The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Doctor Who: Lungbarrow by Marc Platt

Book #202 of 2018:

Doctor Who: Lungbarrow by Marc Platt (Virgin New Adventures #60)

This is a fascinatingly weird book, the culmination of a series of adventures that the Seventh Doctor continued to have after the classic run of Doctor Who was canceled as a television program in 1989. When that version of the Time Lord hero was officially succeeded by the Eighth Doctor in a 1996 TV movie, Virgin publishers’ New Adventures series drew to a close by filling in the final stories of the earlier incarnation. Lungbarrow, the last of these novels, also attempted to answer long-lingering questions about the Doctor’s origins and properly canonize the so-called Cartmel Masterplan that script editor Andrew Cartmel had been building towards when the show went off the air.

It’s subsequently famous in fan circles, but understandably a bit of a mess. The main plot revolves around the Doctor’s titular family home, a Gormenghast-inspired gothic manor of eccentric relations, indoor swamps, and giant living furniture. We learn that Time Lords are created in the “looms” of such houses, a technological process made necessary after the species stopped giving birth countless eons ago. We are also given strong evidence that irregularities in the Doctor’s own looming link back to the Other, a shadowy figure of power from the dawn of Gallifreyan history. Around all this there’s some good old-fashioned Gallifrey politics, the return of TV companions Leela, Romana, and Ace, two versions of the robot dog K-9, and a ton of surreal madness as Lungbarrow comes to life.

All in all, it’s not a very good story. This book is simply trying to do too much, and for a purported conclusion, there’s a lot that is left ambiguous, understated, and unresolved at the end. It’s still a worthwhile read for a dedicated Whovian looking for a snapshot of the era’s mythology, but as an actual reading experience it’s more frustrating than enjoyable.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander

Book #201 of 2018:

The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander (The Chronicles of Prydain #2)

I like this second adventure through the land of Prydain even more than its predecessor, perhaps because it has more twists and turns (some easy to predict, others not) and a greater focus on characterization over plot. But there’s the same sense of humor, and the same love of traditional Welsh folklore informing the narrative.

First published in the decade after The Lord of the Rings, this series clearly owes that one a debt, but it comes early enough in the line of Tolkien’s successors that his vision of a fantasy world had not yet calcified into the tropes that later writers must struggle to avoid. As a result Prydain still feels fresh even a half-century on.

★★★★☆

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Review: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

Book #200 of 2018:

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

A terrific piece of long-form investigative journalism, detailing the shady business practices of the Theranos blood-test corporation. From their heavy employee turnover and their “culture of secrecy and fear” to their overpromises of technical breakthroughs and their lies that directly endangered customer health, Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou presents everything that he uncovered in the investigation that eventually brought the company down. I especially like the final quarter of this book, when Carreyrou moves out of a neutral third-person perspective to recount his own interactions with Theranos lawyers and whistleblowers. It’s a modern-day All The President’s Men, a fascinating look at the truth behind a scam slowly breaking through a wall of obstruction.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Trickster’s Queen by Tamora Pierce

Book #199 of 2018:

Trickster’s Queen by Tamora Pierce (Daughter of the Lioness #2)

Tamora Pierce is always hit-or-miss for me, and this particular Tortall novel is unfortunately more of a miss. The spycraft feels mostly like a repeat of the last book, the plot points are easy to predict, and the author ultimately does little to subvert the white savior issues that have been present in this duology from the start. It’s also yet another Pierce story in which the heroine’s magic is so overpowered that she never really faces any significant difficulty in accomplishing her goals. In the end it’s still a fun adventure narrative, and younger readers will likely enjoy it more than I have, but I know Pierce can do better than this.

This book: ★★★☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Books ranked: 1 > 2

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Book Review: The Outsider by Stephen King

Book #198 of 2018:

The Outsider by Stephen King

Stephen King’s latest novel is also his best work in years (since 11/22/63 in 2011, in my opinion). It’s a compulsively readable mystery-thriller with an irresistible premise: a man is arrested for the horrific rape and murder of a young boy, with irrefutable eyewitness, fingerprint, and DNA evidence linking him to the scene. But he insists that he didn’t do it, and offers up an alibi with its own airtight corroboration. Each version of events seems as though it must be true, but both versions can’t be.

For the first half of this story, King explores with great nuance the ramifications of the case and the doubts that creep into this small town. Is an innocent family man being framed, or has he hidden his true nature and somehow pulled off the perfect crime? I raced through these pages, and was expecting to ultimately award the book 5 stars. Two developments in the back half, however, dampened my enjoyment substantially. Minor spoilers ahead.

First, it turns out that this is a spinoff sequel to the author’s earlier Bill Hodges trilogy, which I’ve liked but never loved. You won’t be lost if you haven’t read those detective novels first, but The Outsider does give away their ending, and it’s a little frustrating that it hasn’t been clearly advertised as a follow-up. More importantly, the paradox posed by the novel’s setup is ultimately given a supernatural solution, and the story’s climax devolves into some standard King monster-hunting.

This part of the book is fine, but it’s nowhere near as strong as the beginning. In fact, it sort of reads as though King, who famously doesn’t plot out his stories ahead of time, wrote himself into a corner and couldn’t think how else to resolve the matter. I almost wish he had instead left the solution ambiguous, as he did in his cold-case novella The Colorado Kid. That would have been a bolder writing choice, more in line with the excellence of this novel’s early chapters.

