The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

TV Review: Star Trek: Lower Decks, season 5

TV #51 of 2024:

Star Trek: Lower Decks, season 5

I’ve never quite loved this cartoon, but I’ve come to appreciate its place in the Star Trek canon, which it regularly comments upon with the most lovingly esoteric references imaginable. (In one episode this season, for instance, a Klingon gets cut off in traffic and yells at the other driver to “experience bij!” — which the internet tells me is a quote from an interactive VCR board game from 1993.) Whether you recognize such callbacks yourself or have them pointed out by others, they’ve long been a part of the distinctive Lower Decks charm, drawing on the rich history of the franchise for all manner of clever comedic bits.

At its best, the series has balanced such humor with interesting character and plot arcs, but the offerings in this farewell year don’t impress me as much as they sometimes have in the past. Boimler gets a vague ongoing storyline about growing out his facial hair — a la Riker on TNG and Sisko on DS9, who likewise each started out clean-shaven — and using a PADD from an alternate reality to try to make himself more like his cooler doppelganger, but that’s really about it. Up until the last few minutes of the finale, it doesn’t feel like a definitive goodbye or an attempt to bring any of the characters to any particular resolutions.

I do like the episode “Upper Decks,” which shows what all the senior officers aboard the USS Cerritos are busy with on a typical day while their underlings are goofing off on their usual misadventures. That’s a structural inversion of the original “Lower Decks” episode from The Next Generation that inspired this program, so it’s only fitting to return to that concept before the final bow. I also continue to enjoy the guest stars that have been willing to reprise their older live-action roles for this show, bringing us animated versions of Harry Kim, Data, T’Pol, Dr. Bashir, and Garak — the latter two of whom are revealed to be a happily married gay couple in one parallel dimension, paying off their long-running subtextually romantic dynamic on Deep Space Nine.

It’s been a fun ride! But at the same time, I’ve felt for a while now that the writers had probably exhausted everything they wanted to say with the overall premise here, so I’m not terribly upset to see it departing from us at this point.

This season: ★★★☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Seasons ranked: 3 > 2 > 5 > 4 > 1

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Book Review: Dzur by Steven Brust

Book #181 of 2024:

Dzur by Steven Brust (Vlad Taltos #10)

In this story, the former assassin Vladimir Taltos returns home to sort out some trouble with his ex-wife and the criminal organization they both used to work for, which still has a bounty on his head. That’s pretty standard plot fare this deep into the series, and the novel unfortunately doesn’t do much else to stand out from its peers. The protagonist has a good meal, wanders around Adrilanka in disguise while investigating the current intrigue, and realizes how important his friends are to him, but that’s all that really happens here. In passing we also meet the legendary Mario Greymist and learn a little bit more about the sorcerous wing of the Jhereg, and Vlad continues to process everything that happened with Lady Teldra in book 9, yet overall, this is a quieter installment of his adventures.

But I suppose it’s nice to see Kragar again, at least.

[Content warning for gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Ithaca by Claire North

Book #180 of 2024:

Ithaca by Claire North (The Songs of Penelope #1)

An extraordinarily effective Greek mythology retelling, centering on the character Penelope and the wider kingdom around her while her husband Odysseus is still lost at sea following the victory at Troy. (He’s been gone for 17 years, placing this novel roughly three years before his eventual return in The Odyssey.) Author Claire North takes many of her specific cues from Homer, but she’s not afraid to remix and weave new patterns either, as when she brings the fugitive queen Clytemnestra to Ithaca’s shores, pursued by her children Orestes and Electra seeking justice for their murdered father Agamemnon. That family drama is not connected with Penelope’s reign in any traditional accounts that I’m aware of, but North blends everything together seamlessly and relates it all in a pitch-perfect mythic tone. Fans of Madeline Miller’s Circe, take note!

Even her choice of narrator is inspired: the goddess Hera, whom I am used to seeing treated as a minor antagonist at best in this sort of tale. While still decidedly — and deservedly — haughty, her version here is sympathetic both in her own perspective and in her protectiveness over the various Ithacan women. Though mostly unseen to those mortals, she’s an agentive heroine desperate to influence them however she can to hold back the fated bloodshed that she alone can feel is coming should Penelope’s fragile regency tear asunder.

