The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

TV Review: Archer, season 7

TV #33 of 2016:

Archer, season 7

Given its ratings, this may be the last season of Archer, and if so, it’s ending on kind of a weird note. But this season was still pretty funny, and I enjoyed the show’s latest attempt at rebooting itself, this time casting its characters (who originally were spies and not so long ago were drug-dealers) as private investigators in Hollywood. There weren’t as many film noir features as I would have liked for that setting, but it was still refreshing to see yet another a new side of this show. Here’s hoping it’s not the last one we get.

★★★☆☆

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Movie Review: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Movie #11 of 2016:

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

This is at least the third time I’ve seen this film, and the initial thoughts I jotted down in 2015 still stand:

“This is such a good movie on every level, from character to worldbuilding to plot to sheer pulse-pounding spectacle. I still have the film score roaring through my head, and I might need to go back and see it again in 3D. This is easily my top film of this year ~~that didn’t star Mila Kunis as a space princess~~.“

In fact, every time I see Fury Road, I am newly amazed at how much worldbuilding it crams into such a short running time – and at how it manages to make 120 minutes feel like a short running time in the first place. A year later, it’s still giving me goosebumps.

★★★★★

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TV Review: Arrow, season 4

TV #32 of 2016:

Arrow, season 4

Damien Dahrk was absolutely the sort of magnetic, scenery-chewing villain that Arrow needed after last season’s tired Ra’s al Ghul arc. But with the exception of Dahrk, this season still struggled to hit the heights of Arrow’s first two years. It would make sense for the next season to be its last (since it will bring the flashbacks up to the point when the show began), so I hope the writers are planning something good for that. They certainly have the chance to end on a high note, as so many characters leaving this season provides something of a fresh slate.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater

Book #42 of 2016:

The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven Cycle #4)

The Raven Cycle is a series that defies narrative conventions of the fantasy genre in a lot of ways. There’s no big bad for the series; this final book’s villain was introduced at the end of the previous novel and is basically defeated here off-screen. Sometimes this can make the stakes seem lower, but at its best, The Raven Cycle operates on a surreal, dream-like level where plot is less important and character relationships are primary. And by that rubric, The Raven King is an unqualified success, deepening those characters and their bonds for one last time before they leave us forever.

This book: ★★★★☆

Overall series: ★★★★☆

Book ranking: 2 > 1 > 4 > 3

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TV Review: New Girl, season 5

TV #31 of 2016:

New Girl, season 5

Year-old spoiler alert, but last season of New Girl ended with two characters getting engaged, and this season tracked the length of that engagement, ending with their wedding in the season finale. So that was fun to watch, as someone who’s getting married soon myself, since it’s rare to see a sitcom tackle the exact situations you’re going through at the time. I’m also impressed with how seamlessly New Girl handled losing its main actress to maternity leave for so many episodes: her replacement was very definitely a different sort of character than Jess, and the rest of the cast has been fleshed out so well over the years that it was easy to hardly notice Jess had gone. I don’t think New Girl would (or even should) go on if Zooey Deschanel ever decided to leave for good, but this season makes a strong argument that the show can still work without her.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Morning Star by Pierce Brown

Book #41 of 2016:

Morning Star by Pierce Brown (Red Rising #3)

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.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Evil Genius by Catherine Jinks

Book #40 of 2016:

Evil Genius by Catherine Jinks (Genius #1)

This book got better around the halfway mark when the main character finally developed a conscience, but I still didn’t really love it. There were a lot of elements in this book that suggested a heightened comic-booky reality, but it never felt like the author was wholly committing to that. And the protagonist gets called a genius a lot, but for the most part, we’re only shown the results of his actions without any indication of what those actions really were. I feel like this book had potential, but it wasn’t realized enough for me to continue on with its sequels.

★★☆☆☆

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TV Review: The Flash, season 2

TV #30 of 2016:

The Flash, season 2

Zoom wasn’t quite as compelling a villain as last season’s Reverse Flash, partly because his master plan never really made much sense. But this season still delivered a lot of fun with its new multiverse setting, so on the whole I’d call it a success. I’m not sure what the last scene of the finale means in terms of continuity – I’m really hoping it’s not a brand-new timeline like Fringe delivered at the beginning of season 4 – but I trust these writers. And now that they’ve sent a few characters over to live on Earth-2, hopefully that means more time can be spent on each of the remaining team members! (I’m cool if those other characters recur from time to time, but the main cast roster was getting a little bit crowded. It’s nice to thin the herd once in a while on a show like this, especially when you can do that without killing anyone.)

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, season 1

TV #29 of 2016:

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, season 1

I hate to say it, but this latest Arrow spinoff was a complete and utter trainwreck. I kept watching for the shared continuity with the Arrowverse (and, okay, for Caity Lotz and Wentworth Miller), but I’m not sure if I can put up with another season of this. Just weak, lazy storytelling all around, and most of the cast isn’t up for the challenge of making the bad writing seem at all believable. I think this may be where I stop being a DCTVU completist.

★☆☆☆☆

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TV Review: Fargo, season 2

TV #28 of 2016:

Fargo, season 2

Fargo’s second season was even better than the first, another taut examination of how quickly events can spiral out of control once people step outside the protection of the law, all wrapped up in midwestern niceness. It had a great cast in service of some seriously great writing – I have no real complains about this season other than that it placed all its fireworks, Game of Thrones-like, in the penultimate episode and not the finale. But the fallout was interesting enough from a character perspective that even that I didn’t mind so much. This series remains a surprisingly rich remixing of various elements from the original hit film.

★★★★★

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