The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: The Overstory by Richard Powers

Book #171 of 2024:

The Overstory by Richard Powers

The language in this 2019 Pulitzer Prize winner is undeniably lovely at times, but as a whole, I’m afraid it’s rather bounced off of me. The structure and length is one issue: this is a very long book, and it spends almost its entire first third — seven hours of the audiobook at regular speed — on a succession of vignettes that don’t have any connections whatsoever beyond the focal characters all feeling some loose affinity for trees. These eight chapters read like discrete short stories, and while the novel eventually brings certain protagonists together, it’s a pretty slow and pointless-seeming start. (There’s no universal predicament they’re all responding to, either, like how the pandemic in Stephen King’s The Stand makes a similarly disjointed approach come across as generally unified. These folks are all dealing with their own localized concerns.) Even once the main plot arrives, some of the strands from the beginning never are more than tangentially connected to the rest.

This is also a title that asks a lot from its audience, and not just for the time commitment and degree of patient trust involved in initially waiting for the project to get to the point. Over the course of the tale we’re invited to sympathize with suicide attempts, artificial intelligence, and acts of eco-terrorism, and to find it reasonable that activists would chain themselves to trees or live up in them for months to stymie the logging industry. Even for a reader concerned about climate change and naturally predisposed towards environmentalism, it’s a bit of a stretch, to say nothing of a few goofier elements like the character who claims to be able to hear the secret voices of forests after receiving a near-fatal electrical shock or the one whose professional therapy involves silently staring into her clients’ eyes. There’s a subtle air of nihilism throughout the enterprise too, as people repeatedly suffer from accidents and other turns of misfortune for no greater apparent narrative purpose. Meanwhile, multiple men become romantically infatuated with younger women who are either less interested or uninterested in them at all.

Despite everything, I kept reading, which I suppose must be a testament to author Richard Powers in some fashion. I did feel invested enough to continue following these various lives and want to see if/how matters would resolve for them. But ultimately, the aggregate effect was too compromised to make a major impact on me.

[Content warning for ableism, racism, sexism, gun violence, police brutality, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: Classic Doctor Who, season 15

TV #46 of 2024:

Classic Doctor Who, season 15

This is the halfway mark of Tom Baker’s record seven seasons as the Fourth Doctor, and despite his ongoing popularity in that role, it’s also unfortunately where the shine starts to come off. Behind the scenes, Graham Williams replaced Philip Hinchcliffe as producer, and the series shifted away from the gothic horror that had marked the former’s era towards more of a lighter comic tone. Nowhere is that more representative than in the Time Lord’s latest companion, debuting in the second serial of this year: the robotic dog K-9, who seems pitched specifically to appeal to younger audiences and presumably sell them some toys.

In truth, I don’t mind K-9 as a character. I always appreciate when Doctor Who varies up the typical companion dynamics, and both he and the futuristic ‘savage’ Leela (returning from last season and departing at the end of this one) help bring a distinctive energy to the screen. But the humor around the tin dog can be pretty broad at times, and Baker responds by dialing up his own comedic performance to match it. It’s no wonder that we’d soon see Douglas Adams of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fame come and write for the show, although no one of his caliber is penning the jokes just yet.

The stories are mostly adequate, with one standout as a holdover from the Hinchcliffe regime and a couple weaker efforts. The franchise history gets plumbed a little bit, bringing back Sontarans for the first time in three years and revisiting Gallifrey for a semi-sequel to last season’s adventure there, but overall the Doctor is facing forgettable humanoid threats on a noticeably lower budget. It’s not exactly the program’s finest hour.

Serials ranked from worst to best:

★★☆☆☆
IMAGE OF THE FENDAHL (15×9 – 15×12)
UNDERWORLD (15×17 – 15×20)

★★★☆☆
THE INVASION OF TIME (15×21 – 15×26)
THE INVISIBLE ENEMY (15×5 – 15×8)
THE SUN MAKERS (15×13 – 15×16)

★★★★☆
THE HORROR OF FANG ROCK (15×1 – 15×4)

Overall rating for the season: ★★★☆☆

[Content warning for gun violence and suicide.]