Above all, this is a feminist reclamation of the familiar narrative. It digs deep into the female experience of mythohistoric Greece and all the petty cruelties and larger injustices that would be a regular part of life there for humans and gods alike, and it emphasizes how Ithaca’s emotionally-stunted men were either too old or too young to join the land’s soldiers in the Trojan War, yet still wield extraordinary power over the fairer sex in their stratified society. How would such women react to their restrictions? How would they find subtle ways to assert their agency within those constraints, beyond the awareness of the menfolk? This text takes such questions seriously, which is everything I wanted and didn’t quite get from Margaret Atwood’s similarly-themed Penelopiad.

And Penelope is our main protagonist here, outside of the divine presence narrating events. She’s busy fending off suitors in the conventional fashion, but whereas that’s usually presented as a sign of her love and devotion to her absent lord, this iteration of the lady is more circumspect. We are reminded that she married Odysseus as a teenager and did not know him for very long before he departed for Troy, and how while he blithely cheats on her with the nymph Calypso on some far-off isle, she’s had to act as the de-facto ruler in his name to keep the realm from falling into chaos. As the newcomers impose upon her hospitality and limited coffers and vie for her husband’s throne, she knows that picking any one of them to marry or take as a lover would give the others justification to wage war against the household. She also sees that her son Telemachus is swiftly leaving childhood, which renders him yet another target for the dangerous men laying siege to her home.

Overall, it’s an exceptional read, and I’ve debated giving it a full five-star rating. My hesitation stems from the shape of the plot, which is unfortunately somewhat formless and open-ended. This is the initial volume of an entire trilogy, and although it makes sense to break the story up given its length, the situation in Ithaca doesn’t reach as much of a natural resolution in this first installment as I would ideally prefer. Still, I will certainly continue on to the sequels, and be grateful that this writer took the risk of branching out from her typical high-concept speculative thriller fare.

[Content warning for domestic abuse, incest, slavery, rape, and gore.]

★★★★☆

TV Review: What We Do in the Shadows, season 6

TV #50 of 2024:

What We Do in the Shadows, season 6

A strong and funny sendoff to the gory vampire mockumentary, although not one that necessarily gives everyone in the ensemble a shared chance to shine. Nandor and Guillermo are as usual the (un)beating heart of the matter, and this farewell season is a decent follow-up to the one before it, which finally explored the idea of the human familiar getting his wish to join the ranks of the undead, albeit temporarily. The next phase of their dynamic after that is estrangement and eventual recognition as equals, by means of Gizmo finding a regular job and learning to stand up for himself there against a boss who’s basically as demanding as his former master. Meanwhile Nandor sees that behavior in Jordan and sort of realizes how unacceptable it is, though of course he’ll never admit that to anyone or apologize for it.

Admittedly, this is not a program that ordinarily delivers such sentimentality, and I’ll always be somewhat salty that the story doesn’t ever go anywhere with the romantic undertones of that central relationship, despite teasing it all the way up to the finale. But if the romance is being left to the shippers and their fanfics, at least its foundations are brought to a healthier state before we say goodbye.

And the Cannon Capital corporate sendup does make for some good jokes in a distinctive new key; this sitcom has never had a problem hitting its intended humor or periodically refreshing its serialized components to avoid growing stale. Thus Nadja also starts working in the shady finance world to keep an eye on things, while Laszlo and Colin Robinson spend the season creating and then trying to domesticate a Frankenstein-like monster and the Guide swoops in occasionally to maintain her status as a main cast member too. If none of these arcs resonate quite as much as #Nandermo, well, I suppose that’s not a new issue for the show.

In the meantime, we get random Newhart and The Warriors parodies, the introduction of another old housemate, and a final appearance from a few recurring characters like the Baron and the vampires’ neighbor Sean, though there aren’t as many of those callbacks to previous years as I would have predicted. It’s a nice but not mind-blowing note to end on, and the last episode does a fine job of underlining how these people don’t change much and honestly shouldn’t be expected to, no matter how the audience and our POV identification figure Guillermo might prefer otherwise. Like the credits say, after all, they have no use for your song.

