The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Tiassa by Steven Brust

Book #26 of 2025:

Tiassa by Steven Brust (Vlad Taltos #13)

I don’t know that I would call this volume a novel like the others in its series have been. Instead it’s more like a triptych of loosely-connected smaller stories, none of which are developed at enough length to really satisfy. Part of the issue here is likely also that the title is a crossover with author Steven Brust’s related saga The Khaavren Romances, which I admittedly have never read. So I personally don’t have the background context for those particular characters, nor do I consider the faux Alexandre Dumas vernacular in which they’re written to be as effective as Vlad’s usual colloquial tone.

As a result, the Easterner’s portion of the narrative is my favorite, although I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s among his best. This adventure is a prequel, taking place in the days when the Jhereg was still a local mob boss / assassin, and it sees him caught up in a twisty The Sting-style caper that’s entertaining but somewhat out of his normal wheelhouse. Which is to say, the protagonist is a canny operator who can both see through other people’s deceptions and deftly spin his own falsehoods around them, but it feels more like a plot that’s been grafted onto him by authorial whim than one that would organically develop in his life.

The middle section of the text jumps forward to the time when the antihero has fled the city-state with a price on his head, as his now-estranged wife investigates and foils a scheme to draw him out of hiding ahead of an expected incursion of deadly extra-dimensional beings. It’s interesting to see her in his absence, and the similar way she approaches such intrigues underscores what a good match they might be for one another, but this part could and probably should have been an entire book all by itself.

The closing segment several years later then goes full Three Musketeers, focusing on the police guards who have been present for the earlier tales as well. I must confess that I find them all dreadfully boring, and that it’s Vlad alone who truly invigorates the Dragaeran setting for me. He is thankfully back again on the periphery of this one, but even he can only liven up the proceedings so much from that supporting role. Presumably Khaavren fans will like this concluding business better, but it’s rather bounced off of me, I’m afraid.

I do appreciate it when writers take risks, and this was a gamble for sure: a wild departure from Brust’s typical approach and an attempt to do something different with the premise. Unfortunately, it’s an experiment that hasn’t worked for me as a reader, and I don’t think there’s enough cohesion across the work to ultimately justify the unusual structure.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Book #25 of 2025:

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

I first read this fantasy novel soon after its initial 2004 publication, and have found myself drawn back to its wonders at least once a decade since. It is a dense and intricate creation: 782 pages in my hardcover edition, detailing an alternate version of English history around the time of the Napoleonic Wars (1806-1817), in which two gentlemen reignite the performance of magical spells, which had fallen out of practice some centuries prior.

The tone is a confident pastiche somewhere between Dickens and Austen, with clever asides and nearly 200 academic-style footnotes yielding a substantial body of fictional cited references to deepen the reader’s immersion. And while that may sound insufferably dry, the text is actually rather charmingly droll and suffused with a gentle irony throughout. One of my favorite excerpts, from the start of chapter 9: “It has been remarked (by a lady infinitely cleverer than the present author) how kindly disposed the world in general feels to young people who either die or marry. Imagine then the interest that surrounded Miss Wintertowne! No young lady ever had such advantages before: for she died upon the Tuesday, was raised to life in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and was married upon the Thursday; which some people thought too much excitement for one week.” And of course, there’s this priceless exchange somewhat later on: “‘Can a magician kill a man by magic?’ Lord Wellington asked Strange. Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. ‘I suppose a magician might,’ he admitted, ‘but a gentleman never could.'”

As I noted the last time I read the work, it’s an astonishing feat of literary voice and worldbuilding, and an undeniable classic of contemporary British literature. We follow first Mr Norrell and then his pupil Jonathan Strange as they bring magic out of the theoretical / historical realm, employing their powers to aid the nation against the forces of Bonaparte whilst navigating Regency-era social obligations and interpersonal subplots. A dangerous fairy lord swiftly declares himself the protagonists’ enemy, but they spend most of the story in total ignorance of his attentions as he wreaks mischief and havoc upon certain of their acquaintances. Meanwhile author Susanna Clarke meticulously builds up the mystery and lore of the ancient Raven King, who ruled northern Britain for over 300 years before vanishing and promising to return someday. Such prophecies and whispers of stronger sorceries still forgotten in the modern age combine to thrill us as events come together and the plot progresses to a slow crescendo.