Book Review: Issola by Steven Brust

Book #170 of 2024:

Issola by Steven Brust (Vlad Taltos #9)

The back half of this novel is rather good, representing an important step forward for former assassin and current fugitive Vlad Taltos, who’s come out of hiding to help a few friends who’ve been kidnapped by some sort of demigods. It also hinges on a new relationship — platonic but deeply intimate — between that protagonist and Lady Teldra, the courteous steward of Castle Black who has previously only been a very minor character in the series. Her quiet politeness blossoms in conversation with the Easterner, yielding the kind of respectful yet puzzled culture clashes of something like Shōgun.

It’s fun to read before it all turns tragic, but it emerges from some of the most tedious exposition that author Steven Brust has yet devised, justifying the mysticism behind these latest worldbuilding details and the precise logistics of the enemies and their plans for Vlad’s world. With such a flimsy beginning compromising the far stronger concluding arc, I suppose I’ll toss my rating for this title straight down the middle. Still, it’s nice to see the franchise pushing forward into the future and finally delivering on the Spellbreaker mystery that’s lingered in the background for several books now.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon

Book #169 of 2024:

Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon

I saw this book pitched as the Gilmore girls investigating a murder, and that’s honestly a pretty decent shorthand for the character dynamics at play: a small-town fifteen-year-old who discovers the body and is initially considered a suspect, the single mom who had her as a teen, and her own estranged mother, long-divorced and now living with them temporarily while undergoing cancer treatments. Besides the genre, it does feel somewhat similar to that TV show, although the main focus here is on the Diet Coke-guzzling* grandmother who decides to do some Marple-esque sleuthing to clear her granddaughter’s name, with the teenager herself registering as a definite afterthought.

Unfortunately, the plot isn’t as engaging as the interactions among the family, and the mystery element is straightforwardly predictable despite how long certain reveals are dragged out. The investigation also hinges on a few providential strokes of luck, like the protagonist happening to wake up in the middle of the night and look out her window or attending a funeral for someone she didn’t even know who turns out to be relevant to the case. (As a general principle, I stand by the writing advice that your heroes should stumble over bad fortune more often than good and be largely responsible for earning their victories through active choices and struggles.) And while it’s a minor issue, I’m disappointed by the paltry Jewish representation on display, which is mostly limited to surface mentions of holidays like Chanukah gifts or Passover visits with no further detail or exploration of what the identity means to any of these women. (If you can find-and-replace in your manuscript to easily swap out one culture’s attributes for another, you haven’t really done the work to ground that characteristic in anything meaningful.) At least author Nina Simon does a better job addressing the racism in the community, and how a brown kid like Jack — she has an absentee Filipino father — faces obstacles that her more privileged elders do not.

The vibes are strong enough for a passing three-out-of-five stars from me, but on a story level, I’m afraid I’m rather underwhelmed.

*Seriously, her drink of choice is mentioned no fewer than 15 times in this novel. What a strange character quirk to emphasize that way!

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Clary Sage by Victoria Goddard

Book #168 of 2024:

Clary Sage by Victoria Goddard

Morrowlea University is an important part of the backstory of author Victoria Goddard’s Greenwing & Dart series, which begins soon after its protagonist Jemis Greenwing graduates and returns home from there. As we learn as those stories unfold, the institution is alone among its peers in this particular fantasy world for anonymizing the student body, with everyone in attendance keeping their surname and any potentially associated noble rank a secret from one another. Jemis has since learned that his friend and roommate Hal is an Imperial Duke, but neither of them knew anything about their fellow’s family or connections during their time at school together.

This prequel novella centers on the other lad himself, and while I’m generally predisposed these days to be less interested in heroes drawn from the nobility, Hal’s whole arc here involves working through his quiet loneliness and feelings of discontent within his station and eventually making the agentive choice to attend Morrowlea and the botany curriculum he privately finds fascinating instead of the expected path of comfort before him. It probably helps to have already met his more carefree older self, but he’s endearing and sweet in his teenage insecurities, with echoes of the sadness of the ruling class in The Goblin Emperor (or, at more of a distance, Goddard’s own The Hands of the Emperor). It’s a tricky balancing act for a writer to keep a character compelling while still emphasizing the privilege they hold over others, but the task is carried off well in this volume, which works whether you’ve read the later books or not. I would give Hal a hug if I could, and I’m glad the little plant-lover ends this tale on his way towards the happiness he deserves.

★★★★☆

Book Review: The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop

Book #167 of 2024:

The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop

I knew vaguely that actress Kelly Bishop — most iconic to my generation as the matriarch Emily on the show Gilmore Girls — had been one of the original cast members of the Broadway musical A Chorus Line when she was younger. What I hadn’t realized until reading this memoir is that the play itself was based on the actual experiences of Bishop and the rest of the company as dancers struggling to break into acting, and that some of her character Sheila’s poignant lines about her unhappy home life were taken directly from what she had shared during the initial workshops that produced the script.

