The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Movie Review: Ant-Man (2015)

Movie #22 of 2015:

Ant-Man (2015)

This was every bit the disappointment I was afraid it would be based on set rumors, but I am just too much of a completionist to not see it. On the plus side, it does have cool effects, some decent humor, and not an entirely white cast. But on the other hand, both the plot and the characterizations are a mess, the gender politics are atrocious, and the only female character with her own storyline is a figure like Trinity from The Matrix — better already at everything but forced to sit out except to train and fall in love with the man who just joined the team.

There’s also an annoying use of the g- slur, which is particularly awful for this being the first MCU movie since Whedon erased the original heritage of the Maximoffs. The Marvel Cinematic Universe: where characters can’t actually be Romani, but slurs for them can be applied in unrelated and offensive scenarios! There’s so much potential to this movie, but in the end the grossness way overshadowed any actual enjoyment on my part.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Horns by Joe Hill

Book #60 of 2015:

Horns by Joe Hill

This book about a man who wakes up with demon horns and the ability to make people tell him their deepest secrets and desires can’t decide what sort of story it wants to be telling. There are a few different ones at play here, from a detective mystery that gradually turns into a Count of Monte Cristo revenge tale to the supernatural horror piece you’d expect from reading author Joe Hill’s other novels (or those of his father, horror writer Stephen King). There’s also a black comedy mixed up in a thoughtful meditation on the religious imagery of good and evil.

The problem is that these various pieces don’t exact cohere together, and the shifts between them can be breakneck and jarring. Hill does a great job unspooling the plot, deploying flashbacks and bits of foreshadowing at the exact right intervals to keep his readers engaged in the ongoing storyline. But it’s hard to identify just what we’re supposed to be rooting for to happen (or concerned about happening), especially once the “whodunnit” aspect of the story is solved roughly halfway through the book. It doesn’t help that not enough effort is made until the very end of the story to deepen the character of the protagonist’s great lost love beyond the manic pixie dream maguffin that she first seems to be.

Hill is said to have reworked this novel from (old) scratch on two separate occasions before publishing the version we have today. Although there are a lot of interesting ideas in this rendition of Horns, it seems clear that a third rewrite would have done a load of good. After all, as they say, the devil is in the details.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Fool’s Assassin by Robin Hobb

Book #59 of 2015:

Fool’s Assassin by Robin Hobb (The Fitz and the Fool #1)

Ideally, any sequel should justify its own existence. Why are we returning for another chapter of this story? What new developments require plucking these characters and their world out of the happily-ever-after stasis that we last left them in? Of course, some stories are planned as multi-part constructions from the start, and others are open-ended enough that a sequel can still seem to flow organically. But when there’s real weight to a resolution, the very first task of a follow-up should be to explain why that tidy conclusion must now be unraveled.

This is a lesson that Robin Hobb knew, once upon a time. Her Tawny Man trilogy, written and set years after the conclusion of her initial Farseer books, goes to great lengths to highlight the unfinished business suggested by the earlier tales (on both the political level of her setting and the personal level of her main character). The Tawny Man feels like a necessary continuation of the Farseer trilogy, and its closing words — “I am content” –represent a far more satisfactory conclusion.

Any sequel to The Tawny Man, any further exploration of the fate of the Six Duchies or the life of FitzChivalry Farseer, must therefore begin by explaining why it is called for in the first place. But although there are hints throughout Robin Hobb’s newest book that she has a fresh plot in mind for her erstwhile former assassin, these glimpses are murky at best — and seen only sporadically throughout a sedately plodding plot. This novel spans over a decade of time for its characters, and yet it still manages to feel like nothing more than a prologue.

Perhaps what comes next will help give this story some weight, but for now this new Fitz and the Fool trilogy feels entirely inconsequential. As comfortable as it is for longtime Hobb readers to check back in with Fitz and his world, Fool’s Assassin does not provide a valid reason for spoiling his content.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

Book #58 of 2015:

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

An unflinching and unsettling look at the horrors of slavery, as seen through the eyes of a modern-day black woman suddenly transported back to antebellum America. Dana cannot control the strange forces that send her back in time, nor can she avoid getting caught up in the awful dehumanizing treatment of 19th-century black slaves by their white masters once she finds herself in their midst. Butler’s story offers a realism drawn from actual slave memoirs of the time, to which she adds her own harrowing philosophical questions as Dana must struggle to understand and protect her own white ancestor and to contextualize and explain her experiences to her white husband back home.

