The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Movie Review: Doctor Who: Joy to the World (2024)

Movie #17 of 2024:

Doctor Who: Joy to the World (2024)

[Note: No, I don’t know why Disney’s marketing has pluralized the last word of the title on this poster. I assume it’s just a typo.]

Whether as showrunner himself or, as here, contributing a script to someone else’s editorial oversight, Steven Moffat tends to deliver a very particular sort of Doctor Who that’s heavy on the clever time-travel plotting and lighter on the legible human / Time Lord emotions. In this year’s Christmas special, for instance, it sure seems like Nicola Coughlan’s titular character Joy is meant to be the centerpiece of the action, but the episode never really manages to lock in on her, especially given how long she spends either under hypnotic influence or off the screen entirely. (The politics are a bit muddled, too — I’ve seen people online cheering the supposed anti-Tory messaging, but the 2020 lockdowns to keep loved ones out of Covid wards don’t strike me as particularly evil or even misguided. Those rules that Joy rails against saved lives!)

Another odd miss in my opinion is the story’s relation to the program’s past, which Moffat and producer Russell T. Davies should obviously be pretty tuned-into. The Doctor saying he isn’t married? Or that he’s never stayed in one place for a whole year before? Those are bizarre things to observe as a long-time fan of the show, as is a fairly direct parallel between Joy and a different blonde Yuletide costar: Kylie Minogue’s Astrid Peth from Voyage of the Damned.

On the bright side: the mechanics of the Time Hotel are fun, and that period where the Fifteenth Doctor is forced to slow down and live a regular life for a while, though not as unique as it’s made out to be, is certainly a rarity for the series (at the cost, as noted, of sidelining Joy). I don’t know if we’ll be seeing his friend Anita from that segment again, but I can only imagine what audio dramas Big Finish will someday devise for the era.

Holiday specials aren’t always deep or meaningful, and this one is acceptably charming on the surface. But for an hour that feels intended to build to a moment of catharsis and, well, joy for a certain somebody, it doesn’t quite come together enough for me in the end.

[Content warning for loss of a parent.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: Beginnings Omnibus by Robin Furth, Peter David, Jae Lee, and Richard Isanove

Book #185 of 2024:

Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: Beginnings Omnibus by Robin Furth, Peter David, Jae Lee, and Richard Isanove

This graphic novel collects the initial arc of Marvel comic book adaptations of Stephen King’s post-apocalyptic western Dark Tower novels, comprising 30 individual issues published from 2007 through 2010 under the subheadings of The Gunslinger Born, The Long Road Home, Treachery, The Sorcerer, Fall of Gilead, and Battle of Jericho Hill (some but not all of which I had previously read). The first of those is a fairly straightforward retelling of the flashback sequences from the books The Gunslinger and Wizard and Glass, while the rest flesh out events that had been mentioned obliquely on the page but never before depicted in much detail.

It’s a fun read for Tower junkies, ably plotted by King’s research assistant Robin Furth and scripted by comics industry veteran Peter David. The creators capture the tone of Mid-World well, and if the art by Jae Lee and Richard Isanove is somewhat heavy on shadows and light on defined facial features, at least it serves to emphasize the heightened mythic atmosphere of the saga in this era. There’s definite closure in finally seeing the doom that came upon the protagonist’s kingdom and his family’s order of knightly gunslingers, as well as the desperate last stand of its few remaining survivors.

At the same time, the illustrated version is no substitute for the original prose, and the hero’s star-crossed romance with Susan Delgado feels particularly abridged from the familiar tragedy. I think this text probably works best as a supplement for existing fans who can enjoy — and debate the canonicity of — the added scenes with Roland meeting the Crimson King, setting his early sights on reaching the Dark Tower, and so on, rather than newcomers being introduced to the franchise here. That’s especially true given how the plot to this volume ends pretty anticlimactically, without even a personal showdown between the young man and Gilead’s warmongering enemy John Farson.