This season: ★★★★☆

Overall series: ★★★★☆

Seasons ranked: 4 > 3 > 6 > 2 > 1 > 5

Book Review: Traveller’s Joy by Victoria Goddard

Book #179 of 2024:

Traveller’s Joy by Victoria Goddard

A short but sweet prequel / interlude in the madcap lives of Jemis and Hal from author Victoria Goddard’s Greenwing & Dart series, and one that I think would stand fairly well on its own for newcomers — although as ever, recognizing the web of sprawling interconnections across the writer’s extended Nine Worlds setting is half the fun. And there is a particularly droll piece of foreshadowing / dramatic irony here when the heroes mention dropping in on their friend Marcan again, as they’ll eventually do in the most literal and surprising fashion during the novel Blackcurrant Fool.

That classmate of theirs gets some welcome additional characterization in these pages, although the story, like Clary Sage before it, is told from the perspective of Hal, a supporting figure in the main books. The three young men have just finished their schooling at Morrowlea, where Jemis had a scandalous falling-out with his former beau Lark that resulted in him being assaulted with thrown pebbles by the majority of the student body. (Long story.) Taking an early leave after he recovers, the trio embark on a walking tour with no particular destination in mind.

All of that will be familiar backstory to returning readers, and the normal critique of the cozy fantasy subgenre that nothing much happens certainly applies. The companions hike around, looking at plants and religious shrines, and reflect on their recent history together. As the school insists on relative anonymity, none of them know each other’s family or station, and while they’re now free to finally share those details, Hal is somewhat reluctant to reveal he’s actually an Imperial Duke, lest the knowledge of that presumable social gap complicate the friendship. It’s a quiet but soothing installment overall, and would be a fine introduction to Jemis’s saga before the chaos kicks off in Stargazy Pie.

★★★★☆

Book Review: The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern by Lynda Cohen Loigman

Book #178 of 2024:

The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern by Lynda Cohen Loigman

This historical fiction novel unfolds across two alternating timelines, set six decades apart. In the 1920s, teenager Augusta “Goldie” Stern works in her father’s Brooklyn pharmacy, growing close with his delivery boy Irving and learning some of her great-aunt’s homeopathic medicine from the old country, which the pharmacist disapproves of but does seem to genuinely help the women of the neighborhood. In the other chapters, it is 1987 and the same heroine has moved into a Florida retirement community, where she meets her old beau and has to deal with all the ensuing memories and decide if she wants him back in her life after being hurt by him all those long years ago.

My problem with that kind of plot structure is that it inevitably distances us from the characters in the later portion of the tale. Their experiences in the past are plainly relevant and top-of-mind for them, but they’re kept from us until deep in the book, forming a mystery for readers that isn’t shared by the people we’re supposed to invest in and root for on the page. That’s exacerbated in this particular title, as it turns out most of the drama stems from a sequence of frankly silly miscommunications that never should have been left to fester in the first place, let alone been allowed to disrupt the lovers’ entire lives. One got trapped in an icy marriage and the other never married at all, because of an adolescent breakup that could have been remedied by simply talking to one another instead of repeatedly leaping to the worst conclusions.

I’m skeptical about the initial premise of how the older man recognizes the protagonist on sight — from behind! — after 62 years apart, as well. (“I’d know that tuchus anywhere,” really?) But okay. At least he grows a little as the story goes on, like accepting that she no longer wants to be called by her youthful nickname, and I’m glad the novel does eventually explain the coincidence of them ending up at the same place together.

The better parts of this volume include the level of well-researched detail in the earlier time period and the Jewish representation throughout, which were enough to keep me reading despite my frustration with the narrative and its cast. The love potion probably shouldn’t have been elevated to the name of the piece, as it’s only a minor element near the end, but overall I approve of how the apothecary business is handled in a magical realist sort of way without ever explicitly confirming its effectiveness. All things considered, though, this has been just a three-star read for me.

[Content warning for threats of gun violence, loss of a parent, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder by William Hope Hodgson

Book #177 of 2024:

Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder by William Hope Hodgson

This 1913 short story collection consists of six entries initially published in various British magazines a few years prior, all concerning the titular occult detective, Thomas Carnacki. His methods are somewhat like those of Sherlock Holmes, but his domain is the supernatural and especially reports of hauntings. That’s not to say that there are ghosts in every tale of this book — two of them are just that straightforward, while two others ultimately unveil a more mundane provocateur merely masquerading as the sinister presence, a la Scooby-Doo. The remaining pair split the difference, each involving a human hoax that coincidentally draws the attention of a genuine apparition as well.

