The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling

Book #33 of 2025:

Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling

Dr. Tamsin Rivers is losing her mind. She’s not sleeping well, she’s exhibiting odd memory lapses, and she’s going long periods without remembering to eat or leave the house. She’s also studying a strange House of Leaves phenomenon where her basement seems to stretch in size whenever she isn’t looking, its floor ever so slightly further away from the ceiling each time. When it reaches far enough, an odd doorway suddenly appears that she can’t open or materially affect at all. And then an exact duplicate of herself is there too, her blank mental state giving no indication of whether she came through the mysterious portal or not.

Some of these things are objective facts, at least so far as the protagonist can tell. She’s both going crazy and experiencing a crazy event, although the causality isn’t especially clear early on. (Are the forces that summoned her doppelgänger also responsible for her deteriorating cognition, or is the other woman’s presence all a fever dream from her already unwell brain?) Eventually the plot discards the ambiguity and endorses the former option, as her condition continues to worsen. Meanwhile the naïve double is growing ever crueler and more sure of herself in a reverse of the original’s own progression, and it isn’t long before she’s taken her place and reduced the doctor to a frightened mess cowering in their home with the dwindling fragments of her memories.

This is a fascinating piece of psychological horror from the author of the equally excellent The Luminous Dead, heavy on themes of domestic abuse and with some eventual queer and disabled representation as well (the heroine sharing a complicated quasi-romantic dynamic with both her mirror self and her flinty corporate handler). The scientist’s Flowers for Algernon transformation is eerie enough to witness even without the addition of her unnatural tormenter, who like the villain in Stephen King’s Misery soon takes steps to forcibly limit her mobility. It’s a slow burn overall, and while I don’t understand either the title or the cover art — which suggests many such copies for some reason — it’s been a gripping experience to read.

Four stars instead of five simply because the peripheral stuff with the office politics, the Silicon Valley satire, and the corporation’s wider area of study isn’t developed in as much detail as I’d like, and since there are a few matters I would have preferred to get more closure on by the end. But on the level of the immediate character-driven story, this has been a real page-turner for me regardless.

[Content warning for biomedical experimentation, dehumanization, gaslighting, torture, and gore.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Blood Over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang

Book #32 of 2025:

Blood Over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang

This standalone fantasy novel is a total delight, and also probably represents the biggest improvement I’ve ever seen an author display from their debut, which for M. L. Wang was the somewhat forgettable YA title Theonite: Planet Adyn. Her talents have grown considerably in the time since then, as well as her distinctive narrative voice. There are rough plot similarities here to works from more established names — Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere, Stephen R. Donaldson’s Mordant’s Need, and R. F. Kuang’s Babel: an Arcane History all come to mind — but the aggregate effect resembles none of them at all. It’s entirely refreshing.

Our story is set in a crowded city-state surrounded by a magical barrier, outside of which a strange and deadly affliction preys upon the local nomadic tribes, striking seemingly at random to unknit their bones and sinews at increasing frequency the closer they draw to the settlement. The prologue sees a starving clan launching a desperate rush to reach the safety inside regardless, with only one hunter and his young niece making it across the boundary alive. Once there within the protective magic, they find themselves marked as racial minorities, barely tolerated as the lowest social class and forced into jobs of menial labor.

A decade later, the heroine of the piece is struggling to break through a barricade of her own: a gender restriction on who can ascend to the highest order of mages. She’s the first woman in years to even be allowed to take the entrance exam, and although her brilliance and dedicated studying pay off, her new peers disdain her and saddle her with a nearby janitor — the protagonist from the beginning — in lieu of a properly trained research assistant. The assignment is plainly intended to mock and infuriate her, and yet Sciona finds in Thomil an eager mind and a personality forceful enough to push back against her ignorant assumptions about his people.

