landing, especially for rushing a romantic connection between the leads that could have used more room to develop naturally, and the narrative as a whole doesn’t seem like the writers have quite worked through what the rules of paradoxes and such should be in this setting, in terms of whether it’s genuinely possible to ever rewrite history or merely upend people’s flawed understanding of past events. (I’m not saying the scripts can’t square everything we see in this initial outing under a grand unified theory of worldbuilding, just that it hasn’t happened yet.) But the effort improves across these thirteen episodes for sure, and leaves me hopeful for what the remaining seasons will bring.

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

★★★☆☆

Book Review: The Strength of the Few by James Islington

Book #179 of 2025:

The Strength of the Few by James Islington (Hierarchy #2)

I don’t really know what to do with this title, rating-wise. I have major critiques about its structure that I’ll get into below, but taking every section on its own terms, I suppose I’ve enjoyed the unfolding story and how it continues what was started in The Will of the Many. I’ll go with 3.5 stars, rounded up, which is sort of the opposite of how I felt about that initial volume, where a dazzling majority was brought down by a confusingly unsupported ending. Unfortunately, author James Islington’s odd choices there continue to shatter the resulting narrative in this sequel.

But let’s set the stage here (and spoil the conclusion of the first book, as a warning). Our returning hero is a young man with quite a lot of secrets: he’s the orphaned heir of a small kingdom that his militaristic empire conquered, hiding the identity that would mark him for death but being blackmailed over it by a band of rebels, while also trying to pierce a shadowy conspiracy at his cutthroat academy. At the end of the last adventure, he succeeded in that latter goal, only to trigger a ritual that copied him into the two alternate dimensions that apparently broke off from his own several millennia ago. From that point on, there are three of him, and this novel follows them all as they proceed to pick their respective paths forward.

It’s not so unusual in the fantasy genre to divide a sprawling cast and then bounce around among them, as any Game of Thrones fan could attest. Still, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a tale like this before, where the protagonists are identical versions of the same person, engaging in completely separate subsequent plots. This isn’t a Sliding Doors situation exploring how small differences cascade into significant ones as they diverge — the worlds are all strikingly distinct in their histories, present societies, and rules of magic, not parallel in any meaningful sense — nor do the heroes ever reunite and integrate their storylines, at least in this installment. They’re just starring in a trio of totally different scenarios, each of which is a plausible continuation of their common previous ordeals. Adding to the confusion, the chapters are all told in first-person, unlabeled, and in no specific rotating pattern, and although it’s usually easy to determine from the first few sentences which copy we’re now with, the impact is jarring every time.

Despite all that, I can’t help but like the main character(s). His undercover mission in the primary setting remains very Red Rising-coded, ruthlessly gaining stature amidst his enemies so as to better destroy them from within, and he’s clever enough to discover a few Mistborn-style worldbuilding twists that will presumably be of increased relevance later on. He develops into more of a soldier / druid in one reality and a revolutionary spy in another, but all are fun to watch level up their skills in those arenas to overcome their particular opponents. The aggregate effect is enjoyable but decidedly bizarre whenever you stop to consider the bigger picture, and I have no idea how the series will maintain its current direction(s) in any future releases. But I guess I’m still on board to find out.

[Content warning for torture, gore, and mention of rape.]

★★★★☆