Are the stories great? I wouldn’t go that far. They’re rather repetitive in style, particularly when read together in a single volume like this, and none of them stands out as an exceptionally clever piece of writing. But they do provide an interesting look at a genre forerunner that proved influential over the century that followed and still has some limited cultural cachet today. (I first learned about Carnacki earlier this year myself, when the now public-domain character appeared in a few crossover adventures in Big Finish’s Doctor Who licensed audio range.)

And I do like how meticulously scientific this protagonist is, even going so far as to run an electric current through the pentacle diagram he’s chalked on the floor for added protection. It may be a bit goofy that his spectral adversaries respect and obey such rules, but it carries a certain charm, I suppose.

[Content warning for gun violence.]

★★★☆☆

TV Review: Babylon 5, season 2

TV #49 of 2024:

Babylon 5, season 2

This science-fiction series has been steadily improving and growing darker in tone, but I’m still not ready in this second season to bump my critical rating up out of the midrange three-star tier. At its best, I’m really interested in the larger serialized story that the show is telling, with alien politics breaking out into all-out war, an unknown enemy faction skulking in the shadows, and intrigue and corruption back on earth interfering with our protagonists’ ability to keep the peace. I also appreciate the structural choice of turning the villainous Ambassador G’Kar into a compelling noble hero this year, while his counterpart Londo Mollari shifts from buffoonish comic relief into an even greater antagonist.

But the writing is just so heavy-handed throughout, and so indulgent in some of its worst and hokiest impulses. (Space angels! Techno-mages! Literal Jack the Ripper, still alive in 2259!) My mind keeps comparing this program to its similarly-premised — and potentially lightly plagiarized — contemporary Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which got its own silliness out of its system much quicker than this. Babylon 5 may be capable of comparable greatness at this point, but it feels like the scripts are still haphazardly throwing everything into the mix to see what will work from week to week, rather than committing to the elements that plainly already do.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the show’s abrupt replacement of its star actor between seasons (without any significant explanation at the time; later attributed to the departing fellow’s private mental health struggles). That would be an unfortunate situation for any TV production to face, but many titles have nevertheless come up with a smoother transition of leads than the Sinclair/Sheridan swap here, which receives no particular story buildup at all and thus awkwardly requires the season premiere to explain away the station’s new commander and all the dropped arcs and interpersonal dynamics involving the old one. Another performer decides to leave near the end of this run, and is likewise given a sudden exit in the span of a single episode, revealing that their character’s whole personality to date was a hypnotized construct that’s now been discarded. It’s not a serious storytelling moment or instance of honest emotional truth, and it flies in the face of the show’s reputation as a “televised novel” with an intricate five-year plot planned out. (Three decades after the fact, my hot take is that if the overarching plan was truly that thorough and sacrosanct, they should have simply recast those roles instead of scrambling to concoct seemingly last-minute contingencies.)

To some extent, these difficulties mark Babylon 5 (1994-1998) as a transitional piece between two different styles of TV-making. Such cast upheavals wouldn’t be out of place on shows of that era like Star Trek’s The Next Generation (1987-1994) or Voyager (1995-2001), but B5 seems to have aims at a more mature form of serialization common to subsequent series like Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009), where major departures build gradually and provide room for the remaining characters to process the impacts of the fallout. Unfortunately, this one doesn’t have quite the necessary toolkit to reach those heights.

For better or worse, it’s a product of mid-90s network television, pushing the boundaries of the format at times but generally being held back by its episodic strictures. The genuinely interesting worldbuilding is often presented in dense monologues rather than incorporated organically. A lesbian relationship can be hinted at obliquely but always deniably. And the most humanoid female alien is inevitably given a makeover and repositioned as / reduced to a love interest for the main male hero. At least the season finale ends on the one Jewish character lighting Hanukkah candles, a promising sign that the writers aren’t merely paying lip-service to notions of diversity and inclusion.

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

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson

Book #176 of 2024:

Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson (The Stormlight Archive #5)

[Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with this author.]