There is a romance here, but it’s understated to a degree that I appreciate. These characters are not hormonal teens; they are working professionals striving for a scientific breakthrough who wind up uncovering a shameful secret their leaders have suppressed. A certain twist in the worldbuilding is downright Sandersonian as mentioned, but the spellwork surrounding it is strikingly original — more like lines of computer code that must be fed into a typewriter device in order to take effect. Such spells can do great wonders, including powering the vehicles and other forms of advanced technology throughout the society in a seamless blend of science-fiction and fantasy.

Plotwise, this is a tale that starts off strongly and then ratchets up in intensity several times before the end, ultimately arriving at an effort to tear apart a vile institution all the way down to its corrupt foundations. The scholar is initially off-putting in her casual racism — the genre equivalent of white feminism — but that’s by design and gives her an excellent personal arc at gradually overcoming those blinders as she seeks the truth about the Omelas world she’s inherited and the bloody cost of its conveniences. She’s a richly-drawn and complicated figure, and her colleague is likewise far from the noble savage that such a role might have been reduced to in other hands. I’ve loved following their journey towards understanding and the commitment to strike out against injustice, and I could not have asked for a more satisfying conclusion.

[Content warning for suicide, sexual assault, and gore.]

★★★★★

TV Review: The Bear, season 1

TV #10 of 2025:

The Bear, season 1

I’ve never worked in a restaurant kitchen before, but the first year of this FX drama* is so evocative in conveying the chaos and stress of one that I can practically feel my body tightening up with every episode. (“But you’re enjoying it?” my wife asks in concern, a worried frown darting across her face. Yes! Good art is supposed to evoke a chemical, emotional reaction in you; that’s how you know it’s working.) The Bear is pitch-perfect in capturing the rhythms and nuances of its Chicago setting, from the workplace lingo to the many arguments that seem to consist of frazzled people shouting profanity-laced tirades over one another.

If the program has a major fault — besides a sudden turn for the unrealistic in the season finale — it’s that it can occasionally be too opaque. The naturalistic approach results in stories that don’t feel like a typical fiction, but that means less of the customary artificiality of characters spelling out exactly what they’re doing and thinking, too. This isn’t a cooking show or even a procedural, so we don’t get to see enough steps to really understand the scope of the problems anyone is facing or how they manage to solve them. Instead, the plot is more focused on the workers themselves, and how those challenges impact their mental health. And sometimes, my knowledge as an amateur cook admittedly gets in the way here. (What do you mean a risotto is something you can quickly put together with the materials you already have on-hand for other orders, Sydney??)

But the cast is great, revolving around Shameless‘s Jeremy Allen White as a world-class chef who returns to his hometown to take over the struggling family establishment in the wake of his brother’s suicide. Like Jon Snow reorganizing the Night’s Watch, he’s a talented outsider with a vision for reforms who faces distrust and resentment among the folks who were there before him and apparently don’t mind the old inefficiencies. He’s also processing his own grief and trying — largely, failing — to be a better boss than the ones in the business that he’s labored under in the past. Bearing the brunt of that is an even more idealistic Ayo Edebiri, another trained professional attracted to the position because of the main protagonist’s reputation but suffering for his impatience and other weaknesses.

The whole ensemble is similarly flawed, in interesting and human ways, which of course has them at each other’s throats as often as managing to pull together as a team. There’s not much of a larger story, nor is it clear how much of the friction could be sanded down via personal growth while still leaving enough to entertain us, but I know I’ll be happy to come back for seconds.

*I realize the series has competed on the awards circuit as a comedy, not a drama. That’s a bad call, in my opinion! Genre boundaries can be strange and arbitrary, but this one seems pretty straightforward to me. Humorous dialogue and a shorter episode length don’t make a project like this into a sitcom.

