The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: The Little Friend by Donna Tartt

Book #11 of 2026:

The Little Friend by Donna Tartt

The critical consensus on author Donna Tartt’s second novel seems to be that it’s immersively drawn but plodding in plot, which I feel is basically accurate and yet rather beside the point. Which is to say, the story definitely shines best as a slice-of-life family drama about a twelve-year-old girl growing up in 1970s Mississippi, haunted by the unsolved murder of the older brother she never knew. The ramifications of that tragedy continue to reverberate throughout the day-to-day experiences of the young heroine and her extended household, and the writing vividly captures both the texture of her summer days in that specific time and place and the emotional landscape everyone is forced to weather as a result of the loss in their past.

So, no. The problem is not that the primary narrative moves too slowly; it’s honestly that it doesn’t belong here at all. Harriet is a captivating creation all on her own, precocious and probably undiagnosed on the autism spectrum, and the book would have been well-served to simply show us more of her world through her eyes, as a sequence of charming anecdotes around this twentieth-century Tom Sawyer. Once she decides to investigate the old mystery and convinces herself that a local gang of criminals was involved, the character study takes a back seat to that more superficial conflict, to the detriment of the piece as a whole. It’s too fitful in its developments and ultimately anticlimactic there to satisfy readers looking for that sort of thrill — we don’t even discover who really killed the boy in the end — and yet it so dominates the work overall that it can’t be easily set aside, either.

Tartt’s talents save the experiment from being a complete wash, but it’s nowhere near as strong as 1992’s The Secret History or 2013’s The Goldfinch in turn. Still, if she maintains her previous approximate publishing schedule, I can only hope that our decade will see a new title soon to prove this 2002 release was merely a miscalculated aberration.

[Content warning for racism and ableism including slurs, gun violence, drug abuse, suicide, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

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Movie Review: The Matrix Revolutions (2003)

Movie #3 of 2026:

The Matrix Revolutions (2003)

A disappointing but acceptable conclusion to the original Matrix trilogy. This third feature is nowhere near as imaginative as its predecessors with their mindbending fight scenes and special effects, rushing through the comparable moments somewhat perfunctorily and spending far too long on the defense of Zion. For over half an hour in the middle of this movie, we’re kept away from the Matrix itself, instead cutting back and forth between characters in the hidden city shooting at robot drones and those racing a ship through the tunnels to join them. Neo and Trinity are en route themselves at this time too, traveling to the machine capital where he’ll bargain with the hive mind consciousness and finally be plugged back in, so as to defeat the rogue Smith program who by then has taken over the entire virtual interface.

The underground battle sequence isn’t exactly boring, but it’s uninspired, coming across as more of a generic military sci-fi exhibition than anything specific to this franchise. The parts before and after, meanwhile, are too focused on establishing logistical detail and not on providing the necessary spectacle to enliven it. And the exposition isn’t always satisfying, either — the Wachowskis draw attention to the fact that the Oracle’s appearance has changed, for instance, but then offer only a vague half-explanation for folks who haven’t played the Enter the Matrix tie-in video game. (In reality, the former actress had passed away, which is of course a tragedy. But such vagaries do happen occasionally for sequels, and the part could easily have been recast without impacting the narrative. Audiences can suspend disbelief over a different Dumbledore or War Machine perfectly fine despite having no story reason for the switch.)

Smith is the only real antagonist here besides quick appearances from the Merovingian and his new goon the Trainman, but the ex-agent at least provides enough personality and threat to effectively challenge our protagonist, in both his physical human form and his traditional avatar(s) in computer land. The vast horde of Hugo Weavings don’t have as much to do as in the previous film, which is kind of a waste, but their mute presence for the final stormy showdown helps convey the apocalyptic stakes, I suppose. In the end the prophesied hero fulfills his savior role rather precisely, with messianic visuals underscoring the symbolism of his sacrifice just in case we don’t get it, and it’s not a bad way to wrap everything up. But I’ll forever wonder why the creators pushed this installment out a mere six months after the last one, and what they might have done better with more room to craft it. If nothing else, a title that actually references the plot would have been nice!

