The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Kill the Farm Boy by Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne

Book #25 of 2019:

Kill the Farm Boy by Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne (The Tales of Pell #1)

This novel aspires to be a tongue-in-cheek fairy tale sendup a la Discworld or Shrek, but it doesn’t have anywhere near the heart or cleverness to pull that off. Instead it reads more like just the plot beats of someone’s first tabletop roleplaying campaign — and although that’s a common criticism of the fantasy genre, most stories still offer more than just the thin characterization and intended punchlines on display here.

Look, I love a good pun probably more than most readers, and there are a few nice ones within these pages. But a lot of the book is just puerile jokes and lazy referential humor, as though the height of comedy is for elves to live in a forest called Morningwood. I would call it sophomoric, but even high school sophomores would likely find this a tad immature.

The nicest thing I can say is that the authors have avoided many easy opportunities to be sexist or racist, and there’s a lesbian relationship that is mostly not played for laughs. Overall, the farcical elements punch up, not down. But it’s hard to really appreciate that when the main focus is literally on a goat that keeps pooping everywhere.

★☆☆☆☆

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Book Review: Palace of Stone by Shannon Hale

Book #24 of 2019:

Palace of Stone by Shannon Hale (Princess Academy #2)

Much like the first book, this Princess Academy sequel seems like a great title for readers transitioning between the middle-grade and young adult publishing categories. It’s a tough act to balance the atmosphere of class consciousness and fermenting revolution against a lighter preteen tone, but overall author Shannon Hale manages it quite nicely. I also like how she takes a love triangle that could easily feel perfunctory and instead illustrates the different choices more broadly facing her heroine, which is a great use of that genre trope for this sort of coming-of-age story. I’m not sure if the next novel is intended to close out the series as a trilogy or if Hale will go on to publish further volumes, but I’m looking forward to reading on and finding out.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart

Book #23 of 2019:

Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart (Kopp Sisters #1)

The heroine in this historical fiction novel has a plucky Willa Cather vibe to her, and it’s neat that her story is based on real events (which have also been recently portrayed in an episode of the show Drunk History). The narrative struggles to keep my attention, however, and an invented mystery subplot essentially goes nowhere until an egregious betrayal of attorney-client privilege late in the book. I don’t think I’ll bother with the rest of this series.

[Content warning for antisemitism presented as a charming personality quirk — which arguably fits the 1914 setting, but is a curious authorial choice a century later.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander

Book #22 of 2019:

Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander (The Chronicles of Prydain #4)

I like the section near the end of this book when the hero apprentices under a series of artisans who sneakily give him life lessons along with crafting skills, but as a whole it’s a bit too meandering for my tastes. Living up to its title, this fourth Prydain novel really is just a story about its main character wandering around on side-quests while vaguely wanting to learn more about his parentage. It’s a little dull, especially for the continuing absence of the princess whose hand he’s supposedly trying to win. I hope the final volume in the series picks back up.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Thanos: Titan Consumed by Barry Lyga

Book #21 of 2019:

Thanos: Titan Consumed by Barry Lyga

Originally announced and written as the first novel set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe before Disney walked back that claim just before publication, this book presents the backstory of its title character and the origins of his quest to destroy half of all life in existence. (The exact reasons for the Mouse revoking a canonical status remain unclear. I see no contradictions with any of the on-screen continuity through Avengers: Infinity War, so presumably there’s something in here that goes against future plans for the MCU’s cosmic inhabitants, unbeknownst at the time to author Barry Lyga.)

Even if this were still an official part of the series, though, I wouldn’t be able to really recommend it to anyone. The plot is largely unremarkable, and there are so many ridiculous leaps in character logic, most of which hinge on Thanos’s absolute conviction that he’s mathematically determined the certainty of a planet’s entire population dying off — despite making numerous other miscalculations over the course of the text — or him killing whole worlds of people anyway when they don’t agree with his diagnosis or proposed cull.

And while there’s definitely potential for someone to tell an interesting, compelling story about such a misguided savior, rich in dramatic irony about what he’s overlooking, there’s no attempt at that sort of complexity here. Instead the narrative is completely on Thanos’s side, which makes it practically impossible to ever take seriously. It’s just the tale of a bullied child who refuses to check his math, kills a lot of people, and eventually learns what Infinity Stones are. It’s inessential, non-canonical, and generally not worth your time.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Circe by Madeline Miller

Book #20 of 2019:

Circe by Madeline Miller

I’m not well-versed enough in Greek mythology to recognize everywhere this novel diverts from the traditional versions of the title character’s story, but it’s nevertheless clear that this presentation of her life on her own terms is something special. Much like Wicked, it’s a feminist reclamation of a demonized woman and a thoughtful consideration of what it’s like to be cast as the villain in someone else’s narrative. As a protagonist, Circe is both hardened and tempered by her various experiences, and author Madeline Miller crafts that personal journey into a profoundly moving tale.

