The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

Book #96 of 2024:

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

The publisher’s description of this novel calls it “a time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all.” I would contend that it is none of those things, or at least, not a particularly great example of any of them.

Is it a story about time travel? Yes, at a distance. The protagonist is a civil servant in near-future semi-dystopian Britain, tasked with chaperoning an individual who has been plucked out of history by some newly-discovered technology. (Literal history, in fact: author Kaliane Bradley makes the interesting choice to pull in real-life military officer Graham Gore, who was lost in an 1840s arctic expedition, rather than inventing an original character for this purpose. Whether this is all self-insert fanfiction for The Terror, a recent popular dramatization of those events, has been left as an exercise for the reader.) Nominally there’s a degree of culture-clash tension as he and the other travelers learn to adapt to their new century, but in practice they all catch on fairly quickly beyond him being a bit prudish and unintentionally racist.

Narratively, he’s there as an object of desire for the heroine to develop feelings for and eventually sleep with. This romance is not especially well-developed in my opinion, nor does it spark any of the consequences I would have assumed would follow for such professional misconduct. Meanwhile a spy thriller is sort of going on around the edges of the plot, but this mainly manifests as the woman’s superior getting increasingly flustered and dropping urgently ominous comments that she totally fails to follow up on.

It’s all pretty underbaked, with a few twists at the end that fail to land properly as a result. A lot more could have been done with this premise.

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

★★☆☆☆

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TV Review: Seinfeld, season 7

TV #31 of 2024:

Seinfeld, season 7

We have an ongoing plot again! Sort of. This one doesn’t really develop and shift as the year goes on, but it does bookend and provide a distinctive atmosphere to that run. In the first episode, George suddenly decides that it’s time for him to settle down, leading him to go and propose to Susan, his ex-girlfriend from back in season 4. And for some unclear reason, she says yes. (This trope of exes getting engaged instead of just resuming their old dating relationship has always struck me as odd, and it’s hard to understand what any partner could see in George long-term anyway. He’s such an odious little weasel.) Of course, George being the self-sabotager that he is, he swiftly regrets that decision and spends the following episodes complaining about his new fiancée to his friends and brainstorming non-confrontational ways to call off the wedding, up until a certain final dark twist ends the matter for good.

I suppose it’s funny how awful and pathetic he’s being, but that’s never exactly been my favorite brand of humor. Otherwise, the only new element in this stretch is Elaine’s job writing catalog descriptions for J. Peterman — which feels like one of those 90s premises that’s lost its comic edge over subsequent decades, though at least it’s a more productive use of her character than the randomness with Mr. Pitt the year before.

But the rest of the show delivers fairly business-as-usual sitcom hijinks, relying heavily on Kramer’s physical comedy and not fully committing to the proto-Arrested Development style callbacks that occasionally pop up. That is, the series plainly wants to reward faithful audiences by referring without explanation to concepts from previous scripts like calling a romantic prospect “spongeworthy,” but at the same time, it’ll frequently revert to a status quo between episodes rather than letting any particular story development stick. Elaine ends one week still majorly flirting with Jerry after finding out he’s gotten rich, but then once the credits roll, the issue is never addressed again. Meanwhile Susan punches George after learning he’s lied to her and gone on a date with another woman (a memorable cameo from Oscar-winner Marisa Tomei as herself), but then likewise seems to forget all about it by the time the next installment arrives.

