The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray

Book #17 of 2018:

Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray (Constellation #1)

There’s a bit of a rocky start to this novel, but it’s not long before the story kicks off into a careening sci-fi adventure. It’s got so many things I love about the genre: an exploration of the souls of advanced robots, people on backwater planets longing to see the universe, daring space battles, ethical debates about scientific breakthroughs, and more. At the heart of it are two great characters who meet as enemies but steadily come to care for one another in a way that builds believably rather than falling instantly in love. (Fun bonus: no hackneyed YA love triangle, either!) I also like that this book tells a complete story on its own, while still setting up a few dangling threads for the forthcoming sequel to resolve. If you’re looking for light but poignant intergalactic thrills, you can’t do much better than this.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Morning Star by Pierce Brown

Book #16 of 2018:

Morning Star by Pierce Brown (Red Rising #3)

When I first read this book in 2016, I wrote the following review:

“A thrilling end to a spectacular trilogy. I do think this book was a minor step down from the first two Red Rising volumes, which had more cohesive plot structures than this one. Morning Star sometimes felt more like a sequence of discrete stories than a single overarching narrative, but it definitely delivered a satisfying conclusion and the payoff to various character arcs begun in the earlier books. As I’ve said before, Darrow is an amazing character to see thinking his way out of seemingly hopeless situations, and author Pierce Brown is just as adept at coming up with plot twists I never see coming. This is a series I know I’ll be rereading at some point, and I’m excited to see what Brown does next.”

As it turns out, the next thing from Brown is a new sequel series to Red Rising, with the first book out now. And since revisiting the trilogy has made me fall in love with it all over again, as I knew it would, I can’t wait to see the story pick back up in Iron Gold!

This book: ★★★★☆

Overall series: ★★★★★

Book ranking: 2 > 1 > 3

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Book Review: First Test by Tamora Pierce

Book #15 of 2018:

First Test by Tamora Pierce (Protector of the Small #1)

This is the start of a new quartet within author Tamora Pierce’s larger Tortall series, and it benefits from the worldbuilding that the earlier books have established without doing much to further things here. Set a decade or so after Pierce’s original Tortall heroine disguised herself as a boy to become a knight of the realm, this new story concerns the first girl to follow openly in Lady Alanna’s footsteps. The young page overcomes hazing and bullying because of her gender, but I found myself wanting more from the plot, which feels sort of like the first Harry Potter book stripped of any Sorcerer’s Stone business: just the story of a ten-year-old’s first year at a strange new school, without any particular climax at the end. Still, it’s a promising start to a new character arc, and I trust Pierce will throw in some wrinkles soon.

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: Marvel’s The Punisher, season 1

TV #5 of 2018:

Marvel’s The Punisher, season 1

I don’t care much for either the beginning or end of this show (which seem to tell us little we didn’t already know about the character), but the middle section is surprisingly solid. I’m also really impressed with Ben Barnes’s acting and accent work — I hope he’s back next season as Jigsaw, but even if not, he’s definitely someone I’ll be keeping an eye out for in other projects now. Overall I’d say the season was a success, and a nice demonstration that Marvel can deviate away from their initial MCU plans without the effort falling flat.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History by Katy Tur

Book #14 of 2018:

Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History by Katy Tur

NBC News correspondent Katy Tur reported on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign right from the start, often finding herself publicly singled out by the candidate with alternating praise and insults in his signature volatile style. Trump broke political and societal norms left and right, and in this book, Tur somewhat breathlessly recounts what it was like for a reporter to follow that story across the country, watching the Republican’s support grow in rally after rally — and through scandal after scandal — on the way to his unlikely electoral victory.

