The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Postern of Fate by Agatha Christie

Book #74 of 2024:

Postern of Fate by Agatha Christie (Tommy and Tuppence #5)

This 1973 title was the 74th and final novel that author Agatha Christie ever wrote, in addition to the last in her sequence of Tommy and Tuppence adventure stories. (Unlike for her better-known detective series, she did not set aside any additional installments for posthumous publication.) I won’t speculate about the writer’s declining mental faculties at this stage of her life as I’ve seen other reviewers do, but I will say that this book is easily the worst of its lot and a bit of a sour note to end on.

Among its stronger qualities: our married protagonists have continued to age, and are now moving into a new home in their 70s. Their banter back and forth is as affectionate as ever, and their instincts as retired spies / investigators remain relatively sharp. I also love their dog, whose perspective in a few key scenes is a fun change of pace for the narrative.

The premise is both absurd and poorly developed, however. In examining the books that the previous owners have left behind in the library, Tuppence discovers a secret message in one of them: underlined letters that spell out, “Mary Jordan did not die naturally. It was one of us. I think I know which one.” She eventually learns that the woman in question was a spy during World War I, and that the boy who owned the book perished soon afterwards himself.

Two former intelligence agents happening to uncover a relevant plot at their doorstep is as silly as those times when Poirot or Marple stumbles across a fresh murder whilst on holiday, and the actual investigation here mostly consists of asking older folks in the community what they remember from long ago (and receiving contradictory information in reply). The couple’s own contacts in the business, meanwhile, are justifiably convinced that the Beresfords know more than they’re letting on about the affair and have moved into this particular address specifically to pursue the case further.

Yet it’s not entirely clear what that pursuit entails. They’re not seeking to identify the killer — nor do they, in the end — and the clues that they find are largely other things that have been left sitting in the house for decades, suggesting that no one cares any longer or has ever bothered to cover their tracks. Nevertheless, someone in the present day is apparently trying to stop or even kill the heroes for looking into the matter, though their motivation isn’t explained and their traps are so ineffective it’s a wonder that they’re noticed at all.

Anyway. Nice to check in on Tommy and his missus one last time, but their best days are firmly behind them at this point.

This volume: ★★☆☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Volumes ranked: 1 > 3 > 4 > 2 > 5

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Book Review: Doctor Who: The Phaser Aliens & Other Stories edited by Michael Stevens

Book #73 of 2024:

Doctor Who: The Phaser Aliens & Other Stories edited by Michael Stevens

A new audio production collecting six previously-published Doctor Who stories, one for each of the first half-dozen incarnations of that sci-fi franchise’s Time Lord hero. It’s an interesting snapshot of the series history, since the contents were originally written contemporaneously from 1965 to 1984 — and so in the earlier entries, the protagonist is sometimes called “Dr. Who” instead of “the Doctor,” his ship is sometimes just “TARDIS” without the definite article, and he’s strongly implied to be a human from Earth’s future rather than any sort of alien, because such continuity details either had yet to be solidified on-screen or were simply not a concern for the BBC editorial team at that point.

On their own merits, the tales are all fine but somewhat unremarkable. I’m at a loss as to why these particular titles have been selected for a new life in 2024, although the cynical part of me notes that none of the original authors are known and wonders if that played a role in their curation, to minimize the payout of royalties. The audiobook features the voice talents of actors from across the classic and modern eras of the show as well as the licensed Big Finish spinoffs, which I suppose is a further draw. But overall, this is a pretty insignificant and forgettable collection.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard

Book #72 of 2024:

The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard (Lays of the Hearth-Fire #1)

This is currently my very favorite book, which I’ve now read twice in as many years. What follows is an updated version of my original review:

The Hands of the Emperor is a wonderful warm hug of a novel, rich in characterization and gentle affirmation of community trust. It’s rare for a 900-page fantasy tome to feel so cozy, let alone to forgo any significant romance or acts of violence throughout its duration. But this self-published 2019 work is remarkable in any number of ways, each more endearingly quaint than the last. I am honestly not even sure that I would say it has a plot, although events do gradually unfold in support of the central character arc: a quietly effective middle-aged civil servant belatedly earning (or realizing he already has) the love and admiration of his colleagues, his far-off relatives, and his boss.