[Content warning for gun violence, self-harm, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

TV Review: Classic Doctor Who, season 23

TV #3 of 2026:

Classic Doctor Who, season 23

If you’re a modern viewer catching up on old Doctor Who, you might not notice anything immediately amiss when finishing season 22 and starting this next one. There’s an introductory framing device that’s new, involving the Time Lords putting the Sixth Doctor on trial for his alleged meddling in the affairs of other species, but the courtroom scenes represent a fairly minor element, with the participants screening “evidence” that we proceed to watch as well. That first story, which by convention is called THE MYSTERIOUS PLANET, offers a largely traditional excursion that shows the Doctor still in the company of his returning companion Peri Brown, though he doesn’t seem to remember where she’s gone in the outer frame narrative.

Contemporary audiences would have received all that quite differently, however. This run of the series followed an unprecedented 18-month hiatus, which the BBC claimed was strictly a cost-savings measure to move Who to the incoming financial year. Yet it came amidst increased outcry against the program for its supposed glorification of violence, as well as widespread criticism from fans who didn’t like the Doctor’s arrogant cruel streak in his Colin Baker incarnation or the perceived low quality of recent scripts. In a sense Doctor Who itself was on trial in the popular press, and that was very much the subtext in which this season was understood at the time.

The intent, therefore, seems to be for the show to challenge its title character to justify himself, which would in turn serve as a defense for the series at large and why it deserved to go on. It’s a bold approach that would be laudatory indeed, if only the production had lived up to such lofty aims. Instead it falls pretty flat, leaving the unintended impression that the critics were right both on the screen and off. Doctor Who should not in fact continue as it had been, and so Baker would be summarily fired without even the benefit of a regeneration scene (which he was invited to return for but declined). This is the last gasp of his short era, marked behind the scenes by script editor Eric Saward quitting the role he’d held since season 19 too. Each man’s replacement would prove a stronger choice for the aging program, though not enough to save it in the end.

I will give this season credit for its unconventional format. In addition to the legal case providing an overarching structure, the three main tales within it are modeled loosely after A Christmas Carol with its ghosts of the past, present, and future. Here that’s represented by an adventure that apparently happened to the Doctor a while ago, the one he was pulled away from to be tried, and one that hasn’t yet occurred from his perspective. It’s a cool idea, and leads to the new companion Melanie Bush being introduced to us as a fait accompli — our primary Doctor is simply watching a recording of her from his own later timeline when they’ll someday be traveling together. She then arrives in-person to assist him for the closing episodes, but that’s not as difficult a plot point to resolve as people make it out to be; presumably Six drops her off into her proper period and subsequently meets her younger self sometime before he turns into Sylvester McCoy.

The problem with these serials — which on-screen are all titled as THE TRIAL OF A TIME LORD alone — is that at their best they’re solidly unremarkable, while the interjections of the court stuff that should enliven them are just plain awful. There’s no real logic to the prosecution’s arguments or the protagonist’s objections to them, and the subsequent reveal that his opposing counsel is an amalgamation of the Doctor’s own future come back to destroy him makes even less sense than usual. Worse, the hero’s basic complaint throughout is that the record the Time Lords are showing doesn’t match his memories of the experiences (or of when he reviewed TERROR OF THE VERVOIDS in advance), and that he wouldn’t have acted the way he can clearly be seen to do. Setting aside the meta angle or how dramatically null his repeated denials are, that leaves us without knowing exactly how much of what we’re seeing to trust, which was a trouble reportedly shared by the cast during filming, who struggled to get into their characters as a result.

Peri exits at the end of the second and worst serial MINDWARP in a sudden and violent death, although the Time Lords eventually tell the Doctor that she survived to marry a man she had no romantic interactions with in their televised encounters together, which… I guess is an improvement? Somewhat? It’s certainly emblematic of this whole weird season, which I can’t hate for its ambition but am never going to love, either.

Serials ranked from worst to best:

★★☆☆☆
MINDWARP (23×5 – 23×8)
THE ULTIMATE FOE (23×13 – 23×14)

★★★☆☆
TERROR OF THE VERVOIDS (23×9 – 23×12)
THE MYSTERIOUS PLANET (23×1 – 23×4)

Overall season rating: ★★★☆☆

Book Review: Tales from the Nightside by Simon R. Green

Book #10 of 2026:

Tales from the Nightside by Simon R. Green

Three years after the main Nightside series concluded, author Simon R. Green released this anthology of shorter stories set in the same supernatural corner of London. All but the concluding novella The Big Game had been previously published elsewhere, while four of the ten titles including that one feature John Taylor, the returning protagonist from the novels.