It’s a wonderful enchantment full of richly-drawn characters, evocative settings, and imaginative wizardry, and has been a delight to fall into once again.

[Content warning for racism, slavery, amputation, gun violence, and gore.]

★★★★★

Book Review: The Weaver of the Middle Desert by Victoria Goddard

Book #24 of 2025:

The Weaver of the Middle Desert by Victoria Goddard (The Sisters Avramapul #3)

Another delightful Arabian-tinged fairy tale involving the three young heroines, who by now are seasoned adventurers (though Sardeet and Pali have still yet to join up with the notorious Red Company that will someday spread their fame across the Nine Worlds). I can’t tell if this sub-series is intended to conclude here as a trilogy of volumes named after each sister, but whether we ever check in on them again at this stage or not, it’s a fine story that showcases the trio well, while centering on the oldest sibling Arzu. We know that she ultimately won’t be the same sort of swashbuckling outlaw folk hero as the others, and indeed, she’s already forming the ties to their home community that the younger women will eventually eschew. But in some ways that makes her a more interesting narrative focus, happily married and with a child on the way to ground her and pull her back no matter how far she travels in pursuit of the latest plot.

That exact premise doesn’t spring until midway through this novella, which begins with Arzu and Pali — newly returned from her solo experience in the last book — deciding to visit Sardeet in the far-off home of her foreign husband. The journey goes somewhat awry, however, and winds up as a kind of Jack in the Beanstalk retelling, as filtered through author Victoria Goddard’s usual cozy fantasy sensibilities. It’s a pleasant time with endearing characters, carrying just enough stakes to give it the familiar bite of the previous installments. In the end everyone gets the fate that they deserve, even if some of those are mere backstory for their greater exploits ahead.

★★★★☆

Book Review: The Hurricane Wars by Thea Guanzon

Book #23 of 2025:

The Hurricane Wars by Thea Guanzon (The Hurricane Wars #1)

This romantasy debut improves as it goes along, to the point that I’ll grudgingly round my rating up to a mid-grade three stars for the book at large. That beginning is pretty rough, though! I don’t mind a nice enemies-to-lovers arc, but it’s not especially believable when the characters’ first meeting — as opposing soldiers on a literal battlefield! — has them obsessing over one another’s looks, smell, and feel. There’s no escalating tension here, just two people stubbornly denying (for no convincing reason) an attraction that’s obvious to the reader from the start. As a result, the same plot beats play out again and again, like one protagonist lying about their feelings and the other one accepting them at their word and withdrawing.

The whole story also has a distinct fanfiction vibe to it, despite this being nominally an original series. For those of you who know your fandom ship names, if you mix together Darklina from the Grishaverse, Reylo from Star Wars, and Zutara from Avatar: The Last Airbender, you’re basically there, with minimal additional worldbuilding or character work to flesh the lovers out beyond those genre archetypes and tropes. Of course the light magic users and dark magic users are sworn foes but their young scions forge a bond anyway. Of course she’s both a chosen-one light wielder and the missing heir to a nearby kingdom. Of course he has a cold domineering and abusive father. Of course they get pushed into an arranged marriage and later have to share a single bed. Etc., etc., etc.

None of this is poorly executed (or at least, not after the initial few chapters), but it’s simply not very distinctive. Anyone looking for a spicy romance is liable to be disappointed, too; there is exactly one scene with content more explicit than kissing, and it takes place in the last 5% of the text. And for folks like me who are more here for the fantasy side of things anyway, it’s a disappointment of a generic setting and magical system as well.

Despite all those critiques, the project did grow on me enough that I legitimately enjoyed the heroes finally getting together in the end, so I imagine I might like the sequel somewhat better. But I won’t be putting it anywhere near the top of my reading list, that’s for sure.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera

Book #22 of 2025:

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera

One of the more distinctive fantasy novels I’ve ever read, and apparently loosely based on the life / legend of the Buddha’s son Rāhula (literally Fetter, the name of the protagonist here, so named because he represented a worldly connection the mystic knew he would have to sever in order to someday attain enlightenment). I’m not especially familiar with the traditional tale, but it’s evident on the page what sort of trauma complex that would give a child, even before considering how his mother in turn tried to raise him as a weapon against his father.