It’s an incredibly slow unveiling. Cliopher Mdang, private secretary to the ruler of the entire world, spends the first quarter of the text escorting his liege on an incognito holiday, the result of a breach-of-protocol invitation blurted out upon a stroke of insight about how lonely the other man must be in his peerless existence under elaborate courtly taboos, unable to be touched or looked directly in the eye. The two have known each other for decades — or possibly even millennia, as time has fractured in the cataclysmic backstory and now passes slower in some parts of the realm than others — but their relationship has previously only ever been professional. We essentially get to meet His Radiancy the individual as Kip does, whilst simultaneously getting a feel for the viewpoint protagonist himself and the dazzlingly intricate worldbuilding details that author Victoria Goddard has devised for the various cultures of the setting.

The tone here is something like The Goblin Emperor crossed with The West Wing. Or the musical Hamilton, if it weren’t a tragedy and showed its title figure as more in touch with his island origins like Disney’s Moana. It turns out that in his rise through the levels of government, our hero has been subtly reworking that system, pushing for law and policy changes that will contribute to a more equitable society. Inspired by his distant egalitarian homeland, he’s rooted out corruption, instituted a universal basic income, improved the postal and transportation services, and implemented countless further such ideas that in an aggregation of incremental steps have functionally revolutionized the empire. It’s a rejection of grimdark cynicism, a hopepunk ode to the fundamental principle of good governance’s ability to help people, and it’s absolutely riveting to see in action, especially once its unassuming architect starts being openly acknowledged and rewarded for it.

This is also a story about cultural conflicts: about coming from a small backwater province to the capital of the known universe and facing misunderstanding and scorn for the customs of home. About keeping those folkways kindled inside as a guiding beacon, and ultimately proving that oral traditions are not primitive but lavish and meaningful and preserved over generations as a powerful representation of identity. About finding a way to make Kip’s family understand why he left and everything he’s accomplished in the wider civilization, and about his personal journey to realize how he needs to be a better advocate for himself in their eyes.

Above all, I would say that this is a book about being seen and accepted and loved for who you are. The evolving dynamic between Cliopher and the Last Emperor is not romantic — and I’ve heard that in the sequel, the diligent bureaucrat is more explicitly characterized as asexual — but it is deeply intimate and a model of trusting fealty as the lord and his loyal aide come to reveal more and more of themselves to one another. The meaning of the title is twofold: Kip both serves as the metaphorical hands of the Emperor in interpreting and enacting his will across the kingdom and yearns to be able to grasp His Radiancy’s actual hands in friendship. The catharsis of when he finally does, along with several other key moments in the long path there, is emotional and soothing and genuinely heartfelt. Adults being competent at their jobs and earnestly decent to the fellow souls in their lives! Is that what people mean when they describe genre fiction as wish-fulfillment?

There is some periodic darkness, on the margins. The trauma of the Fall that most characters lived through continues to affect them, and the protagonist feels intense isolation and survivor’s guilt that has to be carefully unpacked and confronted, with the occasional panic attack along the way. The possibility of suicide is raised obliquely in passing, and we learn that his former superiors used to torture their political enemies, in the old days before his reforms. One minor character comes from a tribe that engages in sacred ritualistic cannibalism, while another gets casually deadnamed at first mention, although there’s no indication of any transphobia that would give that act the same violent impact it carries in our world. (“Clia was [__] originally, but she changed her name when she was of age to declare herself a woman.”) I raise these issues to respect reader sensitivities, but in general, I’d say that they only cause the pervasive spirit of humanitarian acceptance that powers the novel to stand out more clearly.

This was my initial introduction to both Goddard as a writer and her broader Nine Worlds saga, and having subsequently now read eleven of the other titles in that continuity before circling back around to this one — everything but At the Feet of the Sun and the Greenwing and Dart, Tales from Ysthar, and The Red Company Reformed subseries — I still think it’s probably the best entry point for newcomers. The rest have generally been great as well, though, and they’ve definitely added delightful further background context for me on this reread. Like Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, the Nine Worlds series is less of a single unfolding narrative and more of a loose configuration of smaller contained stories that’s forgiving of practically any reading order but builds in enjoyment the deeper you go and the more connections you start to spot. Nevertheless, my personal recommendation would be to begin right here, with a thoughtful islander striking up an unprecedented conversation with his lord.