I’ll be reading on regardless, but I wouldn’t categorize this as a must for anyone else.

[Content warning for gun violence, suicide, sexism, ableism, incest, rape, violence against children, body horror, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Notes to a Science Fiction Writer: The Secrets of Writing Science Fiction That Sells by Ben Bova

Book #184 of 2024:

Notes to a Science Fiction Writer: The Secrets of Writing Science Fiction That Sells by Ben Bova

I saw this 1981 title on my mom’s shelf over the holidays, and since I’ve read plenty of the late author’s fiction here and there, I decided to take it down and see what he had to say about the craft from the inside. This book is explicitly aimed at the prospective writer of sci-fi short stories of the type Ben Bova used to screen for publication as editor of the magazines Analog and Omni, but it’s overall a decent rough guide to certain key elements that any creator should consider in constructing a speculative tale: character, background (what I’d probably call worldbuilding), conflict, and plot. Each of those four sections also includes an example story by the writer himself and a discussion of how that particular piece illustrates the topic at hand.

Some of this advice strikes me as very helpful indeed, while some feels needlessly restrictive in its myopic definitions. (Most telling is perhaps the author’s offhand comment that “a story without conflict is like a meal without meat,” which reads quite differently to me in 2024 than he presumably intended it 43 years ago.) It’s of course not Bova’s fault that the genre has continued to evolve and push boundaries over the decades, but as he does decry the “ludicrously crude” pulp of an earlier era, it seems fair to critique his own purported universal principles in turn.

Still, the author notes how skilled artisans can knowingly break all the normal rules, and I do think this would be a good primer for anyone interested in the basic mechanics of the business. I could certainly name things I’ve read that might have benefited from just this sort of crash course, so long as its lessons are taken with a large grain of salt.

[Content warning for gun violence.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Star Wars: The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire by Dr. Chris Kempshall

Book #183 of 2024:

Star Wars: The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire by Dr. Chris Kempshall

A staggering work that I would unequivocally recommend to any obsessive-minded Star Wars fans like myself. This book, written by an actual academic historian, applies the investigative principles of that field to the continuity of the franchise to create an in-universe textbook accounting for the complete mechanics of its subject. In 400 dense hardcover pages, author Dr. Chris Kempshall — writing from the perspective of a fictional professional of his discipline within the titular galaxy — covers how exactly the Galactic Empire came to power, governed, and was eventually defeated, far beyond the major events specifically depicted on the screen.

It’s a remarkable achievement. It not only takes in the entirety of the official canon (a collection of disparate movies, TV shows, novels, comics, games, and more, produced by hundreds of individual writers over several decades for a variety of intended audiences and age levels) and synthesizes them into one coherent narrative. It also draws relevant insights and raises significant critiques from across that body to help illuminate the underlying drama, with the inevitable blanks lovingly and plausibly filled in by the author himself, occasionally by integrating characters and elements from Star Wars Legends (the ‘expanded universe’ of pre-2014 stories that Disney categorized as non-canonical due to their haphazard and contradictory nature, but have often been a source of inspiration for the new canon like this). A certain sort of reader will get a kick out of seeing names like Hiram Drayson finally brought back into the fold, but the primary accomplishment here stems from Dr. Kempshall taking up such prior contributions and carefully thinking through their various implications.

For example: why, in a universe teeming with diverse intelligent lifeforms, do so many of the Empire’s officers appear to be white, male humans? The Doylist explanation would account for the realities and biases of 20th-century Hollywood when George Lucas was originally creating the saga, but this is a Watsonian production through and through. Taking that mission seriously means accepting the situation at face value and instead interrogating the premise to yield inferences about the prejudiced attitudes behind imperial staffing patterns and link them to similar forces at play throughout the setting. Likewise, Lucas and his co-writers presumably didn’t put much thought into the military and government command structure of the Empire, which results in a hodgepodge of conflicting signals shown on-screen. But the professor has, and he weaves a brilliant story of how for instance the Death Star’s destruction would have impacted the chain of command or how Darth Vader operated outside of that traditional hierarchy in ways that complicated the war effort and were a factor in his side’s ultimate downfall. As a result, the Rebel Alliance’s victories are awarded additional context that deepens their impact well beyond the initial authorial intent.