Another 1300-page epic fantasy tome that very nearly justifies its massive length. (I listened to the audiobook on 2.5x speed, which still took literally 24 hours to complete.) The extended climax of this novel showcases author Brandon Sanderson at his best, ricocheting in a wild crescendo among his diverse cast of heroes who are all facing various crisis points, in exciting action sequences that also carry important implications for the future of the Cosmere franchise at large. It’s a thrill to reach that stage of the plot, and while impatient readers may chafe at the slower setup to get there, I assume the audience has self-selected enough by now that anyone sitting down to enjoy this fifth Stormlight volume — which also pays off threads from other Sanderson stories, including the quasi-canonical Dragonsteel Prime — knows full well what they’re getting into and is prepared for the long haul.

It’s not that nothing much happens until the last few hundred pages, but this installment even more than its predecessors is pretty heavy on flashback scenes (as it would have to be, since only ten days pass in real time across the entire book). We finally get an origin story for the mysterious Szeth, fleshing out both him and his home culture of Shinovar, but also witness eras in the distant past, with new details about the shattering of Adonalsium, some of the other resulting Shards, and the founding and breaking of the Heralds’ Oathpact on Roshar. This is the area of the text that most feels like it could have been tightened up, to me; although the information is interesting, it’s presented in visions to characters who can’t affect events any more than we can, which winds up seeming like endless inert exposition regardless.

Still, the work is compulsively readable as ever, and the writer continues to improve his representation of marginalized identity topics, including gender transition, mental health struggles, neurodivergence, physical disabilities, dissociative identity disorder, same-sex attraction and romance, and beyond. That level of commitment is rare in the genre and welcome from such a blockbuster bestselling author, even if it occasionally means wondering whether it really makes sense for people in this setting to have words for things like therapists or placebos alongside their medieval-esque technology.

Overall, it’s the pivotal moment that was promised, bringing to a close the first arc of the planned ten-book Archive series. After this Sanderson has indicated he’ll be writing further Mistborn and Elantris sequels before returning for volumes 6-10, so it may be a while until we see these particular protagonists again, assuming none of them make cameo appearances elsewhere in the meantime. But if there’s one thing we Cosmere fans are good at, I suppose it’s waiting.

[Content warning for domestic abuse, suicide, and gore.]

★★★★☆

TV Review: The Lincoln Lawyer, season 3

TV #48 of 2024:

The Lincoln Lawyer, season 3

Somewhere between three and four stars for me as a viewer, but I’ll round up due to my enjoying this TV outing more than the novel it’s based on, Michael Connelly’s fifth Lincoln Lawyer story The Gods of Guilt. (That means the Netflix series has now adapted books 2, 4, and 5, with #6 The Law of Innocence set up for next time in the closing minutes of this one. I’m excited as that’s my personal favorite of the lot, involving the protagonist getting framed, arrested, and placed on trial himself, although as of now the streamer has yet to officially announce a renewal for another year. But this would be an awkward and terrible place to end the show, so let’s hope they come through eventually.)

Picking up from the season 2 finale, Mickey’s former client Gloria Dayton has been murdered, and the man charged with the crime has hired him as defense attorney. A twisty conspiracy involving a crooked DEA agent is gradually revealed, while some character-driven subplots play out in the background. My favorite of these is a new invention for the adaptation: a relationship with the prosecutor Andrea Freeman, who doesn’t even exist in the source material. But she’s a fun contrast for Haller, and while the sparks that flew between them as opposing counsels last year seemed wholly professional, turning things romantic once there’s no more conflict of interest is a reasonable development to keep her around on the program.

The best part of this production remains its hero’s cunning courtroom tactics and how he manages to stay narrowly inside the bounds of legal ethics and the law — at one point this season, he says to someone on the phone, “I need you to tell me ________” so that he can plausibly inform a judge he’s been told the claim in question, even though he has no reason to believe it’s true — in his noble pursuit of justice for his clients. The worst part is when the episodes occasionally pause to deliver a fawning heist-like recap of some strategy the characters just pulled off, which feels like undeserved bragging over how smart the writing supposedly was. But overall, I continue to appreciate this title and long for the rights issues to be resolved so that it can properly cross over with Amazon’s Bosch franchise like the Connelly novels do.

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

★★★★☆