★★★★☆

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TV Review: ReBoot: The Guardian Code, season 2

TV #46 of 2018:

ReBoot: The Guardian Code, season 2

I ultimately gave the first season of this show a 2-star review, feeling that although it was significantly worse than the original ReBoot cartoon, it had occasional flashes of quality that showed promise. Unfortunately, I can’t be as generous to this second season (which was made in the same production block as the first, but released separately by Netflix). It’s just awful on pretty much every level, from cheesy writing and acting to nonsensical worldbuilding and character motivations. None of the potential that I saw before has been realized in this next batch of episodes, and I really hope this is the end of the line for this show. I love ReBoot so much that I’ll probably feel obligated to keep watching, but what this series has done to the franchise is just atrocious.

★☆☆☆☆

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Book Review: There There by Tommy Orange

Book #197 of 2018:

There There by Tommy Orange

This debut novel is a blistering look at the experiences of many contemporary Native Americans, as seen through the perspectives of a dozen “urban Indians” who are each drawn in turn to a pow wow in Oakland. The characters differ in their relation to their heritage and their reasons for attending the event, but their stories all connect — and come together violently at the end. As an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, author Tommy Orange brings great specificity to the indigenous narratives he presents.

Still, I think I appreciate the chapters more as insightful vignettes than as pieces of a whole, as it sometimes gets hard to keep everything straight with so many viewpoint characters over a relatively short novel. I’m also not sure how I feel about the somewhat abrupt ending, which leaves many threads (intentionally) unresolved. But the writing is powerful — even arguably necessary — and clearly establishes Orange as a talent to watch.

[Content warning for a graphic mass shooting and oblique references to rape, suicide, and alcoholism.]

★★★★☆

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TV Review: Better Call Saul, season 4

TV #45 of 2018:

Better Call Saul, season 4

I’ve mentioned this before, but one reason that I prefer Better Call Saul to its parent show is that Walter White has always struck me as being evil right from the start – Breaking Bad could be exciting and horrifying, but the story was never really about its fairly static main character; it was about his toxic effect on the people around him. Better Call Saul, in contrast, continues to offer a brilliant tragedy of its lead character’s moral decline, as the ongoing disappointments of the world grind him down into the jaded figure we know from the original show. That’s heartbreaking to watch, especially through the eyes of a character like Kim Wexler who knows and loves him (and whose ultimate fate, as someone neither seen nor referenced on Breaking Bad, remains the prequel’s greatest and most quietly devastating mystery).

This season edges us ever closer to Heisenberg’s eventual debut on the Albuquerque crime scene, and it’s a thrill to watch those pieces fall into place on both a plot and a character level. I don’t expect this show to end up with a higher episode count than Bad, but that still leaves the writers one or two more seasons to resolve all the lingering issues that this era has explored. Even though we’ve known from the start where the story is heading, there have been so many unexpected nuances that at this point I have no idea what to predict for the ultimate finale. But I have complete faith in this writing team to make it a poignant one.

★★★★★

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Book Review: The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

Book #196 of 2018:

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson (The Masquerade #1)

A fascinating character and culture study, most reminiscent of Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch books. Baru Cormorant is a young woman whose homeland gets annexed by an expanding empire, after which she privately vows to rise through her conquerors’ ranks to take down the enemy from within. The empire’s strict heteronormativity makes this a very personal battle for Baru, as she is the child of a three-parent home and a woman interested in women herself.

But to destroy her enemies and free her people she will need to submerge herself completely into her new role, and there is heartbreak and betrayal aplenty as her decisions twist everything she holds dear. As court intrigue spills into open armed conflict, The Traitor Baru Cormorant presents a captivating look at the insidious forces of cultural imperialism and the personal costs to one woman’s soul for resisting it.

[Content warning for homophobia, eugenics, conversion therapy, sexism, fictionalized colonialism and racism, and discussions of genital mutilation and rape — all presented as unequivocally evil, but still potentially upsetting for some readers. Review originally posted 2/22/17.]

★★★★★

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Book Review: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling

Book #195 of 2018:

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter #3)

This has always been my favorite book in the Harry Potter series, and it is no less excellent even now that I’m closer in age to the second title character than the first. Harry and his friends are growing up, and although they aren’t yet the hormonal teens that they soon will be, they’re still a little less impulsive and a little more prone to self-reflection than they were before, making them more interesting for me as a reader. This is a book where Harry struggles to decide how to act, rather than simply leaping after the latest mystery to snag his attention or the newest insult from Draco Malfoy.

It’s the close of the first stage of the series in many ways, the final moments of Harry’s childhood before his adversary Lord Voldemort resurfaces to threaten the world once more. The stakes get darker and deadlier after this (and the page counts increase accordingly), but nothing ever really tops the intricate plotting of this book’s time-travel climax as far as I’m concerned. I’m also a huge fan of both Sirius Black and Remus Lupin as characters, and I admire how author J. K. Rowling continues to flesh out their generation’s backstory in ways that resonate with Harry’s narrative in the present.

When I think of Harry Potter, it’s usually scenes from this era that come to mind: the quiet, lived-in moments around Hogwarts when there may be an escaped convict on the loose but the life-or-death issues feel secondary to a group of friends figuring out who they are and how they stand in relation to one another. This is a Wizarding World that I could happily get lost in, and it’s always with a pang of regret that I set it aside to move on to the excitement of the later books.

★★★★★

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