[Content warning for gun violence, alcoholism, and panic attacks.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Doctor Who: Timewyrm: Genesys by John Peel

Book #31 of 2025:

Doctor Who: Timewyrm: Genesys by John Peel (Virgin New Adventures #1)

When Classic Doctor Who was canceled after its 26th season in 1989 — not that it was called Classic at the time — there was no expectation that the series would ever pick back up again on-screen. Virgin Publishing, running short on episodes left to novelize and sensing a desire in the fandom for further stories regardless, procured a new license from the BBC so that the franchise could continue on in some fashion. This particular title from 1991 was the first of those efforts in the period later deemed the Wilderness Years, and the first non-novelization Who novel ever produced. It’s also the opening volume to the Timewyrm arc, which would extend through the next three installments under different writers.

The mission brief appears to have been to carry on with the Seventh Doctor and Ace’s adventures via the same sort of complex sci-fi storytelling they had recently showcased on the television program, but without needing to remain as family-friendly. Lacking as strict an editorial filter / oversight, the book series was free to be more violent and mature in its themes as it grew out of that former mold and explored new frontiers. In certain ways, this was a clear boon — the characters often feel more like real adults than the safer versions audiences had seen on TV, and the series would ultimately feature greater representation of queer identities than likely could have aired at the time. But the effect in this debut release is considerably more mixed. Author John Peel, given that leeway to usher in a darker and more grownup Doctor Who, mostly takes the opportunity to include multiple scenes of underage nudity and sexual assault, along with spatterings of gratuitous violence.

The setting is ancient Mesopotamia, and other than the alien presence, I don’t know how much of it is historically accurate. In Peel’s version at least, there are temple prostitutes as young as thirteen years old walking around topless and offering to sleep with all the male visitors, while the legendary king Gilgamesh molests any woman or girl he can get his wandering hands on, our modern teenage companion Ace included. When she objects to his behavior and explicitly worries that he’ll rape her if she’s left alone with him, the Doctor chides her breezily about relativistic cultural norms and how she shouldn’t judge another people’s customs by her own. She’s also nude in two other scenes for no specific narrative purpose — waking up in the TARDIS at the beginning and then later taking a bath in the royal palace — which seems like yet another excuse for the writer to be salacious about actress Sophie Aldred’s imagined body. The Doctor, after all, isn’t subjected to any such treatment in turn.

That’s all basically indefensible in my opinion, as it doesn’t amount to anything but its own problematic inclusion. Meanwhile in the actual plot, the time-travelers are on the trail of a powerful enemy who’s crash-landed nearby and begun laying plans to conquer the world in the guise of the goddess Ishtar. There are a few fun nods to canon that might have been beyond the available TV budget to realize — memories of fallen companions like Sara Kingdom, a recorded message from the Fourth Doctor, Seven somehow channeling Three’s old personality from deep within himself in order to access his mechanical skills, and so on — which is nice for a readership presumably self-selected to recognize and appreciate such callbacks. (On the other hand, that also means readers are predisposed to catch continuity errors like Ace referencing Paradise Towers, a serial she wasn’t in. Whoops!)

In the end the Timewyrm escapes stronger than ever, and the heroes survive to fight another day. It works as a general proof-of-concept for the sequels to come, even if it hasn’t aged especially well in its own right.

★★★☆☆

TV Review: Classic Doctor Who, season 17

TV #9 of 2025:

Classic Doctor Who, season 17

This is a strange year of Doctor Who! Less ambitious than the overarching Guardians / Key to Time stuff from the previous run, but that’s not such a bad thing given how poorly all that was executed. Unfortunately in its place we’ve got some definite clunkers in the form of NIGHTMARE OF EDEN and THE CREATURE FROM THE PIT, and while I myself am fond of THE HORNS OF NIMON — it’s got fun science-fiction concepts, a neat use of recycled mythology, and in my opinion a welcome knowing campiness — I can understand the complaints about its low-budget goofiness and over-the-top acting. David Brierley is also inexplicably odd as the new voice of K9, turning in a very different performance than the robot dog’s original actor John Leeson, who would return to the program the following season with again no explanation for the change.