The setting remains a fun slice of urban fantasy dipped in atmospheric noir, but like the core books, this one can be both uneven and repetitive. (It was clever when Taylor first responded to an occult threat by throwing black pepper in his assailant’s face to make them sneeze. After enough times, however, you would think that that would just be a standard move his enemies would learn to expect and defend against from him.) The finest entries in the volume are the last two: the longer piece, in which our hero has to repel a vampire invasion, and “How Do You Feel?” starring his zombie friend Dead Boy, in which we finally discover the secret behind his origins and see more of his heavily-weaponized car from the future.

These adventures span across the history of the Nightside, and are presumably best for readers already familiar with it, although there aren’t any serious spoilers for anyone picking this up as an introduction to the place. Some are better than others, and I’d probably rate the long final story as four-out-of-five stars if I’d read it independently. But considering the collection as a whole, I’m afraid it belongs in a lower bracket overall.

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

★★★☆☆

Book Review: A Spell to Wake the Dead by Nicole Lesperance

Book #9 of 2026:

A Spell to Wake the Dead by Nicole Lesperance

This novel has a neat beginning that it then proceeds to squander, becoming one of those stories where I can viscerally feel my rating for it dropping as I continue to read along. The initial premise involves a trio of queer and witchy Cape Cod teens, one of whom is nurturing a new crush on another that she isn’t sure is mutual, stumbling across a corpse on the beach as they perform a spell under the moonlight ‘to uncover hidden things.’ To my mind, that introduces three basic plot elements of decreasing appeal: the interpersonal dynamic among the friends, the mystery behind the dead woman, and the potential reality of their magic. Unfortunately, those wind up of increasing prominence respectively throughout the text.

Still, I could handle a tale of witchcraft being real and high school goths getting in over their heads with it. What I can’t fathom is how blasé everyone is towards that revelation here. Skeptics have their worldviews rocked without batting an eye, which fits a broader pattern within the book of character motives and actions displaying no apparent justification upon reflection.

To pick but one example, the protagonists discover that a local secret society consists of members who fake their own deaths to sever ties with their former lives. Why is it important for them to do that? What are they aiming to achieve, beyond nebulous mystical power? What do they even do all day, living in the same general area with no more legal documentation? Unclear! The narrative is fundamentally uninterested in answering logistical questions like that, resulting in many, many plot holes by the end. One girl is messaging with an anonymous person online who seems to know a lot about her situation, and we just… never learn who that is besides someone in the cult. And so on.

“There are still so many pieces of this ritual—of this entire unhinged week—that make no sense,” reflects the narrator in one of the final chapters, and I am sadly forced to agree with her. With that steadfast refusal to ever provide clarity on such matters, what could have been a tender romance and coming-of-age saga in a distinctive setting with fun spooky vibes turns instead into a tedious exercise in trying the reader’s patience.

[Content warning for amputation.]

★★☆☆☆

TV Review: The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, season 1

TV #2 of 2026:

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, season 1

The show The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles originally aired from 1992 to 1996, with Corey Carrier playing the future archaeologist from age 8–10 and Sean Patrick Flanery performing the role for ages 16–21. In 1999, these episodes were then combined with new bridge material and unused older clips and reissued as The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, which consisted of 22 ninety-minute ‘movies,’ some more obviously cohesive than others. That’s the format that’s both easiest to access today and the most complete, albeit at the loss of the bookend scenes with George Hall as an elderly Jones reminiscing about his past. (I did briefly consider reviewing them all as separate films, but I think I would go insane. And in the final analysis, they do function more as a TV series than as a sequence of discrete pictures.)

I haven’t seen the original Chronicles, but from what I can tell, the re-edit was a good choice. Although the transition from the first half of a story to the second is sometimes a little awkward, the Adventures version reorganizes the narrative into a chronological one, rather than bouncing back and forth between Carrier and Flanery or around the latter’s own timeline from week to week. This has the effect of dispensing with the weaker childhood plots sooner, after just five episodes, as well as emphasizing the serialized elements that get a viewer more invested in the character’s ongoing journey.