This title starts there, with the production that won the author a Tony Award and really launched her career, before backtracking to cover her childhood and early dance roles and then progressing to the success on television that followed. It’s a fascinating story that captures the era and the showbusiness industry well, and while Gilmore Girls is far from the only topic, the chapters devoted to that program make plain just how much the writer loved it and everyone who worked there with her. She demonstrates sharp insight into her own character — whose relationship with Lauren Graham’s Lorelai she says was similar to that between her grandmother and mother — and the greater series at large, which she watched religiously even in those weeks when she didn’t appear. (She’s Team Logan, of course, as indeed all discerning fans should be.)

Amid the fond memories, she also discusses the pain of losing her longtime scene partner Edward Herrmann to cancer, along with her own husband and mother. Here and elsewhere in the text, she is frank and unapologetic about her emotions and her perspectives, addressing her sex life, her failed first marriage, health scares, an abortion, and her lifelong commitment to avoid having children all in the same matter-of-fact tone with which she reflects on old auditions or anything else. It’s a refreshing honesty from someone who at 80 has lived a long and satisfying life, and although I may have rolled my eyes at the occasional intrusion of woo-woo mysticism about the universe opening up a path for her and messages from beyond the grave, it’s hard to argue that she hasn’t earned the right to her little eccentricities.

[Content warning for drug abuse and domestic abuse.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Voyage of the Damned by Frances White

Book #166 of 2024:

Voyage of the Damned by Frances White

I’ve heard this book described as a fantasy-genre version of an Agatha Christie story like And Then There Were None, but I think The Hunger Games might be an even more apt comparison for the steadily-rising body count. While the identity of the murderer(s) is unknown to our protagonist, his forging of quick alliances — including one with a young Rue-like girl — and dilemmas over how far to extend his trust feel more like Katniss to me than one of Christie’s stolid detectives, and the fact that the dozen passengers on his ship each represent a different region and noble family of their kingdom additionally calls to mind the various districts of Panem. Although the worldbuilding and magical system is a little under-defined for my tastes in general, the representatives of those lands with their distinctive identities and special powers resemble Hunger Games champions even before the killings start.

Still, the locked-room element of the tale is fun, as is the hero’s chaotic flirtatious bisexual energy. I appreciate the additional detail that he’s an imposter on-board himself, with no ulterior motives except to continue hiding that he’s the only one who hasn’t inherited a magic gift of his own. When the murders do begin, he feels honor-bound to investigate, and there are some amusing plots and intrigues that he winds up stumbling over in and among the corpses. The tension mounts as the cast shrinks, and a few ensuing twists are deployed rather well.

I do wish we were given a clearer sense of the setting outside the boat, and the denouement at journey’s end seems particularly rushed. (I wonder if this title might have worked better as the opening to a series that could have continued to unpack certain ramifications, rather than a standalone volume that carries the obligation to wrap everything up so tidily.) But overall, I’ve enjoyed it enough that this is an easy four-out-of-five stars from me.

[Content warning for fatphobia, xenophobia, suicide, genocide, gore, and violence against children.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Grief in the Fourth Dimension by Jennifer Yu

Book #165 of 2024:

Grief in the Fourth Dimension by Jennifer Yu

Two recently deceased teenagers, who attended the same high school but didn’t really know one another there, now find themselves sharing a room together in the afterlife. The space is an empty void they can populate by wishing for furnishings, but the main feature is a TV which regularly shows them footage of the loved ones they’ve left behind. In a sense they get to process their own feelings of grief and unfinished business while simultaneously watching their family and friends work through theirs.

There’s a lot to appreciate in this YA novel, and as a parent I was especially moved by the scenes of those characters struggling in the wake of such an unfathomable loss. The #ownvoices elements of Kenny’s home life and the Chinese restaurant that his family runs are pretty well-drawn too. I’m also thankful that this isn’t a love story — despite occasional hints of romantic inclination, no one new gets together as the plot progresses, among either the living or the dead. Instead all the budding relationships remain strictly platonic friendships, which feels more appropriate for the circumstances.