★★★★★

Book Review: Those Beyond the Wall by Micaiah Johnson

Book #71 of 2024:

Those Beyond the Wall by Micaiah Johnson (The Space Between Worlds #2)

Not quite on the jaw-dropping level of its predecessor, which juggled an action-packed plot across multiple parallel worlds with ease, but still an excellent bit of science-fiction in its own right. We’ve shifted protagonists for this sequel, following a genderfluid servant of the warlord emperor on one particular planet (introduced as a supporting character before) as they face incursions from yet another dimension. Previously, the technology that enabled such multiversal travel required one’s doppelgänger in the destination plane to be dead in order to function, with the traveler essentially filling the void upon arrival. This new antagonist civilization, however, has devised a means to kill off the duplicate as part of that process, resulting in a string of violent deaths and lookalike enemy agents hiding the evidence to infiltrate the hero’s society.

It’s a largely character-driven story, made up of a cast of marginalized people processing their respective traumas in ways that aren’t necessarily always the healthiest. As they negotiate existing class tensions in their dystopian desert community alongside the newer existential threat from the outsiders, they inevitably hurt and betray one another in escalating fashion as the crisis worsens. The result is an angry and often uncomfortable read, especially for how it reframes and casts doubt on some of what we thought we knew from the previous novel — certain negatives turned to positives in the eyes of the different narrator, for instance, and the former heroine’s idealism viewed far more cynically. (Both books do stand alone fairly well, but obviously you’d be missing a lot of background context if you jumped into the series here.) Luckily author Micaiah Johnson is as sharp as ever, and while there’s little of the Mad Max spectacle that the setting perhaps deserves, the work nevertheless crackles with a desperate and furious energy.

[Content warning for racism, misgendering, police brutality, torture, body horror, domestic abuse, suicide, and gore.]

★★★★☆

TV Review: Star Wars: The Bad Batch, season 3

TV #18 of 2024:

Star Wars: The Bad Batch, season 3

A satisfactory enough conclusion to this corner of the Star Wars franchise, but not one that really pushes the titular characters anywhere exciting. Mostly, the season seems built to lay plausible retroactive groundwork for the infamous “Somehow Palpatine survived” line from the movie The Rise of Skywalker — though the finale hilariously does pull back from that and never explicitly confirms that the ‘Project Necromancer’ research with its suggestive name and interest in clone DNA was aimed at ultimately resurrecting the Emperor. Instead, it just turns out to be an arbitrary stumbling block in the plot to get the protagonists locked up, escaping, captured again, and so on throughout this final year.

At its best, this series managed to fill in some interesting worldbuilding gaps about the galaxy’s transition into the early empire, but that’s a function that’s had diminishing returns across its run, as have the personal arcs of its various heroes. I can’t say that the show overstayed its welcome, and the episodic stories have generally continued to deliver the requisite thrills, but it’s drifted pretty far from appointment viewing even for diehard fans.

[Content warning for gun violence.]

This season: ★★★☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Seasons ranked: 1 > 2 > 3

Book Review: Book of Time by John Peel

Book #70 of 2024:

Book of Time by John Peel (Diadem #11)

The middle-grade / YA Diadem line was released in waves under a succession of publishers: first Scholastic for the original six novels from 1997 to 1998, then Llewellyn (who gave the saga a temporary new subtitle of “Worlds of Magic”) for the next four from 2005 to 2006. I don’t know what went on behind the scenes either time, but the final sprint saw author John Peel self-publish two additional installments in 2012 as a single bound volume, which I have to imagine was intended to wrap everything up.

…and it’s unfortunately not very good, at least in this front half. The bones of a story are here in #11, but it’s really only a promising rough draft at best. An editor was sorely needed: for the many typos and awkward phrasings that riddle the text, for the inconsistent tone to the previous adventures, and for all the basic scene and plot mechanics that are confusingly presented herein.

It’s a shame, because this is the sort of premise that should be an easy layup for a seasoned writer so deep into an ongoing serialized project. We pick up a few dangling threads from before, with a shadowy foe scheming in the wings and Score reeling from the revelation that Shanara — spoiler alert — is his long-lost mother from his girlfriend Helaine’s homeworld. The antagonist is revealed to be an agent of Destiny, whose consciousness somehow survived her mortal fate back in book #6 and is understandably now bent on revenge against the heroes, while the earth boy is angry about all the lies and demanding that his duplicitous parent explain herself. Yet when she tries to summon a vision to do just that, the villains twist the spell to send the party hurtling back in time to the Diadem’s ancient past.