On the other hand: Lalla Ward is legitimately great as the second regeneration of the Time Lady companion Romana, with her airy alienness and good-natured humor proving a much better match for Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor than her predecessor ever managed. (In fact, the two actors fell in love while filming this season and married during the next one, although the romance wouldn’t last long beyond her tenure on the show.) And for the best illustration of that altered dynamic between the two lead characters, there’s CITY OF DEATH, which is easily in the contention for the top story in all of Classic Who. Douglas Adams may be spotty as the overall script editor this year, but his work writing that particular piece himself is simply superb. It being filmed on location in Paris adds further energy, but the scripts are overflowing with comedy and fantastic sci-fi ideas that the cast members noticeably use to power some of their own finest performances.

And since I’ve discussed all the other serials, I might as well mention DESTINY OF THE DALEKS: not the strongest plot, but noteworthy both as Dalek creator Terry Nation’s last time writing for Doctor Who and as the adventure that transforms Davros into a recurring villain rather than a one-off foe. He never again reaches the effectiveness of his initial introduction in season 12‘s GENESIS OF THE DALEKS — another contender for best in all of Who — but he’s up there with the Master as one of the Doctor’s primary nemeses, and that arguably starts with his reappearance here.

The one serial I haven’t rewatched this time through is SHADA, which was originally slated to make up the final six episodes of season 17. A production strike prevented half of it from being filmed, however, and although the surviving material has been reworked and rereleased in many forms over the years that followed, none of those takes is exactly definitive. My personal preference is to disregard the lot, aside from how the footage was incorporated into the 1983 anniversary special THE FIVE DOCTORS when Baker declined to reprise the role for any new scenes with his fellow stars.

Altogether I’d say it’s a mixed bag of a season, but not one to skip entirely. That’s a fitting swan song for producer Graham Williams, who departs at this point after three seasons of such varying quality. But do check out CITY OF DEATH at least, if you’re a Whovian who’s never seen it before.

Serials ranked from worst to best:

★★☆☆☆
NIGHTMARE OF EDEN (17×13 – 17×16)
THE CREATURE FROM THE PIT (17×9 – 17×12)

★★★☆☆
DESTINY OF THE DALEKS (17×1 – 17×4)

★★★★☆
THE HORNS OF NIMON (17×17 – 17×20)

★★★★★
CITY OF DEATH (17×5 – 17×8)

Overall rating for the season: ★★★☆☆

Book Review: Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson

Book #30 of 2025:

Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson (Ernest Cunningham #1)

A decent murder mystery of the snowed-in-with-a-rising-body-count subgenre. Unfortunately, as that description suggests, this is not the most original storyline, and I’ve personally found its efforts to stand out a little hokey. The narrator is very meta with his explanations of how books like this often go and the twisty ways in which he presents this one, but the ultimate effect is of a work that’s not nearly as clever as it seems to think that it is. I called both of the big twists — the identity of the killer and the identity of the killer, if you catch my drift — fairly early on, in large part because I’ve seen other writers like Agatha Christie use them in a similar fashion. That’s not automatically a fault against the present volume, but it does tend to dampen my subjective appreciation.

Two elements do register as particularly distinctive here: one a brief but striking flashback to when the protagonist and his brothers were accidentally left in a parked car as children, to understandably disastrous consequence, and the other the gimmicky concept that gives the novel its title. Yes, everyone in his immediate family has indeed been in some way responsible for someone else’s death, at least arguably — or if they haven’t in the backstory, then they will be by the time the current plot finishes. That’s an interesting hook, but certain specific qualifications that get revealed are a bit of a cheat, and it winds up being one of those instances where I feel that the book gets in its own way and does more harm than good.

Anyway. It’s not bad overall, but it’s in an odd position where it’s clearly trying to be in conversation with its literary predecessors and yet probably lands better for folks who haven’t read as many of them. Do with that information what you will, but I don’t imagine I’ll be checking out the sequels in this series myself.

