The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

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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Book Review: The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells

Book #126 of 2016:

The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells

This novel about a mad scientist and his animal-human hybrids is justifiably a classic, and a clear precursor to modern “biopunk” stories like The Rook or Leviathan. I was also surprised to recognize its influence on Jurassic Park, with its plot of biomedical experiments breaking free and taking over their island home, and on Flowers for Algernon, with its themes of intelligence backsliding into chaos. The Island of Dr. Moreau is a little slow-paced and expository by modern standards, but it never overstays its welcome. And even over a hundred years since its publication, it remains a chilling glimpse of the potentials of science unmoored from ethics.

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life

TV #49 of 2016:

Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life

An absolutely amazing revival (and presumed finale?) to the original show, which went off the air back in 2007. Among the things I love about this new miniseries is that it really feels like ten years have gone by for these characters. So many TV series that get brought back after a long absence either try to act like no time has passed (e.g. Arrested Development) or make it into a reunion where most of the characters are seeing each other again for the first time since the show ended (e.g. Veronica Mars). But watching Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life is like watching the latest season from a world where the show never went off the air, and it’s so cool that they managed to pull that off. I know how hard it was to arrange everyone’s schedules to make this new series happen, so I’m not expecting anything further – but that’s fine, because it really is the perfect full-circle epilogue to the show.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Book #125 of 2016:

The Magicians by Lev Grossman (The Magicians #1)

Thematically, The Magicians is a story about wizards with depression, and about how getting your heart’s desire isn’t always enough to make you happy. That’s a perspective that’s pretty rare in the fantasy genre, and I appreciated author Lev Grossman giving his characters such realistic human reactions to the magic around them. But plotwise, this novel reads a lot like a Harry Potter / Narnia crossover fanfiction, and I often felt like Grossman was struggling to get out from under the shadow of those fantasy giants. (With honorable mention to Christopher Golden’s Strangewood, which also deals with a journey into a supposedly fictional fantasy world that turns out to be far darker than the children’s books about it.)

When he does manage to find his own voice, as during the time at the South Pole or the stuff concerning the Beast, Grossman’s narrative soars. I’m hoping he leans into that more in this book’s sequels, so that the story feels less like a fanfic with just enough changes to avoid a lawsuit from the C. S. Lewis estate.

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: Vixen, season 2

TV #47 of 2016:

Vixen, season 2

This is still a pretty lightweight entry in the CW Arrowverse, to the point where I’m not even sure if it’s fully canonical or not. (It doesn’t help that each “season” is about 45 minutes long, and it’s hard to remember individual “episodes” when they’re only a few minutes each and released one week apart.) For a while I got excited, since it seemed like the second season was going to provide new information about the first Vixen, Amaya – presumably an ancestor of the one on this show, Mari, although that hasn’t been explicitly confirmed – in parallel to Amaya joining the team on sister show DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. But that didn’t pan out, and the season ended with Mari teaming up with Green Arrow, the Atom, and Black Canary, which has me super confused about what the timeline is supposed to be. This would all be okay if the story was good enough to overlook the crossover-related plot holes, but frankly, we’re not there yet.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Armada by Ernest Cline

Book #124 of 2016:

Armada by Ernest Cline

This follow-up to Ernest Cline’s first novel Ready Player One is (perhaps inevitably) a bit of a let-down, as it is nowhere near as inventive as that other story. Like RPO, Armada is packed full of Cline’s signature nerd culture references, but the plot they’re in service to here is a pretty straightforward retelling of The Last Starfighter by way of Galaxy Quest: the main character is recruited to fight aliens due to his video game prowess, and those aliens have modeled their invasion tactics in part on the transmissions of earth science-fiction that humanity has beamed out into the cosmos. It’s a fun bit of wish fulfillment to see a gamer save the world, but I wasn’t really blown away.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia by Brandon Sanderson

Book #123 of 2016:

Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia by Brandon Sanderson (Alcatraz #3)

Another fun entry in Brandon Sanderson’s Alcatraz series, again harnessing his love of creative magical systems into something more whimsical than his typical fantasy novels for older readers. In this third book in the series, the politics get murkier and the relationships between characters get deeper, but the magic remains no less thrillingly inventive and absurd.

(New to the ever-expanding roster of Alcatraz’s family with their awful-sounding but highly effective magical talents: a cousin who dances terribly, which basically makes him a very skilled brawler in a crowd so long as there’s music playing.)

This is the middle book of the series, and it’s really where the larger narrative starts falling into place, as our meta-minded narrator is quick to assure us.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Epitaph: A Novel of the O.K. Corral by Mary Doria Russell

Book #122 of 2016:

Epitaph: A Novel of the O.K. Corral by Mary Doria Russell (Doc Holliday #2)

More of a follow-up than a true sequel to the author’s earlier novel Doc, Epitaph focuses on roughly the same set of historical figures but is not particularly beholden to the first book for any crucial context. Mary Doria Russell once again paints a captivating picture of Doc Hollywood and the Earp brothers (and of the women in their lives who have been unsung by history but were no less crucial to how events unfolded), this time in the period surrounding the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

Russell’s narrative is a bit more cluttered than it was in Doc, but she has once more clearly done incredible research into her subject matter, and here she manages to present a plausible synthesis of the many conflicting accounts of that infamous showdown that have circulated for over a century. It is likely not all true, and the reader should never forget that Epitaph is a historical novel rather than a history. But it rings true, and still offers a wonderful insight into these figures and this period of America’s past.

This book: ★★★☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Book ranking: 1 > 2

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Book Review: Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

Book #121 of 2016:

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

I don’t usually care for experimental narrative styles like stream-of-consciousness or forgoing all character names, but the disjointed nature of Jenny Offill’s writing adds a lovely etherealness to this short novel on depression, introversion, and infidelity. Her nameless narrator goes on quite the interior journey to come to terms with her husband’s affair and what it means for their family, and Offill adds a wry and dreamlike quality that elevates the story far above its mundane particulars.

★★★★☆

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