Pixel, Jenna, and Shanara find themselves at the height of the Triad’s power from the initial series backstory, when the tyrants’ servant Sarman had yet to betray and overthrow them to seize the mantle on Jewel for himself. The Three Who Rule are cruel torturers, as we see firsthand when they create the incorporeal Oracle from the shade of a man that they just slaughtered and wish to continue abusing. But the future visitors worry that if they do anything to intervene in such atrocities, they’ll disrupt the proper flow of history and perhaps paradoxically prevent their own births. Meanwhile, Score and Helaine have arrived centuries earlier on Ordin, where they learn that Traxis and Sarman were both members of the royal family as well (Queen Shanara’s brother-in-law and his cousin, respectively) before they ever set their sights on conquering the wider Diadem. The testy lovebirds likewise cannot alter the course of known events, which makes for a somewhat flat narrative even if it didn’t end on a cliffhanger with so much unresolved.

Most of this could have worked, with a little polish. Take out Score’s anxiety that people will think he’s gay for kissing Helaine-dressed-as-Renald, the totally unnecessary use of the r-slur, and Jenna’s sudden insecure cattiness; clean up the action so that it reads more clearly; give the protagonists actual accomplishments and meaningful obstacles to overcome instead of reducing them to passive witnesses… These are the kinds of things I might have suggested to raise this sequel to the level of its predecessors, if I had been the one tasked with editing such a flawed manuscript. Too bad nobody else seems to have gotten the gig, either.

★★☆☆☆

TV Review: Star Trek: Lower Decks, season 3

TV #17 of 2024:

Star Trek: Lower Decks, season 3

This season starts out a little slowly, but it certainly hits its stride again by the end, with the episode set on Deep Space Nine and the one with the unexpected return of wayward ensign Peanut Hamper as particular formula-breaking standouts. At its best — and a lot of this run is up there! — the animated Star Trek comedy is both telling lovingly esoteric jokes about the franchise lore and spinning engaging new stories to further develop its characters. At this point, the crew of the Cerritos (the titular bottom ranks and the bridge officers alike) have been through so many adventures together that the ship’s initial characterization as a place for perpetual second-stringers doing all the boring work no longer really makes sense, so it’s good to see the show / the other people in Starfleet recognizing that and shifting the framing accordingly.

(Would I still watch a series that was legitimately about the unsung menial side of life in Trek’s version of the future? Absolutely. But it’s also great for these heroes to actually get treated as such while they continue to riff on the absurdities of the science-fiction universe around them.)

★★★★☆

Book Review: The Bronzed Beasts by Roshani Chokshi

Book #69 of 2024:

The Bronzed Beasts by Roshani Chokshi (The Gilded Wolves #3)

This is the seventh book I’ve read from YA author Roshani Chokshi, and while I’m glad I finally got around to finishing this particular trilogy, I think this is where I part ways with the writer for good, as her style has unfortunately just never really clicked for me. I joked that the first volume in this series felt like thinly-disguised Six of Crows fanfiction in a National Treasure AU, and those parallels have remained throughout the sequels, without ever blossoming into anything more distinctive. The comparison does a disservice to Leigh Bardugo’s Crows, however, who are generally much richer-drawn as characters and placed within more interesting and challenging plots and fantasy settings.

The storyline here is largely a repeat of what’s happened already, including an absurd degree of continued mutual pining between protagonists who obviously like each other and don’t have any excuse not to talk about their feelings. The only meaningful new wrinkle is that one specific individual spends the beginning of the novel away from his friends who believe he’s betrayed them, which is merely non-romantic angst built on further miscommunication. And there are the requisite puzzles and clues that some ancient benefactors have helpfully laid out to help guide the heroes to their latest macguffin, of course.

On the whole, the Gilded Wolves sequence isn’t terrible, especially for readers who may not have read widely in its genre quite yet. The cast is cross-culturally diverse (though somewhat tokenized), and the affectionate banter among the juvenile grave-robbing heist crew is fun, at least when the resident historian isn’t explaining rudimentary concepts like scapegoats or the myth of Icarus. But this title is the clear worst of its lot, even before its unsatisfying nonsequitur of an ending that does nothing to clarify the lingering vagueness of the historical fiction worldbuilding. I can’t bring myself to give it even the middle-of-the-road three-star rating that I’ve awarded to every Chokshi book before this.

[Content warning for gore.]