It’s hard to have much faith in the writing team with that degree of inconsistency, and knowing that this was co-creator Larry David’s last season, I’m curious whether I’ll like the remainder of the program any better or worse in his absence. For all my critical points above, I don’t hate this show and am often entertained by it on an episode-by-episode basis. (Yes, 7×6 “The Soup Nazi” is as fun and quotable as everyone always says it is, and you do have to admire the audacity of 7×24 “The Invitations.”) But at this point Seinfeld is hitting a baseline of solid comedy for me with only occasional flashes of brilliance, which isn’t enough to raise it out of my personal three-star / good-but-not-great rating tier.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: The Will of the Many by James Islington

Book #95 of 2024:

The Will of the Many by James Islington (The Hierarchy #1)

This fantasy novel starts off strong and gets even better from there, spinning a tale that’s rather reminiscent of Red Rising in both its Roman-inflected worldbuilding and its rage-filled protagonist infiltrating the high society of his enemies (and subsequently feeling conflicted over the friendships that he builds there). But unlike Darrow, Vis isn’t merely a member of the oppressed underclass; he’s also the deposed and presumed-dead heir of a smaller nation that the dominant civilization conquered, lending him a further degree of private stakes in the matter more like Sage in The False Prince. In fact, one of the things I love most about this series debut concerns all of the factions and divided loyalties that the young orphan hero must secretly juggle: there’s his cover story as an ordinary student trying to rise through the ranks of the cutthroat academy, the mission his powerful adopted father has sent him on — under threat of imprisonment and torture — to discreetly investigate a deadly conspiracy at the school, his own true identity that would mark him for execution if anyone ever found out, and the rebel group who have learned of it and are blackmailing him for their own hypocritical ends.

The magical element is neat too, although oddly dropped for a large section of the book, since students aren’t allowed to utilize it on-campus. Early on, however, we’re briefed on the mechanics: people are organized into pyramid-like hierarchies, ceding a portion of their energy to the members above them in exchange for social benefit. The higher-ranked individuals can draw upon the lower to gain disproportionate physical strength, or else to power the country’s machinery like Sandersonian investiture. While not a major focus of the plot, it’s a fun background note that helps distinguish the setting in a crowded literary landscape.

Mostly, though, we are following the very personal journey of our narrator as he outwits and ruthlessly outfights his way through a succession of tricky scenarios. At every moment, this character is thinking not only of how he can turn the present situation to his advantage, but also how it could fuel his growing legendary reputation among his peers. (Again: heavy vibes of Darrow from Red Rising, alongside the tensely unfair wargame challenges of Fourth Wing, The Hunger Games, or Ender’s Game.)

The ending unfortunately loses me a bit. There are just too many threads left unresolved, as well as a pretty massive genre-bending twist in the final pages that would have needed way more development than it receives here in order to land with the proper impact. I understand multiple sequels are planned and cliffhangers are a fine storytelling tradition, but this volume ends so messily that I’m forced to scale back the five-star rating I spent a lot of the book assuming I’d be giving it.

Still! I do like this title a lot overall, and will be eagerly reading on to see where the series goes next.

[Content warning for amputation and gore.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: The Husbands by Holly Gramazio

Book #94 of 2024:

The Husbands by Holly Gramazio

I was initially charmed but ultimately dissatisfied with this paths-not-taken novel, in which an unmarried London woman suddenly finds a husband of several years sharing her flat. No sooner has he arrived than he’s gone again, replaced by yet another stranger — for it turns out that the attic of her home has somehow become the trigger for this uncanny revolving door, and every time her current partner climbs up the ladder, reality shifts so that the heroine is married to somebody new climbing back down.

Gradually she realizes that her recent past is being rewritten entirely with each new spouse; although she retains her memories throughout, everyone else immediately forgets and she keeps discovering she’s inadvertently altered some detail like her job or her friend group dynamic along with the change in fellow. (The idea seems to be that she’s repeatedly displacing some different universe’s version of herself, but that element isn’t really addressed. It does have troubling implications for how frequently she empties her bank account, quits her career, or otherwise acts rashly under the justification that she’ll soon be moving on to a new blank slate of circumstances, however.)

I don’t necessarily need a story’s protagonist to be likable, but this one is pretty selfish and cruel throughout. She has to drug one husband to get him to go back into the attic, and threaten to shoot another. On several occasions, she abuses her knowledge of people she was close with in a previous life to break into their houses and steal from them, and of course, she’s keeping her predicament / ability a secret from everybody the entire time. She’s also often obnoxiously shallow, rejecting certain spouses on sight without even getting to know why some iteration of her would have fallen in love and married the guys. Over the course of several months, she winds up going through literal hundreds of them in this way.