Ultimately, though, too many of the little details about this project bug me. Two major items — how one character died and the identity of the driver that killed the other — are held back from readers for big reveals midway through the book, which I wouldn’t call the most effective writing choice. The tone can sometimes grow overly mawkish. A lot of drama hinges on the outcome of the upcoming vehicular manslaughter sentencing hearing, which turns out to carry a maximum penalty of just one year in jail. And the mysterious intelligence behind the situation, who communicates with the teens via written messages deposited out of thin air, strikes me as too cutesy by far. I imagine author Jennifer Yu wanted to keep things somewhat ambiguous so as not to specifically endorse any particular view of the hereafter, but the logistics are weird enough — they can each use a summoned telephone once to communicate from beyond the grave, for instance, and it garbles the sounds that the recipient will hear back on earth — that it winds up raising practical questions that serve to distract from the core themes of the work at hand.

Your mileage may vary, but with such drawbacks I’ve found this title to only sporadically live up to the potential of its premise overall.

[Content warning for depression, suicide, and alcohol abuse.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Doctor Who: Rogue by Kate Herron and Briony Redman

Book #164 of 2024:

Doctor Who: Rogue by Kate Herron and Briony Redman

Probably the best of the recent Fifteenth Doctor novelizations, as is fitting for being the only one written by the author(s) of the original episode in question. Kate Herron and Briony Redman tell just as thrilling a queer love story for the Doctor on the page as they did on the screen, and while we don’t quite get the visual impact of the sumptuous Bridgerton-style setting and outfits — or the audio of some well-placed Kylie Minogue — it’s overall the same fun romp giving way to ultimate tragedy.

Plotwise, we follow the Time Lord and his companion Ruby Sunday to a nineteenth-century ball doubling as the site of a shapeshifting alien invasion, where they get mixed up with a dashing bounty hunter stalking his latest target. The pseudonymous Rogue isn’t the first one-off romantic partner for Doctor Who’s lead, but he’s a welcome step forward in representation for the franchise, engaging in a whirlwind and banter-filled flirtation that’s nevertheless taken seriously by the script/novel and culminates in the two men sharing a passionate kiss. It’s a thrill to read as well as watch, particularly with an eye towards how groundbreaking this sort of normative queerness could be for the show’s future.

What elevates the prose version of this tale is the extra focus on Rogue himself, who’s promoted to more of a viewpoint protagonist alongside the Doctor and Ruby. We are treated to additional backstory on him and the boyfriend he’s lost, which both deepens the character and helps contextualize — spoiler — his sacrifice at the story’s end. He isn’t merely taking out the villains and coincidentally saving the life of someone he just met; he’s consciously acting to spare his new love interest from experiencing the pain of loss that he’s suffered so achingly himself. That’s an element that’s not really present in the episode that aired, and whether it was rescued from an earlier draft or belatedly worked in for this adaptation, it definitely strengthens the connection between the two star-crossed lovers.

(It’s still silly that the Doctor doesn’t seem to think it’s especially urgent to find and rescue him afterwards, though. What’s up with that?)

★★★★☆

Book Review: In the Shadow of the Fall by Tobi Ogundiran

Book #163 of 2024:

In the Shadow of the Fall by Tobi Ogundiran (Guardian of the Gods #1)

An exhilarating new fantasy series debut that pits a novitiate orisha priestess against body-snatching heretics like Doro from Octavia E. Butler’s Wild Seed seeking to destroy her order. I wish the plot structure deviated more from the standard Lord of the Rings/Star Wars/Wheel of Time/Children of Blood and Bone/etc. arc of a young hero suddenly forced to flee from the safety of their childhood home, and like most novellas, the short length cuts against the effectiveness of the piece, with not enough time to fully develop certain character relationships. (That’s especially true here, where the title has been marketed as the opening half of a duology. Why not just write one normal-sized novel instead?)

Still, the story is propulsive, what we see of the setting and its #ownvoices flourishes is interesting, and the protagonist is endearing: a twenty-two-year-old now well past the age when most of her fellow worshippers first hear the voices of their gods, and understandably chafing at the inexplicable delay. Like Garth Nix’s Lirael, there’s a sense that she likely has some greater destiny ahead, but the chip on her shoulder in the meantime helps sharpen her characterization and strengthen her resolve. Overall it makes for a compelling viewpoint entry into this world, although I maintain it would have been more impactful with additional room for everything to breathe.

I give it three-and-a-half stars, rounded up.

[Content warning for gore and violence against children.]

★★★★☆