It remains a bit of a strange series — one that I almost like more as the tale of a random young man of the era and not the junior iteration of the part originated by Harrison Ford (who does pop in for a brief appearance near the end, along with the only inclusion of the familiar John Williams soundtrack). This whole enterprise was clearly inspired by the prologue with River Phoenix as a 14-year-old Indy in The Last Crusade, and yet it rarely feels as though it’s setting up the adult hero as neatly as that short flashback did. Teenage Indiana has the iconic hat now, but he doesn’t use the whip or engage in much treasure-hunting. Instead he runs off to join the Belgian army — under the assumed name of Henri Defense for some reason — to fight in World War I, which ends up occupying the majority of the runtime. In consequence the Germans are often the de facto antagonists, and in my opinion that muddies the evil of the Nazis from the big-screen adventures. Our protagonist should oppose them for their ideology, not just because his country is at war with theirs! At least he’s still given the opportunity to stand up against bigotry at times, especially after finally returning stateside.

The writers also have the character meet a staggering number of real historical figures, from Teddy Roosevelt to Ho Chi Minh, with several like T. E. Lawrence and Ernest Hemingway recurring throughout the program and Edith Wharton and Mata Hari each serving as a passing love interest (the adolescent Jones being apparently quite the inveterate womanizer). This is again a pretty significant change from the films, in which the adventurer only ever momentarily brushed up against Hitler! And in yet another divergence, the supernatural is limited to an eerie encounter with a gentleman who might be an immortal Vlad the Impaler, whereas Ford dealt with such mystical powers on every single occasion.

In short, there’s simply not a lot here that directly speaks to its own source material, although the hero’s frosty relationship with his academic father translates well, with Lloyd Owen doing a capable rendition of a young Sean Connery. The last few installments after the war help to narrow the gap too, even functioning as backstory for the gem from the beginning of Temple of Doom. (Kingdom of the Crystal Skull would later link back to the show in turn, mentioning a connection to Pancho Villa that we see firsthand here.) On the other hand, characters that would logically fit into a prequel are utterly missing — there’s no Sallah, or Belloq, or Marion, or anyone else that the title figure canonically knows before the start of his movie experiences.

And yet, taken on its own terms, I can’t deny that this series is a lot of fun. I like seeing the wartime espionage scrapes that ‘Defense’ gets himself into, and I enjoy the educational aspect surrounding the various celebrities and their settings. The history isn’t always entirely accurate, particularly where it has to bend to accommodate the fictional Jones, but it’s all roughly true, and it reminds me of the pure historical serials that classic Doctor Who used to produce, with nary an alien invader in sight. (We even have a couple Doctors here: Colin Baker and Jon Pertwee both show up, among other notables and early-career actors that are neat to spot.) The serialization is more of a factor than was common in a production of this time too, and the scripts don’t shy away from heavy subjects like Paul Robeson facing racial slurs or Indy’s Irish republican friends getting gunned down in front of him by the British.

I assumed as I watched that I would ultimately give this program a 3-star rating, but the closing stories up through Indy entering college to study archaeology improve to a degree that I’m left feeling charitable towards it overall (ignoring the two subsequent summer excursions into showbusiness, which are more farcical and again not especially Indiana Jones). It’s deeply uneven and not at all what we’d expect from a modern franchise project, but it has enough charms for me to land on a 3.5, rounded up.

★★★★☆

Book Review: The Magician of Tiger Castle by Louis Sachar

Book #8 of 2026:

The Magician of Tiger Castle by Louis Sachar

This 2025 novel has been promoted as author Louis Sachar’s first story for grown-ups, but I feel as though it only earns that designation via the adult narrator and the slightly higher page count. The tone isn’t noticeably different from his previous offerings, and the fifteen- and seventeen-year-old characters who are supposed to be in love read more like his usual young adolescents. While the plot touches on a few mature themes like marital rape or drug addiction, I wouldn’t say it’s any darker in its depictions of such matters than something like Holes.

My bigger issue is with the protagonist himself, however. He’s introduced to us as an ancient alchemist reflecting back on the sixteenth century, but he doesn’t gain that immortality until the very end of the tale, at which point he has to quickly summarize the next five hundred years of his life. He also apparently doesn’t have any friends in the flashback timeline besides the aforementioned teens, which is a bit strange for a man in his forties, and although he’s nominally trying to help them escape their awful fates — the princess ordered to marry someone horrid and the apprentice scribe sentenced to death for loving her — his method for the first half of the book is to simply try perfecting a potion to make them permanently forget one another. That’s an incredibly bizarre goal for a hero to focus on, and it definitely keeps me from investing in the situation as fully as I otherwise might have.