Kindred speaks very powerfully not only to the appalling nature of slavery and its inherent abuses, but also to the ways in which a person’s upbringing and life experiences can warp them out of understanding and empathy for others. Throughout the novel, Butler brings her characters to life as more than just tropes and stereotypes, and makes it impossible to look away from their suffering.

★★★★★

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Book Review: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Book #57 of 2015:

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Following in the tradition of George R. Stewart’s Earth Abides and Stephen King’s The Stand, Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven spins a tale of our modern society collapsing and rebuilding itself in the wake of a calamitous plague that kills off much of the earth’s population. The novel follows a handful of people over the years both before and after the pandemic, gradually revealing how their lives intersect — sometimes in ways unbeknownst to the characters themselves.

Mandel paints a haunting picture of the fragility of our everyday lives, and she has clearly given a lot of thought to how the beginnings of a post-apocalyptic civilization might develop. Like Stewart, she draws very sharp distinctions between those who can recall the old ways and those to whom such things are but faint memories or even simply stories.

It is to Mandel’s credit as a storyteller herself that the sections of Station Eleven concerning a few more conventional lives well before the collapse are no less gripping than those about the Shakespearean troupe wandering across the new landscape. All in all this was an excellent novel, and I both look forward to a reread and hope for a sequel to further illuminate this setting.

★★★★★

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Book Review: Graceling by Kristin Cashore

Book #56 of 2015:

Graceling by Kristin Cashore (Graceling Realm #1)

This is a book that really grew on me as it went along, especially as its feminist themes became clear. Cashore has a lot to say about the major and minor oppressions that women can face in a male-dominated society, as well as the various ways they can resist. There are no major revelations here — and no discussion of race beyond the note that one kingdom’s people have facial features and an accent that the main character can recognize — but this is the kind of story that could easily be formative for the young readers in the intended audience.

I’m still disgruntled over how little worldbuilding there was, an issue that I hope is rectified in the book’s sequels. This one takes place in a very generic quasi-medieval land of seven neighboring kingdoms, only one of which is given even shades of a unique culture. (What’s beyond these seven kingdoms? Who knows! Only one character in the entire book isn’t from one of the seven kingdoms, and that’s literally all that’s revealed about his origins.) The magical system is also little more than a sketch: we spend a lot of time with two “gracelings” with very different special powers, but never really come to understand the overall grace system in any detail. This is not a dealbreaker, but it makes certain plot developments less engaging than they could be — without readers ever having the chance to think we understand how the system works, we cannot really be surprised when certain other powers are revealed.

These are minor quibbles, though. On the whole, Graceling is a compelling Young Adult fantasy novel with a strong female protagonist, a rich male and female supporting cast, and a well-written plot. I would, however, recommend reading the book and not listening to it on audio as I did — the audiobook version is a full cast production, and the talent of the performers is somewhat variable. There are also several repeated musical motifs that you will get very tired of by the time the story ends.

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: Louie, season 5

TV #28 of 2015:

Louie, season 5

This latest run of Louie is far from Louis C.K.’s best work, but it’s also not bad enough yet for me to stop watching if the series ends up coming back for another round. If nothing else, I’m pretty invested in Jane and Lily’s development at this point, especially when it involves calling out their dad on his many failures.

Plus I just find the inherent tension between Louis as a writer and Louie as an autobiographical character really fascinating. What does it mean when the show treats Louie as a massive jerk? What does it imply about how the auteur creator sees himself? These are the questions that keep me tuned in — along with the absurdist elements like the airport announcement welcoming those passengers who are afraid or dying to now board their flight. I love that stuff, too.

★★★☆☆

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Movie Review: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Movie #17 of 2015:

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

[review originally posted 5/25/15]

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.

★★★★★

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Movie Review: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Movie #13 of 2015:

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

★★★★★

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Book Review: Every Day by David Levithan

Book #54 of 2015:

Every Day by David Levithan (Every Day #1)

I really liked this story of an agender teenager who wakes up each morning in a different person’s body. I did think there were some ethical issues behind the premise that didn’t get explored (although there were a lot that did), and the author could have done more research about the various sorts of lives he’s describing*. Still, this was a tremendous love story with a great effort to include diverse life experiences of gender, sexuality, race, class, mental health, and more. Recommended, for sure!

*To expand on that a bit more: the protagonist spends one day in the body of a trans man but keeps referring to him as ‘biologically female’ which is not how I’ve ever heard any trans person describe themselves (and the narrator can access the body’s memories so it’s not like this is just an ignorant character). I’m cis, but it rang a bit false to me.

★★★★★

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