To some extent, the resulting book is less interesting because of the very outcome it depicts. The author is completely correct that there has never been a presidential candidate like Trump, but after a year of seeing him govern in the same chaotic way that he ran for office, there’s not really much novelty in looking back on the election beyond the occasional jolting reminder that we used to find such behavior unusual. Tur’s insights into Trump’s success are also pretty surface-level, although her descriptions of the sexism and other ugliness on display at his rallies are chilling, especially for the verbal and physical threats directed at the author and her fellow journalists. In the end, however, it’s sadly all too believable.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Book #13 of 2018:

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Historical fiction is not generally my cup of tea, but I appreciate this Pulitzer-winning novel of a blind girl in Nazi-occupied France, especially for its short, staccato scenes that manage to be poignant but never maudlin. I do think the novel goes on far longer than it needs to, and I’m not terribly interested in the character of the conflicted German soldier, but on the whole it’s a good read. [Trigger warning for a completely unnecessary rape scene near the end, though.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Origin by Dan Brown

Book #12 of 2018:

Origin by Dan Brown (Robert Langdon #5)

I’m not going to belabor the usual Dan Brown tropes, because if you’ve read this far into his Robert Langdon series, you know what to expect. Someone gets murdered just before sharing a big secret, Langdon races around an old city trying to solve clues, and there’s a twist reveal near the end that’s probably not as surprising as the author thinks it will be. It’s a propulsive pageturner, even as you find yourself groaning at some of the obvious things that Brown and his character mouthpieces feel the need to dansplain. (The most egregious case here is probably the ridesharing service Uber, which is helpfully described for the reader nearly a decade after that company’s launch.)

This writing style is hokey and gimmicky with plot holes aplenty, but it still usually just about works through sheer earnestness alone. In this case, however, the storyline depends so heavily on Brown’s misconceptions about science and religion that it’s hard to just sit back and enjoy Langdon doing his thing. The idea that one scientist’s discovery could shatter the foundations of every faith in the world is ludicrous on its face, even before we finally get to see his somewhat mundane TED Talk at the story’s end. That’s a weakness that maybe wouldn’t sink a better novel, but for an airport thriller like this, it’s fatal.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Forest of a Thousand Lanterns by Julie C. Dao

Book #11 of 2018:

Forest of a Thousand Lanterns by Julie C. Dao (Rise of the Empress #1)

I have some minor quibbles about character motivations, but overall this is an impressive debut novel that retells the beginning of the classic Snow White fairy tale without ever feeling unoriginal. Partly this is due to the great setting, a fantasy version of East Asia that’s incredibly refreshing in a genre dominated by western kings and castles. But it’s also due to author Julie C. Dao centering this book around the character of the wicked stepmother, providing a rare villain’s origin story rather than any straightforward hero’s narrative. I’m reminded favorably of Garth Nix’s Clariel, which similarly tracks a complex protagonist descending into her worst impulses.

If Dao continues to follow the traditional beats of the Snow White story, I do expect Xifeng to get her comeuppance in the sequel. But this first novel is all about the would-be empress crushing her enemies in her initial rise to power, so if you can stomach a whole novel about an antiheroine gradually losing what’s left of her soul, then this is absolutely the book for you.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo

Book #10 of 2018:

Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo (Grisha #3)

This final novel in Leigh Bardugo’s Grisha trilogy is the first one that I feel really approaches the quality of her later Six of Crows series. (Or to put that more charitably, the five Bardugo books that I’ve now read get steadily better when arranged in publication order. She’s definitely growing as a writer, and I’m excited to see what she produces next.)

I was lukewarm on the Grisha series for the longest time, but this closing volume crackles with all of the excitement and originality that I wanted from the first two books. The characters are deeper, more decisive and tragic where before they could feel somewhat petty, and the love triangle resolves with a minimum of fuss. I’m not sure if it quite makes up for the earlier weaknesses, or if I’d even recommend the trilogy as a whole. But Bardugo really nails the conclusion here, and I enjoyed it far more than I expected to.

This book: ★★★★☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Book ranking: 3 > 2 > 1

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Movie Review: Airplane! (1980)

Movie #1 of 2018:

Airplane! (1980)

It’s been quite a while since I last watched this movie, and my wife picked the DVD off the shelf tonight because she had never seen it at all. It holds up pretty well, although the pacing is noticeably slow from a modern perspective. (Obviously this is a movie that’s more about the jokes than the plot or the characters, but there are entire scenes that don’t do anything for any of those measures. A better writer or director could have easily tightened up that script.) Anyway, it’s still a classic, and the jokes are top-notch – I even noticed a few this time that I’d never picked up on before. No idea when we’ll feel like watching it again, but I’m glad I’ve kept the DVD all these years.

★★★★☆

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