My prior knowledge of this figure comes mostly from The Odyssey, but my favorite chapters here are actually the moments before and after her fate intersects with the wandering Odysseus. Miller has constructed an authentic-feeling mythic world for the witch-nymph to inhabit, and her origins and her destiny there are more interesting than just the retelling of Homer from a different point of view. In fact, my sense is that this book would largely succeed even for readers who know nothing of the original legends beforehand — for if considered solely as a work of fantasy, it would still be an outstanding character piece about the power of moving past early trauma to define one’s own legacy.

[Content warning for rape, graphic violence, and emotional abuse.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: All the Ever Afters: The Untold Story of Cinderella’s Stepmother by Danielle Teller

Book #19 of 2019:

All the Ever Afters: The Untold Story of Cinderella’s Stepmother by Danielle Teller

I have a soft spot for fairy tale retellings, and in theory this novel offers a fine premise: Cinderella is a spoiled brat, her stepmother is a former servant struggling to keep the household solvent, and all the wickedness and magic in the familiar version of events is nothing but hurt feelings and exaggerated court gossip. In practice, however, the book is unfortunately rather lifeless. The heroine doesn’t even marry Cinderella’s father until the last quarter of the text, and there’s no conflict particularly driving her narrative either before or after that point. Some sharp observations on the historical restrictions of class and gender are appreciated, but the idea that a conventional villain is just a misunderstood woman from the lower classes isn’t enough on its own to justify telling the story this way.

[Content warning for rape.]

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: Breaking Bad, season 3

TV #6 of 2019:

Breaking Bad, season 3

This series has been incredible from its very first scene, but the third season is where it truly hits its stride in terms of plotting and character work. This run of episodes is all about the chess game against Gus Fring and the battle for Jesse Pinkman’s soul, both of which offer ever-ratcheting tension and sporadic outbursts of deadly consequence. I have some issues with Breaking Bad as a whole in its treatment of its central antihero, but the writing is best when it functions like it often does here, puncturing Walt’s ego and stripping his illusions from both himself and the audience.

If I have any complaint about this period of the Heisenberg story, it should be clear from the names above: this is a very male-centered narrative. Even Mike and Hank emerge this season as more complicated and compelling figures, but the women like Skyler and Marie are increasingly being left on the sidelines. That’s not necessarily a damning fault — there’s plenty to say about these men alone — but it sometimes leaves me wishing for the interesting cross angles that, for instance, Kim Wexler brings to Better Call Saul.

All in all, however, I love this show, and this season has some of my favorite, most iconic moments. It’s darkly funny and beautifully shot throughout, and it’s the year that cements the series in my mind as one of the greats.

★★★★★

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Book Review: Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

Book #18 of 2019:

Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

Unsurprisingly given the power of her novels, author Jesmyn Ward’s presentation of her own early life as a poor black girl in rural Mississippi during the 1980s-90s crack epidemic is equal parts insightful and gut-wrenching. Told mostly as a series of vignettes, this memoir centers its narrative around five male friends and relatives whom the young writer has already had to bury. Some have lost their lives to drugs, some to violence, and some to accidents, but all are victims of fates that don’t seem to cull people from other backgrounds in America to anywhere near this degree. It’s incredible that Ward has had to go through such a devastating experience so many times, and that she’s been able to present her raw grief so achingly here.

Published just as the Black Lives Matter movement was first gaining momentum in 2013, Men We Reaped is an unflinching cry at the injustices that have struck down these boys, and a demand that we not look away from the pain of their community.

[Content warning for slurs and other racism directed at the author, sexual assault, and suicide.]

★★★★☆

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TV Review: Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, season 3

TV #5 of 2019:

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, season 3

I may look back and decide that I’ve judged this season too generously in the moment, but wow: not only does it improve upon the first two outings for this Netflix series — which were already quite strong! — but it also avoids nearly all of the frustrating vagueness of the closing volumes of the source material. Grading on either of those curves, it’s an absolute triumph.

This show has always been a fantastic piece of literary adaptation, skillfully capturing the delightfully morbid tone of the books whilst expanding on quite a fair bit of unrealized potential in their setting and overarching plot. Here, as in the previous seasons, important details and characters are threaded into the narrative much earlier (and occasionally later) than their first appearances in the novels, which gives them more resonance and thematic weight when they do take center stage. It’s not the most faithful possible interpretation of the original series, but it’s a whole lot stronger for the creative team having embraced that freedom.

This season brings Lemony Snicket’s tale of the Baudelaire orphans to its ultimate conclusion, and although there’s still a slight degree of ambiguity in the final hour, it plays more like an intentional storytelling choice and less, as I put it in my review of that book, “like a writer who didn’t know where the story was going when he began and didn’t manage to come up with anything before his publisher’s deadline.” There’s actual resolution in this version of The End, capping off an outstanding run of episodes that further complicate the lines between heroes, villains, and well-meaning but ineffectual authority figures. It’s a great send-off for what’s proven to be a surprisingly fortunate adaptation process.

This season: ★★★★★

Overall series: ★★★★☆

Season ranking: 3 > 2 > 1

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