This volume: ★★☆☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Volumes ranked: 1 > 2 > 3

TV Review: American Gods, season 2

TV #16 of 2024:

American Gods, season 2

I’m finally circling back around to this show almost six years after I saw season one, so my memory of it isn’t necessarily the clearest. (Luckily, I reread the original Neil Gaiman novel so many times as a theology-obsessed teenager that it’s burned pretty strongly into my mind.) I do remember being initially upset with how much had been altered from the book, but gradually won over across that first year by the striking visuals and the greater characterization given to the protagonist Shadow Moon. I also really appreciated the new character pairing of Laura and Mad Sweeney, each more prominent than they were on the page and absolutely dynamite now together, while being not quite as taken with the same expansion of Salim and the Jinn or Bilquis, who mostly use their increased screentime to just stand around talking.

Between seasons, the showrunner changed and at least one high-profile cast member departed amid reports of a troubled set (Gillian Anderson as Media), which is one reason I didn’t make it a priority to keep watching. Now that I have, I’d agree with the general consensus that this sophomore outing represents an unfortunate step down for the series. Periodic moments are tremendous at channeling the basic premise here — human belief through storytelling creates and empowers supernatural beings who struggle once it falters, although some of them manage to redefine themselves to survive in the modern world — and Laura and Sweeney remain fun, but the larger plot stalls out to a considerable degree. Wednesday is still traveling the country recruiting the old gods to join his cause for a war against the new ones, but he doesn’t make any particular tangible progress on that front, and his enemies like Mr. World aren’t especially well-defined in their own goals either, leading to a lot of ominous-sounding scenes on both sides that don’t ever amount to anything real. It’s become a show that’s fairly uneven overall, though the better elements continue to impress.

Now that I’m relatively back on board, I’ll go ahead and watch the last season too, since it’s only ten more episodes and I do want to see how this program handles the Lakeside subplot (in the red-flag hands of yet another new showrunner). I don’t imagine events will reach the end of the source material, as I know a fourth season was being planned when the thing got canceled, so I’m not exactly expecting a satisfying conclusion to all this. But a little more time with these characters is justification enough to push on, I suppose.

[Content warning for gun violence, torture, body horror, suicide, gore, homophobia, and racism including slurs.]

★★★☆☆

TV Review: Seinfeld, season 6

TV #15 of 2024:

Seinfeld, season 6

I don’t know if this qualifies as a hot take nearly three decades after the fact, but I personally think that Seinfeld is a stronger, funnier, and more distinctive sitcom when it leans away from its instincts for wacky zaniness and into the pedantically mundane (the opposing Kramer and Jerry poles of the show’s DNA, if you will). That’s why my favorite episodes tend to be the ones where the characters are just talking with each other over the inherent absurdities of life, like a long wait to be seated at a restaurant or a parking garage where no one can remember where they left the car.

Unfortunately, the series is too often veering to the opposite extreme at this point in its span, devising outlandish scenarios that could never remotely happen to anyone watching in the audience at home. Back in season 4, George gets called out for the gross behavior of double-dipping a chip into a shared salsa dish between bites, and a lively conversation ensues about the appropriateness of that. Relatable! Two years further on, a comparable plot now has him rescuing someone else’s half-eaten food from the garbage to finish it himself, which presumably fewer of us have ever considered.

Season 6 also finds new jobs for both George and Elaine that are not particularly interesting. He got the position with the Yankees that he interviewed for in the previous finale, despite how such a bumbling schlemiel type is always more comedic in his failures, and it mostly seems like an excuse for cameos and references that mean nothing to me as a non-fan so far removed from the players’ heyday. I don’t really get the intended humor of his rambling offscreen boss voiced by Larry David, either. Meanwhile, Elaine’s career has taken a complete 180 from her previously grounded work in the publishing business, and she randomly becomes an overqualified personal assistant to Mr. Pitt, a man who’s more of a loose bundle of eccentricities than a consistently-defined character. I’m having flashbacks to the later seasons of Dawson’s Creek, when the writers couldn’t figure out what to do with Pacey once he was out of high school and so kept throwing him into one bizarre employment situation after another with basically no justification at all.

Is it funny? Sure, for the most part. The episode “The Jimmy” has definitely aged the worst, featuring both a running joke about Kramer being mistaken for someone with a mental disability and the suggestion that Jerry’s dentist — played by Bryan Cranston in another new recurring role — may have sexually assaulted him while he was knocked out by nitrous oxide. It’s hard to muster any kind of defense for stories like that, and thankfully most of the rest in this era aren’t quite so awful, especially with all the fun callbacks that are starting to pile up. Still, even at its best, this season isn’t really playing to the program’s particular strengths.

★★★☆☆