The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

TV Review: Party Down, season 2

TV #41 of 2017:

Party Down, season 2

One of the things I love about Party Down – and there’s a lot! – is just how committed it is to its structure. This is the only workplace comedy I can think of where practically every single moment takes place entirely within the workplace. These people aren’t friends outside of work, and the only glimpses we get of their personal lives are what they discuss with one another while at a catering gig. That’s a bold writing choice, but it works and it gives the show a really distinct feel. This was my second time watching this show the whole way through, and I’m sad all over again, because 20 episodes was not nearly enough for a cast and writers as sharp as this one had.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Scourge by Jennifer A. Nielsen

Book #198 of 2017:

The Scourge by Jennifer A. Nielsen

I like that the main characters in this novel are from an oppressed underclass in their society, because it teaches an important lesson about tolerance to any young readers clever enough to spot the parallels to people’s treatment in our own world. Unfortunately the book as a whole struck me as pretty half-baked, with easy-to-guess twists, bare-bones worldbuilding, and everyone’s morals a little too simplistic even for the intended middle-grade audience. I’d be interested in reading a sequel that deepened the world and its characters, but as a standalone story this one doesn’t really satisfy.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Ten Thousand Skies Above You by Claudia Gray

Book #197 of 2017:

Ten Thousand Skies Above You by Claudia Gray (Firebird #2)

This middle book in Claudia Gray’s Firebird trilogy suffers from the same problem as a lot of sequels: a somewhat clunky effort to kickstart the plot and present new stakes now that the main conflict from the previous story has been resolved. Nevertheless, the novel as a whole is much stronger than the first volume (which admittedly had its own issues in the beginning).

The plot machinations that set Marguerite universe-hopping again are about as contrived as the Quarter Quell from Catching Fire, but the unfolding narrative raises a lot of interesting sci-fi questions about fate, identity, and paths not taken, all wrapped in a sinister story of universes at war that brings to mind the best episodes of Fringe. Having Marguerite face universes where she’s made different choices also makes the love triangle from the first book feel less like a mandated feature of the YA genre and more like a genuine exploration of two distinct possibilities. It’s a real step up for the series, and a very encouraging sign for its conclusion.

★★★★☆

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TV Review: The Mindy Project, season 2

TV #40 of 2017:

The Mindy Project, season 2

Honestly I don’t think this show knows what it wants to be. Even ignoring all the cast changes, the writing too feels like it careens wildly from one sort of story to the next without always bringing in solid character logic to back those plays. On the merits of humor I guess it’s a successful sitcom because I do laugh during most episodes, but it’s more puzzling and even frustrating than entertaining for me.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: The Iliad by Homer

Book #196 of 2017:

The Iliad by Homer

I had only ever read isolated portions of Homer before, so this was my first time through the Iliad as a whole. This epic poem is a bit odd to modern ears, more a series of brief vignettes than a single cohesive narrative (which is why reading isolated portions works so well, I suppose). I was most surprised by the lack of resolution at the end of the poem, taking us away from the Trojan War after Hector’s funeral rites but before the death of Achilles or that whole business with the horse. Still, the story works here and there, and even in translation, it’s easy to see why it survived and became a classic.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb

Book #195 of 2017:

Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb (Farseer #2)

This middle book in the Farseer trilogy was formative in my teenage years, speaking to the idealism and anger that most young people probably feel to some degree. There’s something universal in youths chafing against authority figures who will not see reason, and author Robin Hobb taps into that emotion of impotent frustration rather adroitly.

With age and distance the narrative cracks show a little more, and this is definitely a novel where not much happens and the same scenes feel like they repeat themselves again and again with little variation. I was also a bit disappointed in the villains on this reread, wanting either more complexity in their goals or more intelligence in how they pursue them.

Nevertheless, I think the book works when the main character is viewed as a tragic hero, and Hobb makes his flaws believable without ever quite turning us against him. The latter part of the book also succeeds in tearing down the familiar structures of life at Buckkeep that we’d come to know thus far, guaranteeing for better or worse that the last book in this trilogy would bear little resemblance to the two before it. It’s hard to build up a fictional world solid enough that its destruction resonates, but Hobb delivers amid a rather striking climax here.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Heir of Sea and Fire by Patricia A. McKillip

Book #194 of 2017:

Heir of Sea and Fire by Patricia A. McKillip (Riddle-Master #2)

This middle volume in the Riddle-Master trilogy is probably the strongest, but it still moves to the strange internal logic of a dream, often leaving its readers grasping after oblique shades of meaning in under-explained references to this world’s history and culture. What does manage to sink in, though, is intensely compelling.

Whereas the first novel detailed a fairly typical hero’s journey to power, this story takes the more interesting step of following the hero’s betrothed as she grapples to come to terms with both his absence and the power of her own dark inheritance. Woman are front and center here, fighting against the strictures of their society and desperately seeking to prove to a breaking world that there are better truths than vengeance. I don’t remember being as satisfied by the conclusion to this series, but rediscovering this book has made me excited to read on and see it with fresh eyes.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Book #193 of 2017:

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

There’s a decent story submerged in this book, but it’s utterly swamped by the narrator’s endless didactic asides on whales and whaling. For every page about Ahab’s obsessive quest or Ishmael and Queequeg’s sweet friendship or even the fate of minor characters like poor Pip, readers are subjected to two or three pages of nautical background information that adds little to the tale at hand. I liked the narrative on the rare occasion it surfaced, but the reading experience too closely mirrored the long periods of boredom accompanying an actual hunt at sea.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

Book #192 of 2017:

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo (Grisha #1)

This is the first novel in Leigh Bardugo’s Grisha trilogy, a series I’m reading after (and on the strength of) the author’s Six of Crows and its sequel Crooked Kingdom. Those books share a world with this series and take place after it, but are otherwise unconnected… and so far, I like them a lot better. Shadow and Bone isn’t bad, but the heroine is too passive for my tastes and I don’t think Bardugo builds up a particular other character enough for certain twists to land with much impact. The book ends on a promising upswing for the remainder of the trilogy, but it’s not a good sign when my main takeaway from a story is a slightly greater understanding of the background geopolitics in its semi-sequel.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel

Book #191 of 2017:

The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel

Lane Roanoke has never known any family except her mother Camilla, who left home when she was pregnant with Lane and cut off all ties to her past. But when Camilla kills herself, the orphaned teen is sent to live at the Roanoke family estate with the grandparents and cousin she’s never known, only to flee as well at the end of her first summer there. Ten years later, she’s reluctantly dragged back by the news that her cousin who stayed behind has now gone missing.

This is a dark and twisted story of family secrets buried beneath small-town Midwestern values, calling to mind both Gillian Flynn and Daphne du Maurier at their finest. (The Flynn comparisons are perhaps inevitable for a thriller and a heroine like this, but the opening line could honestly have been, “Last night I dreamt I went to Roanoke again,” for how closely the haunting manor evokes images of Manderley from du Maurier’s Rebecca.)

The action cuts back and forth between Lane at sixteen gradually uncovering the mysteries that Roanoke hides and her older self returning to look for clues about the cousin who was once like a sister to her. The truths she unearths are repugnant yet irresistible, and throughout it all, author Amy Engel ratchets up the tension and the creep factor until readers are all too aware of why the Roanoke girls always run.

★★★★☆

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