They do all eventually flee the castle together, but by then the targeted amnesia elixir has worked, so the boy and girl don’t remember any of their personal history with one another. In theory I guess the idea here is that they fall for each other all over again, but they’re promptly rushed off the page as soon as that really starts happening, so who knows? To repeat: odd writing choice!

Despite those flaws, I do think the title is more forgivable if approached as another middle-grade volume instead of how the publisher has been marketing it. But I can’t honestly say that I’ve enjoyed the reading experience myself.

★★☆☆☆

Movie Review: The Matrix Reloaded (2003)

Movie #2 of 2026:

The Matrix Reloaded (2003)

As a movie, The Matrix (1999) is perfectly standalone. As a box office hit and a genuine cultural phenomenon, however, it was probably always going to launch a franchise, and this first sequel is a pretty solid follow-up. It’s messy and overstuffed by comparison, even ignoring the cliffhanger ending, but it makes some smart writing choices and is overall a lot of fun. Let’s dive in!

The first thing I appreciate about this chapter of the saga is that it starts in media res, after a time jump from the last one. We haven’t skipped far ahead, but it’s enough that we don’t need to see Neo’s wide-eyed introduction to the city of Zion or the evolution of his relationship with Trinity or anything. Instead we’re simply put down in the new status quo, with the plot picking up from there. That pair’s dynamic is also a major improvement; my biggest critique of the previous film is that her declaration of love comes out of nowhere and reads like the trope of the guy getting the girl basically by default. Now a few months later, they’re opening up emotionally and can’t keep their hands off of each other in private — a much more believable love story that raises the personal stakes considerably.

That degree of sensuality marks another welcome change, as The Matrix, for all its strengths, is a largely sexless movie. Cypher looms in an aggressive manner over Trinity’s helpless body, and the men of the Nebuchadnezzar crew talk crudely about women in general, but there’s no real sense of physical intimacy anywhere. This time, our heroes get to tenderly embrace, looking almost identically androgynous in how the camera frames their entwined limbs. As if to emphasize this fluidity of form, the scene cuts back and forth between the couple’s love-making and images of people writhing together in an indiscriminately-gendered crowd at the nearby underground rave. If that’s not a queer statement of purpose (and an early indicator of the Wachowskis’ interests on their show Sense8), it’s at least as near as one could imagine in a 2003 blockbuster. The characters subsequently meet the married programs of the Merovingian and Persephone, who are likewise obsessed with human sexuality and touch, while the rogue Smith seems overwhelmed by the senses of his stolen host outside. In short, it’s a work that grounds its embodied feelings, especially as a shorthand for what divides us from the machines.

But back to the plot. This entry significantly widens the worldbuilding, beginning with showing us other ships and a hierarchy of power in Zion that Morpheus must nominally report to. The detail that not everyone believes in the prophecy of the One like he does is a neat development, particularly as background for the emerging threat: humanity’s enemies are burrowing down to destroy the free city, with a projected arrival mere hours away. There’s thus an instant conflict between those who want every ally to stay and fight the incoming force of sentinel drones, no matter how outnumbered, and those who think Neo and his team can somehow save the day inside the Matrix.

From there, the story gets a little complicated. Our savior protagonist is trying to find the Oracle, who tells him he needs to rescue the Keymaker from the Merovingian in order to be able to fulfill his destiny by accessing the Source, and that’s just a lot of important-sounding titles disguising an elaborate fetch quest. We’re drowning in competing factions here, and it’s not always clear who’s working together or why. (Do the agents know that Neo has to reach the Architect for the Matrix to survive? Is Smith’s deviation an anticipated part of the plan or an independent element changing the calculus? Etc.) There’s also an impression sometimes that we’re missing key elements, perhaps because sections of the script were indeed siphoned off to supplemental media like the video game Enter the Matrix or the cartoon compilation The Animatrix, which both came out around this time. I’m a fan of extended universes of continuity in general, but the cardinal rule should be that the primary piece stands fine on its own, and I’m not sure that’s entirely achieved here. Yet even with those omissions, the narrative feels overly busy, leaving certain reveals like the existence of werewolves or the idea that the Matrix has been secretly reset (and Zion destroyed) five times already without the necessary room to breathe.