★★★☆☆

Movie Review: Saturday Night Live 50th Anniversary Special (2025)

Movie #2 of 2025:

Saturday Night Live 50th Anniversary Special (2025)

The ongoing fiftieth season of Saturday Night Live hasn’t seemed like much of an occasion thus far, so I’m glad that this three-hour anniversary special exists to help fill that gap. It’s jam-packed with former cast members and celebrity hosts, and it takes the fun form of the usual show — live musical performances, sketch comedy, Weekend Update segment, etc. — with brand-new instances of recurring premises from across the program’s history, or at least the last couple decades. There’s Black Jeopardy (2014-2019), Drunk Uncle (2011-2022), Debbie Downer (2004-2020), a Deep Thought by Jack Handey (1991-1998), and beyond. Bringing these back with fresh material rather than simply airing or reenacting the original versions generally manages to celebrate the past without feeling stale, while the star-studded cameos add an extra frisson of entertainment to the proceedings.

This could have been a simple clip show, but instead the archives are deployed in a few breakneck montages that hit the hilarious highlights without overstaying their welcome: one for physical comedy, one for pre-filmed commercial parodies, and one for problematic sketches that in hindsight haven’t aged particularly well. Of course, SNL being SNL, it’s still making such missteps today — one of the bits revisited for this episode is Scared Straight (2008-2012), in which convicts try to deter juvenile offenders with a sequence of terrible prison rape puns. Now there’s an idea that should have stayed on the shelf!

Luckily the rest of the evening is stronger and occasionally even touching, honoring the legacy of the series and especially those actors who have since passed on. Not all of the surviving performers make an appearance, but so many do that it really does feel like a celebration of the institution as a whole and the impact it’s made on popular culture throughout its half-century on the air. Overall I’d say it’s well worth watching, for even the most casual of fans.

★★★★☆

Book Review: Amari and the Despicable Wonders by B. B. Alston

Book #29 of 2025:

Amari and the Despicable Wonders by B. B. Alston (Supernatural Investigations #3)

A significant step down for a previously-charming middle-grade fantasy series. I gave the first two novels four stars apiece for their freshness and overall fun, but this one feels like a generic and less entertaining Percy Jackson ripoff. You know you’re in trouble when your fugitive protagonist loses all sense of forward plot momentum to hang around with a ghost named Peekaboo (with a sister named Boohoo, of course). There are ways to blend such wacky worldbuilding with rising stakes — Harry Potter and Brandon Sanderson’s Alcatraz books each manage it alright — but the balance is considerably off here. The romance is a bore too; the canonical love interest is someone Amari occasionally exchanges mutual blushes with, while the more interesting potential dynamic she shares with the antagonist stays firmly in the subtext.

I’m sympathetic to the fact that the primary audience of this genre will have different expectations and comparative landmarks than I do, and I spent most of this title feeling like I would probably give it a mid-tier three-star rating in the end. Unfortunately, that ending turns out to be so disappointing that I’m forced to lower my impression further. Even kids who aren’t as jaded or plot-invested as me are likely to be let down by it.

Skip this paragraph if you don’t want spoilers, but I have to complain about this at length. First, our tween heroine learns in this story that there’s a magical artifact that can do the thing she needs in order to defeat the villain, but at the cost of killing the person who wields it. Drama! A quandary! With no other options, she ultimately makes the heroic decision to use it anyway, only for one of her professors from the previous books who *hasn’t been around for any of this one* to come to her deathbed and die in her place, something that has never before been hinted at as remotely possible. It’s both nonsensical and unsatisfying / narratively dull, since there’s no recent relationship there to draw upon. Why should we care about his sacrifice when we barely know him anymore? Imagine the sort of reader who might not even read a series like this in order, and you can really understand the problem there.