There are so many fun Easter eggs to spot for those of us who have partaken widely of the Star Wars canon, but the writer plays fair by citing fictitious references in his footnotes instead of specific published titles from our reality. That approach also creates some nice instances of dramatic irony, as there are plenty of cases where his everyman narrator figure couldn’t know the same details that we the audience might, like the identity of the mysterious early Rebel leader codenamed ‘Axis’ on the series Andor. On the downside, he’s sometimes forced to declare a given topic uncertain due to records remaining lost or classified, which I imagine has been at Disney’s editorial discretion for stories they aren’t yet ready to tell.

I think the weakest / least convincing part of the book can be found in its final section exploring the post-Endor era that gave rise to the First Order and the New Republic, but that’s more to do with the sparseness of the existing canonical record and the lack of critical distance there than a flaw in the author’s command of the material per se. Even comparable history texts from our world face a similar conundrum as their timeline approaches the present day, and the effort is commendable in attempting a moral lesson about complacency in a time of resurgent political extremism. Still, he’s on much stronger ground with the earlier supporting evidence behind how the Empire initially emerged from the ashes of the Old Republic and its civil war against the Separatist movement, and in how that transition created the circumstances that formed the background of the original films.

Overall: a treat to read and linger over, and accordingly one of my top books of the year.

[Content warning for slavery, genocide, police brutality, and torture.]

★★★★★

Book Review: Mislaid in Parts Half-Known by Seanan McGuire

Book #182 of 2024:

Mislaid in Parts Half-Known by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children #9)

Broadly speaking — although this is as inaccurate in the details as Eleanor West’s flawed Logic / Nonsense dichotomy that she tries to fit all the student experiences into — there are two types of stories that the Wayward Children novellas alternate back and forth between. So far the even-numbered volumes have all been classic portal fantasies depicting the strange worlds that the kids slip away into, in all their terror and glory and refuge from a problem at home, while the odd entries focus on the difficulty those same protagonists face in resuming their old lives after returning and their subsequent time at Elly’s specialized school. As the ninth title, this one is in the latter category, following up on the heroine from the previous book who came back to Earth as a nine-year-old in a teenaged body, unrecognizable to the family who presumed her dead.

She additionally now has the magical gift of being able to find anything that she decides to look for, which her classmates soon realize extends to the mystical doorways themselves. As most of them yearn to go back to where they felt they belonged, this is an exciting development indeed.

It’s also one that hurts the series, in my opinion. Everything we’ve heard about the doors until this point has emphasized their unpredictable and bespoke nature — they appear only in their proper moment, to the person who needs to see them, and cannot be called upon demand. A lot of angst and drama has stemmed from various people longing to go back to those other dimensions, and from the heavy cost of ultimately accepting that they can’t. That’s all weaker now that the matter can be forced by a relative stranger on a whim.

The rest of the plot is better. A small group of friends, most of them familiar to us from earlier installments, go off exploring and eventually reach the nexus shop where Antsy lost her childhood. She confronts an old acquaintance there for abusing the trust of a child and speaks out about the importance of breaking the cycle of violence, while similarly weighty topics like transphobia, racism, and child sexual abuse are likewise addressed in passing.

My fundamental complaint remains that these books are too short for the issues and plots that they take on. That’s not an insurmountable challenge — I gave five stars to the last release, which shared the same main character — but it’s an element that author Seanan McGuire stacks against herself, and here, as usual, I’d argue that it gets in the way of her developing the story to a truly effective degree.

★★★☆☆

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

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.

★★★★☆