The plot is relatively engaging — though the ending is a bit abrupt — and I think the piece as a whole works well as a bitter commentary on modern dating apps, which likewise encourage folks to churn through romantic options and make superficial snap judgements to swipe away prospective matches they might have been perfectly happy with. But it’s not much fun to read, or even clear what sort of outcome we should be rooting for as we go along.

★★★☆☆

Movie Review: Enchanted (2007)

Movie #16 of 2024:

Enchanted (2007)

Basically as delightful as I had remembered, and my 3y/o and 5y/o seemed to like it too, despite not being very into live-action stuff yet as a rule. This movie is so fascinating to me, because it rides a really fine line between lovingly mocking various Disney Princess tropes and representing just a straightforward example of them in turn. Still, bringing such characters out of animation and confronting them with relatively realistic New Yorkers remains a fun postmodern twist for the genre, and I especially adore how it skewers the conventional love-at-first-sight plot by turning into a stealth romantic comedy between the two protagonists we’ve actually spent the movie watching grow closer. (The fact that they’re each initially attached to someone else provides good cover for this angle of the script, and throwing those two quasi-spurned lovers together in the end is a pretty tidy solution. It’s almost Shakesperean!) In a way, this seems like a prototype for several later relationships from the same studio; both Frozen and Tangled come to mind for offering similar optimist/cynic dynamics that blossom slowly into romance.

On the flip side: I’m less enamored of the wacky CGI chipmunk sidekick and Nathaniel’s violence against him than I probably once was, and I don’t love how that minor antagonist goes through multiple ethnic stereotypes for his successive disguises, which doesn’t even make sense given his particular background and knowledge of the world. The dragon bit at the film’s grand climax is also a tad over-the-top, and the story feels like it’s maybe missing a beat where Robert comes to terms with the idea that magic is legitimately real beyond the manic-pixie-dream-girl breaking him out of his divorcee doldrums.

But Amy Adams is indeed magical in that role, and “That’s How You Know” is a classic Disney bop. That cements the matter, in my book.

★★★★☆

TV Review: American Gods, season 3

TV #30 of 2024:

American Gods, season 3

Better than season 2, but ultimately unable to cross that elusive threshold from good to great, especially in comparison to the masterful first year of this loose Neil Gaiman adaptation. The perpetually troubled production swapped showrunners yet again for this final run, which really doesn’t feel like it was intended to be the actual conclusion of the program and certainly doesn’t come close to the endgame of the original novel. Bilquis’s arc in particular winds up going nowhere, laying tracks that might have been interesting later on, had the series not been canceled a week after the finale aired. But with her journey belatedly ending here, it all seems largely pointless.

The degree of cast turnover is also disappointing: Orlando Jones’s Mr. Nancy goes entirely unmentioned, Mousa Kraish’s Jinn has likewise vanished (though at least his absence is textually-addressed, despite being unmotivated and leaving his main scene partner Salim more adrift than usual), and Crispin Glover’s Mr. World suddenly has several additional avatars that he cycles between, which is similarly unjustified in the text of the scripts but is presumably a creative choice to accommodate the primary actor’s schedule. Perhaps such issues were unavoidable, but the result is that this universe feels smaller than ever on-screen, with both divine factions often reduced to just a couple people standing around talking.

The best part of this season, besides Shadow’s new haircut, is that it finally adapts the Mike Ainsel / Lakeside subplot, which adds a nice structure to events. It’s a little weaker than on the page — positioning Marguerite as a love interest for the hero could work, if only it were set up well enough for the turn from her initial mistrust to be believable — but the basic framework of the missing teen and the idyllic midwestern town still delivers, and the local busybody Hinzelmann (now a middle-aged woman instead of an elderly man) is a hoot as always. But otherwise the plot isn’t as immediately compelling; Mr. Wednesday’s long-simmering war against the new gods somehow remains eternally stuck in its planning and recruitment stage, and Laura is as lost without Sweeney to bounce off of as Salim is without the Jinn.