The setting is modern-adjacent, verging on urban fantasy, with demons and magical powers existing alongside email forwards, TV broadcasts, dating apps, and the like in a fictional region inspired by South Asia (and particularly author Vajra Chandrasekera’s native Sri Lanka). There the hero comes of age and tries to chart his own path away from his dueling parental influences, eventually falling in with both a group of would-be revolutionaries and an effort to study the strange phenomenon of doors that only seem to exist on one side of a wall and cannot be opened by any known means. All the while, he does his best to hide his own inherited abilities like flight and the occasional eerie prophetic vision.

The story logic often feels dreamlike to me, with no clear sense of what’s driving the characters or provoking certain events around them. That’s intensified near the end of the volume, during Fetter’s listless time in a dystopian internment camp, but it’s present throughout the text to such a degree that it seems intentional — perhaps to some readers’ distaste. In that vein I personally don’t find the conclusion to be entirely satisfying, although again I think that’s probably the writer’s intent.

Mostly I will remember this title for its worldbuilding and its thematic grappling with issues of colonialism, genocidal displacement, and religious extremism. I love the idea that the cult leader can rewrite reality to change the past on a whim, which functions as a brilliant metaphor for colonial impacts on indigenous culture and suppression of historical accounts that differ from the official record. The execution is spottier, or maybe just more ideal for someone with the relevant background context that Chandrasekera is drawing upon, but in general, it’s made quite an impression.

[Content warning for gun violence, homophobia, suicide, torture, and gore.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Omnibus by Robin Furth, Peter David, Richard Isanove, Sean Phillips, Luke Ross, Michael Lark, Laurence Campbell, and Alex Maleev

Book #21 of 2025:

Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Omnibus by Robin Furth, Peter David, Richard Isanove, Sean Phillips, Luke Ross, Michael Lark, Laurence Campbell, and Alex Maleev

This bound edition contains volumes 31-60 of Marvel’s comic book adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series, originally published from 2010 through 2013 under the subheadings of The Journey Begins, The Little Sisters of Eluria, The Battle of Tull, The Way Station, The Man in Black, Sheemie’s Tale, Evil Ground, and So Fell Lord Perth. Roughly half of these issues depict events from the novel The Gunslinger, while The Little Sisters of Eluria adapts that prequel short story and the rest provide connective tissue to both the previous releases and the wider Tower saga.

I mentioned in my review of the first omnibus that although it would likely prove appealing to fans for fleshing out more of the canonical backstory, the main plot struck me as a weaker substitute for the proper experience of reading the actual King books. I feel the opposite about this sequel, in part because The Gunslinger itself is such a strange and flawed title to begin with. It’s a volume that coasts by on character and mood more than concrete answers, and so it benefits tremendously from the addition of illustrations and further lore details on these comic pages. There’s a clearer sense throughout of the far-future dystopia that is Roland’s parallel reality, along with the ultimate goal that’s driving him. His relationship with the boy Jake from our world, already one of the better parts of the source material, is likewise strengthened by giving their conversations space to unfold as they make their way across the eerie landscape, steadily pursuing the hero’s foe.

Struggling readers are often encouraged to power through the first Dark Tower book before deciding whether to quit the series or not; I could also now suggest that they try checking out this comic treatment as another option instead.

[Content warning for sexual assault, gun violence, and gore.]

★★★★☆

TV Review: Farscape, season 3

TV #7 of 2025:

Farscape, season 3

Cast shakeups are hard. Some TV series take such overhauls in their stride, like Doctor Who‘s revolving door of companions and regenerations, while others can weather the occasional new arrival or departure by leaning into the mission at the core of the premise and how the ensemble pursuing it is bigger than any single participant. On paper, it feels like Farscape should be an example of the latter category — its band of protagonists on the living ship Moya has never been a cohesive crew like that aboard a Star Trek vessel, after all, just a gang of misfits trying vaguely to escape the attentions of their enemies. There’s an inherent malleability there, which is why Chiana was able to fit in without issue when she arrived in a random season 1 episode and surprisingly stuck around.