Luckily the action sequences are spectacular enough to help mitigate such concerns. Everything is bigger now: the martial arts fights are more complex, the car chase setpiece on the highway is a true standout, and there are several brawls against an absurd number of Smiths, who’s survived his apparent death and learned how to replicate himself. (He’ll have more to do in the next film, but recognizing that the energy Hugo Weaving brought to the antagonist role was a vital contribution to the first movie’s success and finding a way for the series to retain him reflects another great instinct from the creators). If I have a complaint here, it’s that the new ‘virtual camera’ technology is not as seamlessly integrated as I would like; there are multiple shots throughout that look distractingly like smoothly rendered gaming graphics, which wasn’t really ever the case before.

In the end it’s not as coherent a production as its predecessor, and I don’t love the unresolved arcs that stem from filming this title and the next one back-to-back as a two-part story. But it’s still an entertaining installment that expands the Matrix mythos nicely, and for that I give it four-out-of-five stars.

[Content warning for gun violence, self-harm, and gore.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: A Libertarian Walks into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (and Some Bears) by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

Book #7 of 2026:

A Libertarian Walks into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (and Some Bears) by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

A darkly-ironic case, not always written about very well in this particular book. The town in question is Grafton, NH (population 1,385 in the latest census), which we’re told was already somewhat libertarian-leaning even before an organized movement from out-of-state convinced people to move there in 2004 and steer the politics further in that direction. Several hundred newcomers, predominantly men, came to the area and began voting for immediate reductions in pretty much every government service in pursuit of their Ayn Rand-style utopia. They talked a big game about freedom as they dismantled the social safety net and other matters of the public good, insisting that private enterprise would soon step in with more efficient alternatives.

Needless to say, it did not. It turns out that slashing the fire department’s budget, for example, does not actually lead to fewer incidents or better outcomes in that domain, particularly when accompanied by an increase in the attitude that laws regulating outdoor burns are an unconscionable infringement on a person’s liberty. Potholes likewise went unfilled, schools and libraries were given fewer resources, crime reports rose, and the number of violent run-ins with the local black bear population surged.

You see, certain townspeople were exercising their claimed sovereignty over their personal property lines by refusing to abide by the regulations to use bear-resistant food and garbage containers. Others were blithely putting out meals for the animals specifically, which for some reason the busybodies in the state Fish and Game Department didn’t want to allow. In consequence the wild beasts encroached further and further into areas of human settlement, to predictably disastrous result. It would be funny, if not for how many innocent victims among both species ended up hurt or killed before the ‘Free Town Project’ was eventually disbanded in 2016.

It’s a fascinating story, but author Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling is not the best messenger for it, despite his valuable on-the-ground reporting. He can tell us how he was repeatedly threatened by gun-toting residents for asking too many questions, but his writing struggles to remain on point and he sometimes speculates wildly, like when he proposes without evidence that locals might have parasites driving their reckless behaviors. He also starts each of his short chapters with a random quote about bears, most of which have no connection to anything else about his subject. (“He is an atrocity that carries its own punishment along with it–a bear that gnaws himself” from a Charles Dickens novel, for instance). One or two of these would have served fine as cute epigraphs for the entire work, but placing them every few pages is just too much. Thus, while I’ve enjoyed the righteous skewering of the libertarian ethos here, I can’t help thinking that someone with a stronger command of nonfiction narrative could have done a lot more with the material.

[Content warning for suicide and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: The Rise of Neptune by Scott Reintgen

Book #6 of 2026:

The Rise of Neptune by Scott Reintgen (The Dragonships #2)

The first volume in this middle-grade sci-fi series about dragons in outer space didn’t blow me away, but it was promising enough that I decided to check out this sequel to see how the cliffhanger resolved. And I guess I’m reasonably satisfied on that front, although overall this entry is heavier on the action and lighter on the character dynamics than I would ideally prefer. Unlike in the last book, the plot never seems to seriously challenge the teenage hero beyond his having to figure out military campaign tactics, which isn’t the most interesting way to spend a novel. I also miss how the friendship bonds and a sense of the daily struggle for life on Mars provided some nice background texture to the story before.

Two-and-a-half stars rounded up, in recognition that I am not the target audience here, but I don’t intend to read any further in the saga at this point.

★★★☆☆