The background premise of deities made sentient and corporeal by human belief and subsequently dwindling once the power of that faith wanes is inherently promising, and individual scenes still offer striking imagery to illustrate that core theme, even this late in the game. I will truly miss this version of these characters and all the added diversity, no matter the many wild story changes and my preferring the book to the show overall. But at the same time, I’m happy to be done with the thing at this point.

[Content warning for domestic abuse, torture, homophobia, racism, and gore.]

This season: ★★★☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Seasons ranked: 1 > 3 > 2

Book Review: Yendi by Steven Brust

Book #93 of 2024:

Yendi by Steven Brust (Vlad Taltos #2)

Published in 1984, this second Vlad Taltos novel is a prequel that’s lighter on the worldbuilding lore, taking us back to earlier in that assassin / crime boss’s career when the antihero was running a smaller territory and hadn’t yet married. In fact, he meets his future wife Cawti over the course of this book — as established in the first volume, she’s initially hired to kill him, though luckily the contract is negated when both parties die and get magically revivified — and their instantaneous romance is probably the weakest part of the story. The immediate attraction between these two rival professionals is fine, but declaring love and intention to marry after knowing one another for only a few days? That’s a lot harder to accept, and author Steven Brust doesn’t do a good enough job of selling it, in my opinion. Even with the knowledge that the characters are still together later on, it feels like there should be some narrative comeuppance for how swiftly and completely the protagonist trusts this new femme fatale love interest who swoops into (and temporarily extinguishes) his life.

The rest of the plot is more engaging, although like Jhereg, it ends with some abstract intricacies of Dragaeran politics that mostly track but aren’t especially interesting. The main premise here is that Vlad has gotten into a turf war with someone trying to muscle into his area, and that’s a fun thread of moves and countermoves to watch play out, as well as a nice change of pace from the more straightforward mission he was paid to carry out last time. Overall this title isn’t the best example of its genre or even its series, but the fantasy mafia vibes remain compellingly distinctive.

[Content warning for torture and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: While Idaho Slept: The Hunt for Answers in the Murders of Four College Students by J. Reuben Appelman

Book #92 of 2024:

While Idaho Slept: The Hunt for Answers in the Murders of Four College Students by J. Reuben Appelman

This true-crime title is pretty slim, despite how much time author J. Reuben Appelman spends on describing the victims’ backstories. He painstakingly walks through the police bodycam footage from when officers were called out to their house earlier in the year on a noise complaint, for instance, even though that has nothing to do with the students’ subsequent murders or their suspected assailant. He even delves into their old social media posts, dragging out Facebook quiz results, tween Instagram captions, and high school essay responses as though they’re at all relevant for understanding the four college-aged adults who were killed one night in 2022. (He also drastically overestimates the fame of this incident, saying at one point that a particular event happened “before most of the world knew” the name of one of the murdered girls.)

But there’s not much else to this book, either due to the writer’s own limitations or the inherently scant material available. A suspect was arrested only six weeks after the killings, and while the circumstantial evidence that Appelman describes seems convincing, the individual in question hasn’t confessed or even been brought to trial yet. Meanwhile, the sensationalized account of the crime scene reconstruction is grisly, but not especially distinctive against other reporting from this genre.

The most interesting thing about this volume may be its brief discussion of the horde of ‘citizen sleuths’ who took up the matter, swarming on the small Idaho town to record self-promotional podcasts and TikToks, interview/harass potential witnesses, and gleefully speculate about the dead and their surviving loved ones in dedicated subreddits. That’s an ugly side of modern society that could help differentiate this case from similar previous slaughters, both causing undue suffering and interfering with official law enforcement investigations, but Appelman doesn’t really dig into it any further, let alone grapple with his own role as a part of that ecosystem. With more distance and time, this could have been a significantly stronger work.