Theoretically, then, the program should be able to accommodate that sort of disruption. You can imagine the team operating as a Ship of Theseus situation, swapping out members as it goes along, rather like the last few iterations of the sitcom Community. In practice this third season, however, it doesn’t quite work for me, perhaps because there’s too much turnover in too short a period. Jothee and Stark joined up late in the previous year, when it looked like Aeryn was on her way out. (I’m attempting to avoid spoilers here about the specific circumstances involved.) Then all three remained, Jool got written in, Zhaan and Jothee left, Crais returned, and so on. And that’s merely the contingent of major characters on Moya / Talyn, not even considering how the villain Scorpius has been upgraded to the main cast and consequently given more screentime, whether as his actual self or as the lingering neural clone hallucinations within Crichton’s mind. There’s not enough time for the scripts to ever settle down into their new rhythms before being offset by yet another revamp.

Most notably of all the changes this year, Crichton winds up “twinned” into two identical copies at one point, which seems like a typical sci-fi episodic plot until both men survive the initial encounter. There are then simply two Crichtons hanging around with everybody else in perpetuity, which works out to one leaving and the other staying behind when the group splits into two halves for a while. It’s another development that I can understand in concept — the series bounces back and forth between the two smaller units week by week, and Ben Browder as the show’s star gets to be in both of them — but doesn’t land as well as I think it could. I loved the alternating split cast thing when Fringe did it across its universes, but here it again just doesn’t have enough room in the season to really get going and establish itself. The Talyn segments are significantly stronger by virtue of including John’s love interest and primary friendly-ish foil (and by building to an eventual tragedy) too, whereas the Moya ones tend to languish with underdeveloped personal conflicts until the two storylines reunite.

None of this is exactly bad, but I’m nitpicking because it all feels like a messy step down from a series I’d been enjoying considerably more beforehand. I do love the increased presence of Scorpy, and as far as subplots go, both Aeryn’s evolving feelings for John and Crais’s redemption arc prove pretty satisfying by the end. But this is ultimately too chaotic a year to develop its better elements into their strongest possible versions.

[Content warning for gun violence, torture, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Pull to Open: 1962-1963: The Inside Story of How the BBC Created and Launched Doctor Who by Paul Hayes

Book #20 of 2025:

Pull to Open: 1962-1963: The Inside Story of How the BBC Created and Launched Doctor Who by Paul Hayes

A probably definitive overview of the creation of what would eventually become the BBC’s flagship science-fiction program Doctor Who, well before it had secured that reputation by longevity and popular acclaim. Although author Paul Hayes has conducted no new interviews for this work (published for the sixtieth anniversary of the series in 2023, when many of the principal figures would admittedly be unavailable), he’s exhaustively combed through the historical record, from old production memos and contemporaneous news articles to later memoirs and interview responses, all to produce this fairly cohesive account of the two years in the title.

It’s a somewhat arbitrary timespan. The idea for Doctor Who grew steadily over many creative sessions with various contributors, but the earliest concrete seeds appear to date to 1963. By setting his purview to cover the previous year as well, Hayes is able to share more of the background industry landscape of the era, as well as a few preliminary reports the studio had produced exploring the concept of sci-fi on television in general, which may or may not have been incorporated by the team later working on Who. In many areas like this, there’s no smoking gun of clear evidence regarding some specific piece of involvement; with human memory being fallible and many papers of the time not preserved, sometimes even the producers themselves disagree about who was responsible for what.

On the opposite end of the book’s designated period, the show famously premiered on November 23rd, 1963, with a slight delay due to overrun coverage of the recent JFK assassination. The writer again fudges a little to extend his window through the following month as well, presumably to include more details about the Daleks, those popular villains which were introduced in the second serial to air. But he stops long before any notion of regeneration or other changes to the cast or story format had been developed, leaving a curiously staid impression of a media property that by now is best known for its capacity to update and reinvent itself on a regular basis.

Regardless, it’s an interesting look at the topic of how certain elements gradually took shape — and false starts were discarded — as the first scripts were written, and a nice reminder of how many now-iconic pieces of the franchise like the TARDIS arrival sound were there from basically the beginning. We also get treated to lessons on outside British history and culture and mini-biographies of some of the key players both on and off the screen, although this of course necessitates going back even further than 1962. All things considered I wouldn’t classify this as any sort of must-read for fans, but it’s certainly been informative.