I see on Goodreads that author B. B. Alston has also announced that the sequence is now planned to run to five volumes in total, rather than stopping as the trilogy it was originally marketed to be. But I think this is where I make my exit, with one more exasperated repeat of my standing objection to the audiobook narrator: please please please use an Irish accent for the redheaded character named Fiona who says things like “ye,” “lass,” and “aye” in every other sentence. The choice of a default American voice there is just bizarre.

★★☆☆☆

Book Review: Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland

Book #28 of 2025:

Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland

A raunchy yet oddly sexless pirate fantasy comedy. Which is to say that the characters in this story are all obsessed with sex and talk about it incessantly in the vulgarest of terms, but nothing more graphic than makeouts or a naked arm lifted out of a bathtub is ever actually depicted on the page. It’s not the sort of tame that often characterizes the YA genre — these people are all adults firmly established in their respective senses of self, and they are absolutely getting it on between chapters — but if this were a movie, I imagine it would be rated PG-13. I saw another reviewer compare the overall tone to Deadpool meets Discworld, and that’s more or less accurate.

I am sure the piece will reach its proper audience. It is a marvel on a representation front alone, with a diverse array of queer identities, sexualities, and disabilities each presented as thoroughly normalized and undiscriminated against. It’s also funny and occasionally swashbuckling, with a particularly delightful closing sequence set at a baking competition wherein rival ship crews roam around loudly insulting one another’s cake creations.

At the same time, I personally find the protagonist rather exasperating — a proud “male slut” who gets off on domineering partners and has the temperament of a Dragonlance kender, blessed by strange fortune that has circumstances always miraculously go his way. He’s daftly childlike, which makes the ribald humor even harder to take (and him harder to accept as an object of anyone’s attraction), and he wears out my patience well before the end of this book. I think if this were a novella or a short story I would view it much more fondly, but at this length and with author Alexandra Rowland’s blunt moral messaging on restrictive religions and regimes, I’m afraid it gets only a lukewarm appreciation from me.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: An Academy for Liars by Alexis Henderson

Book #27 of 2025:

An Academy for Liars by Alexis Henderson

The opening sequence to this horror-fantasy novel is appropriately chilling: our protagonist, standing between two mirrors in the bathroom, notices a distant figure in the receding reflections that isn’t behaving like the others. In fact, it’s slowly walking towards her, weaving through all the normal faithful copies, and as it approaches she sees that that version of herself has no eyes and is grinning ear-to-ear. When she breaks away before it can reach her, it’s to walk in on her fiancé cheating on her with a friend. Driving to a random location and thinking about how to kill herself, she’s distracted by a ringing phonebooth in an otherwise empty parking lot. She answers the call to hear that she’s been granted an interview for a school she can’t remember ever applying to.

It’s a warped and unsettling twist on a Hogwarts acceptance letter, but unfortunately, the rest of the story fails to live up to that initial promise. Once the heroine actually arrives on campus, the institution loses a lot of its mystique, turning out to be just a place to learn how to control people — or for the very powerful, reality itself — with only one’s mind and will. In other words, it’s a pretty generic and somewhat under-explained magical system, and the plot that unfolds from there isn’t terribly impressive either. A lot of it revolves around the woman’s zero-chemistry attraction with her academic advisor, and while I’m not criticizing the book for depicting that sort of forbidden romance, it’s too bland and cheesy here to be effective.

There is still a darkness inherent in the premise, and the work is at its best when it leans into that element. For long stretches it doesn’t, however, and the ultimate product is a bit of a mess. Plotlines are dropped with no resolution, the supporting characters feel rather interchangeable, and the expected ‘dark academia’ vibes never really materialize. Even the title itself isn’t especially justified, in the end. (Is Lennon more skilled at lying than the majority of the world’s population who weren’t invited to attend Drayton? Is she excelling at the coursework because she’s a better liar than her classmates? Show us!) I’m left with more questions than answers, which is rarely a satisfying reading experience.

[Content warning for torture, gore, cruelty to animals, body horror, racism, and rape.]

★★☆☆☆