★★☆☆☆

Book Review: A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland

Book #91 of 2024:

A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland

I’m so torn in my reaction to this fantasy novel, which is very well-written but absolutely not my thing in a rather unavoidably central way. I love all the worldbuilding details, the queer representation including a trinary-split gender system, the political intrigue, and especially the characters — the prince’s panic attacks that he sees as a moral flaw of cowardice, his arc of learning to respect himself, his valet / bodyguard’s own journey from disdaining his charge to recognizing his worth in turn, and so on.

But I find myself unable to get past how their dynamic blossoms into physical desire and eventual romance, which feels like a major abuse of the royal’s position for him to become involved with an underling in that fashion. The text doesn’t treat this behavior as toxic at all, even though it’s a clear pattern with the protagonist having already slept with another of his guards (problematically framed as a more worldly seducer) in the novel’s backstory. Instead, the two men are presented as essentially equal prospective partners for whom simple logistical challenges arise from the one’s rank and the other’s sworn duty, without ever engaging in the question of implicit coercion and pressure. Indeed, the story is related through third-person limited narration, where both characters appear totally into the attraction when they’re not denying it to themselves. But the underlying power differential bugs me, as does the fact that it goes utterly unaddressed.

This element is particularly disappointing given how I’ve seen author Alexandra Rowland mention both Victoria Goddard’s The Hands of the Emperor and Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor — two of my very favorite examples of the genre — as among their inspirations for this work. Those titles are likewise built around compassionate models of loving fealty, but in each case, the relationship between the liege lord and his vassal is intimate yet firmly platonic. The overstepping of that boundary seems more appropriate for a what-if fanfiction, as do a few fairly tropey developments like the pair realizing their chemistry whilst pretending to be a couple to throw off pursuers, and subsequently harder to accept as part of the core narrative here.

Or that’s my personal taste as a reader, at least! I suppose I’ll grade on a curve based on how much I like everything else in this piece, and on how I sincerely acknowledge the unfairness of judging a book for not telling the story you wanted it to, rather than how well it’s told the version that it has. But this won’t go down as another favorite for me.

[Content warning for torture.]

★★★★☆

Movie Review: Babylon 5: The Gathering (1993)

Movie #15 of 2024:

Babylon 5: The Gathering (1993)

Okay, I like this. I don’t love Babylon 5 as a franchise quite yet, but this TV pilot movie is a solid setup for the sci-fi framework to follow. If I were a Warner Brothers executive in the 90s, I likely would have ordered a full series on the potential of this initial release as well. It’s very reminiscent of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to me, which I understand is not necessarily a coincidence — this title aired midway through the debut season of that other one, with its own first season a year later, but they were obviously in development at the exact same time. And since Paramount initially passed on the Babylon 5 pitch before commissioning DS9, I know there’s an argument to be made that the Trek producers might have poached certain elements that they liked without attribution, whether consciously or not.

Or it could just be a fluke. Regardless, both shows are set on a space station outpost where multiple alien cultures clash and political intrigues abound, but as a viewer I watched through Deep Space Nine without any knowledge of Babylon 5, so I’ll try to keep the comparisons out of my reviews on this side now in turn.

On its own terms, this film introduces us to the setting, the factions, and a few figures who will presumably be important going forward, but it’s not always the most elegant in its scripting. There are a lot of scenes where one character tells another something that they logically ought to have already known, serving the transparent function of providing that exposition for the audience’s benefit rather than actually moving the plot along. The acting doesn’t all feel keyed-in either; a few of the performers are either stilted or overly sardonic in their line readings in a way that I hope gets ironed out later on. And the immediate story is pretty bare-bones, concerning an assassination attempt on a newly-arrived ambassador and its subsequent investigation, which doesn’t go anywhere interesting except for temporarily implicating the guy who appears to be our main protagonist. It’s not great science-fiction at this point, but it’s definitely promising for the road ahead.

★★★☆☆