★★★☆☆

TV Review: Sex Education, season 3

TV #6 of 2025:

Sex Education, season 3

I do love when a season of television has a distinct, contained storyline bracketing it. In conversation with someone else who’s seen the program, you could succinctly refer to this year of Sex Education as the one where Hope takes over Moordale, in a way that you couldn’t really do for either of the previous two seasons. (The Netflix art / marketing department, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to have gotten the message. The poster obviously should have been a group shot of the students looking alternately sullen or resolute in their new school uniforms, with a tagline like “Change is coming. So are they.” Not whatever this bizarre botany textbook page is, with no significant connection to either the series or this specific run of it.)

Because yes, there’s a new head teacher on campus, and the increasingly restrictive policies that she introduces form the major thrust of season 3 before finally reaching a climax near the end. Various subplots weave in and out of that, and the whole thing is pretty delightful with the show’s usual grasp of character, offbeat humor, and charming candor about all facets of human sexuality. That also comes with the typical interpersonal drama, but most of the former petty antagonists like Adam and his dad have been sanded down and presented more sympathetically over time to where we can easily root for them at this point. Otis, our original leading man, is considerably nicer now than he had been last year too, not to mention further reduced to just one figure among the growing ensemble. All great writing choices, in my opinion.

The series still veers down some strange alleys from time to time — I don’t think Eric’s actions in Nigeria are remotely well-justified by what we know about him — and I do miss the days of Otis and Maeve’s initial sex clinic, which led to more cohesive episodic plots. But overall, this is a welcome step back in the right direction.

[Content warning for sexual assault, post-traumatic stress, domestic abuse, racism, sexism, transphobia, scatalogical humor, childbirth, and gore.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Did You Hear About Kitty Karr? by Crystal Smith Paul

Book #19 of 2025:

Did You Hear About Kitty Karr? by Crystal Smith Paul

I’m convinced there’s a stronger story buried somewhere in this authorial debut — the tale of a Black woman whose biracial daughter passes as white to eventually become a big Hollywood film star — but unfortunately, the version presented on the page isn’t especially effective. The novel has a tendency to tell when it should show, and the split timeline does more harm than good, as the sections set in the present day are far less compelling than those set in the Jim Crow past. The modern characters seem pretty thinly-developed by comparison, and their half of the plot doesn’t have any pressing stakes or reasons for readers to stay invested. (The three sisters don’t know why their elderly neighbor left them her estate in her will, but since they’re all millionaire celebrities anyway, it’s hard to feel interested in the mystery or summon much concern over what might happen after that. The relationships are shallow too, particularly those theoretically crucial ones between the girls and the late Kitty Karr, which we don’t even get to see in flashbacks.)

The earlier sequences carry more potential, though it’s ultimately squandered as well. Racial passing is a big complicated topic, and the book is at its best in interrogating that action and the cost it winds up placing on families divided by the color line — including the subsequent decision of white-passing women to have children or not, as there’s no guarantee that traits like darker skin which skipped one generation won’t reappear in the next. But the writing isn’t up to the task of fleshing out the historical setting, or of plotting the work in a sensible manner. We start in 2017 soon after Kitty’s death, before jumping to the 1930s and the early life of a maid who has a child by rape from her employers’ son. That girl grows up looking white, but it isn’t until a third of the way through the text that she moves west and changes her name to Kitty, a reveal that’s easy to predict yet simultaneously unclear if it’s supposed to be or not. As written, there’s nothing overtly connecting the two bifurcated strands until that point. A similar apparent twist occurs at the three-quarter mark to finally justify the time spent in the twenty-first century, which doesn’t offer nearly enough remaining space to properly unpack it and deal with the implications.

I had hoped that this title would resemble the works of Taylor Jenkins Reid, whose fictional creations generally manage to sing with realism and get me to care about their personal problems despite all their wealth and fame. Author Crystal Smith Paul approaches that level of immersion at certain moments with the older heroine and her mother, but the overall effect is considerably less impressive.

[Content warning for disordered eating, alcohol abuse including drunk driving, domestic abuse, and racism including slurs.]

★★☆☆☆