The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

Book #136 of 2016:

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion (Warm Bodies #1)

Retelling Romeo and Juliet as a zombie love story – in this case between a human named Julie and a zombie narrator who thinks his name might have started with an R – is a clever idea. But author Isaac Marion doesn’t do much with the Shakespearean angle, and I just couldn’t get past the fact that the two lovers meet when R kills Julie’s boyfriend in front of her and then keeps her a prisoner. The logic of the zombie virus is also never made clear, which ends up robbing the narrative of any real tension as the story progresses. All in all, a disappointing execution to what could have been a fun reinterpretation.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: To Hold the Bridge by Garth Nix

Book #135 of 2016:

To Hold the Bridge by Garth Nix

A mixed bag, as short story collections often are. The Old Kingdom novella that starts the book (and gives it its title) is justifiably the main selling point, and “A Handful of Ashes” was another highlight with its tale of magic that was reminiscent of Harry Potter and Chrestomanci while still managing to stake out its own original territory. Some of the other stories struggled to communicate all their worldbuilding in a relatively short span of pages, and I could have done without Nix’s John Carter, Hellboy, and Sherlock Holmes fanfiction. But there was stuff to love here, even if I might skip much of the book on a reread.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Magician King by Lev Grossman

Book #134 of 2016:

The Magician King by Lev Grossman (The Magicians #2)

Like the previous novel in this series, The Magician King is about wizards with depression, and it’s a good illustration of how that condition can strip away all sense of joy or satisfaction and leave a person completely listless in every situation. The downside is that, as a novel, The Magician King feels equally listless. Quentin is stuck in a repeating pattern of hating where he is, leaving, and then trying desperately to get back once he decides he hates the new place even more. Julia’s flashbacks offer a slightly different pattern – and a welcome escape from Quentin’s barely sketched-in Voyage of the Dawn Treader plot – but she too views everything with a bleak uncertainty that really begins to grate over time. When you add to all this a quest so inane and under-explained that it never really generates any stakes, as well as a completely gratuitous rape scene, it’s very hard to muster any enthusiasm for the final book in this trilogy.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: The Green Mile by Stephen King

Book #133 of 2016:

The Green Mile by Stephen King

A well-told story, albeit with one of the most literal and egregious uses of the ‘magical negro’ trope. And it’s neat that Stephen King wrote this as a serial, so that the first chapters were already published before he even knew how the story would end, but I do wish he had edited the finished work to remove cases of repetition and make the story flow better between chapters. Still, this was a fine read with echoes of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and a pointed critique at racism in the criminal justice system.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling

Book #132 of 2016:

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling

This memoir / humor book is mostly funny, but with periodic unwelcome interruptions for the author to indulge in transphobia, antisemitism, body-shaming, and other such charming behaviors – sometimes without even the excuse of a punchline. I still like Mindy Kaling as a comedian, but it turns out I could have done without this direct look into her psyche.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Version Control by Dexter Palmer

Book #131 of 2016:

Version Control by Dexter Palmer

Version Control is a slow burn of a novel. Although set in the near future and populated with new technologies like self-driving cars, it’s not until halfway through the book that it really becomes clear science-fiction. That might be frustrating in other stories, but Version Control is packed full of smart and insightful commentary on a wide range of topics, from big data to online dating to scientific progress to racism to time-travel and more. And the characters having these conversations are so fleshed-out and human that the novel crackles with electricity even before the main plot becomes evident. Version Control was beautiful sci-fi, like a novel version of the White Tulip episode of Fringe, and it was absolutely the best book I read all year.

★★★★★

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Book Review: Sinner by Maggie Stiefvater

Book #130 of 2016:

Sinner by Maggie Stiefvater (The Wolves of Mercy Falls #4)

A weird and kind of unnecessary add-on to the Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy. I’m generally a fan of supporting characters getting to tell their own stories – that’s what’s given us such classics as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead or The Vampire Lestat, after all – but there’s just not much story here. It’s Cole and Isabel continuing to blunder around their mutual attraction and respective emotional scars, but with very little plot and certainly nowhere near the stakes of the first three books. Even Cole’s being a werewolf is practically a non-issue here, as he very rarely shifts and is never really in any danger. Sinner was perhaps a good writing exercise for Maggie Stiefvater, but I don’t really think it needed to be published as part of this series.

This book: ★★☆☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Books ranked: 2 > 3 > 1 > 4

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Book Review: Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson

Book #129 of 2016:

Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson

A scattered but hilarious memoir about living with mental illness – and about how that isn’t inherently a contradiction in terms. Lawson doesn’t shy away from the low moments that her condition has brought her to (or that her husband has had to put up with), but she demonstrates how she hasn’t let those moments derail her entire life either. Finding the humor in life – insisting on being “furiously happy” in the face of crushing depression and anxiety – can be tough, but as Lawson says, it helps immeasurably just to know that other people are going through similar battles of their own. I know I’ll be glad that I’ve read this book the next time I’m at a low point of my own.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Shadow Throne by Jennifer A. Nielsen

Book #128 of 2016:

The Shadow Throne by Jennifer A. Nielsen (The Ascendance Trilogy #3)

The first novel in this trilogy was definitely the strongest, but this third one resolves the larger story nicely, and it’s always a joy to spend more time with a character like Sage. His ability to think his way out of desperate situations is taxed to the limit here, and with a war threatening Sage’s entire kingdom, the stakes could not be higher. The plot mechanics that separate the young king from his soldiers and servants feel less contrived this time around, and author Jennifer A. Nielsen threads a tricky needle at driving home the horrors of war without going darker than the YA genre could handle. The initial book remains my favorite, but The Shadow Throne absolutely gives Sage and his friends the send-off they deserve.

(Side note: can we talk about how awful that title is, though? I get that it fits the pattern of the “The False Prince” and “The Runaway King,” but those actually were decent summaries of the plots of their books. “The Shadow Throne” sounds pretty, but it really doesn’t mean anything in the context of this story.)

This book: ★★★☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Books ranked: 1 > 3 > 2

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Book Review: The Madman’s Daughter by Megan Shepherd

Book #127 of 2016:

The Madman’s Daughter by Megan Shepherd (The Madman’s Daughter #1)

I love the idea of a prequel to The Island of Dr. Moreau, particularly one told from the point of view of his daughter (a new invention – there were basically no female characters in the original novel). And that idea is very well-executed here; Juliet is a great character, and her time on her father’s island is a gripping gothic adventure of mad science and suspense. The plot fits nicely in the gaps left in the original H. G. Wells story, while also staking out plenty of new territory of its own. Unfortunately, it’s bogged down a little by a completely unnecessary YA love triangle, with Juliet’s heart torn between two fairly bland male suitors. But in the moments when she sets thoughts of romance aside, Juliet’s story soars.

★★★☆☆

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