The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon

Book #169 of 2024:

Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon

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

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

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

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

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Clary Sage by Victoria Goddard

Book #168 of 2024:

Clary Sage by Victoria Goddard

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

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

★★★★☆

Book Review: The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop

Book #167 of 2024:

The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop

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

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

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

[Content warning for drug abuse and domestic abuse.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Voyage of the Damned by Frances White

Book #166 of 2024:

Voyage of the Damned by Frances White

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

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

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

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

★★★★☆

Book Review: Grief in the Fourth Dimension by Jennifer Yu

Book #165 of 2024:

Grief in the Fourth Dimension by Jennifer Yu

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

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

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

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

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

★★★☆☆

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

Book #164 of 2024:

Doctor Who: Rogue by Kate Herron and Briony Redman

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

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

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

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

★★★★☆

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

Book #163 of 2024:

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

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

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

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

[Content warning for gore and violence against children.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: After the Forest by Kell Woods

Book #162 of 2024:

After the Forest by Kell Woods

I like the idea of following up with Hansel and Gretel (sorry, “Hans” and “Greta”) as young adults, haunted by the trauma of what they experienced as children, but this fantasy novel spends a bit too long getting to the point, which then winds up focusing around a romance that never really interests me. It’s also an unfortunate example of a story whose characters aren’t as aware as the readers of what the genre is; although the heroine survived a witch’s attentions and still uses the spellbook she took from her to bake delicious gingerbread, she has a hard time drawing the fairly obvious conclusion that the mysterious strangers with animal pelts who have come to town right when an unnaturally-behaving bear and a pack of wolves are spotted nearby are in fact shapeshifters. (Hilariously, even after she learns the wolf-men’s secret, it takes her even longer to realize the similar truth about her werebear love interest.)

The ending of the book is better, especially for incorporating other fairy tales like Snow White and Rumpelstiltskin (as well as the quasi-mythical Countess Elizabeth Báthory as the ultimate villain), and I appreciate the protagonist’s arc of being tempted by the whispering tome towards darker and darker magic. But in the final analysis, that elusive special element that elevates a work from good to great just isn’t there for me in this one.

[Content warning for animal cruelty, ableism, rape, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

TV Review: ReBoot ReWind, season 1

TV #45 of 2024:

ReBoot ReWind, season 1

In honor of its 30th anniversary, this new eight-part documentary series is a neat look back at the 90s TV show ReBoot, which was the first cartoon to be made with entirely CGI graphics. Drawing on newly-restored footage and interviews with over 50 members of the old cast and crew, this deep-dive retrospective provides all sorts of fascinating inside information on that process, including the context for just how groundbreaking it was, which totally went over my head as a kid. The creators were basically inventing the technology from scratch, in the face of considerable skepticism from the industry that it could be done at such a scale with the available resources and time. Launching a year before Toy Story brought the new medium to the mainstream as the first all-CGI movie, ReBoot paved the way for much of the look and feel that’s commonplace in animation today.

For fans of the program or just anyone with an interest in how children’s television was made a few decades ago, it’s a fun watch. It’s also a pretty thorough overview, following the production team over the years and even talking about side ventures like the PlayStation game, the two motion simulator rides, and of course the tie-in toys and other merchandise.

It’s not wholly a rosy picture. There were squabbles with the networks and some working conditions that would likely raise an eyebrow from a 2024 perspective, like long hours of crunchtime before deadlines and a boys club office vibe that regularly held work meetings at the strip club down the block. But it’s also plain from everyone interviewed that the experience was a labor of love creating a product they’re still proud of, especially after the leap in storytelling quality midway through season 2.

The ending of the docuseries does feel somewhat truncated. The original showrunners all say they’d love to return to make more ReBoot someday if they ever got the intellectual property rights back from the current holder, but there’s no exploration of how they left the company / lost those rights in the first place, and no talk at all of the official webcomic continuation or the terrible half-live-action revival series ReBoot: The Guardian Code that aired in 2018 with none of their involvement (or the movie sequels that were announced and then canceled in the decade prior). Whether the interviewees realized it was more political to stay quiet about that or it just wasn’t a topic the documentarians thought relevant to include I’m not sure, but it adds a curiously unfinished note to the post-season 4 coverage of what otherwise seems like an exhaustive and definitive celebration of the franchise.

Regardless, I’ve enjoyed and would recommend this miniseries overall. You can find all 8 episodes at this YouTube playlist, here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmsFQF5CvPribGVmcSNRQGHmU33agz8BN

★★★★☆

Book Review: Out of Time by Chris Archer

Book #161 of 2024:

Out of Time by Chris Archer (Mindwarp #9)

A fun penultimate adventure for this middle-grade sci-fi series, and by this point, I’m positive that I never read this far into these books back in the 90s, so I’m excited to see how everything resolves. The six teenage heroes start this volume still stuck in the future dystopia, but they swiftly escape and embark on their mission to somehow rewrite history. The problem is they don’t really know how to do that, but they split into pairs to work on the various possibilities, which creates an energetic rush as the plot bounces around among them and allows for some spotlight uses of everyone’s special abilities.

One thread sends Ethan and Toni to the 1940s, where the girl’s brush with racism is handled pretty tactfully for the intended audience, with the text establishing rude glances and name-calling without actually putting her in danger of violent bigotry or spelling out exactly what she’s being called. Back in the present, Jack and Ashley wind up in a paranoid conspiracy thriller that fits well with the story’s roots, while Todd and Elena… okay, mostly just research at the library. But at least we finally learn what his power is, and get to see the rippling timequakes that happen from their friends changing things in the past.

It’s another quick read, especially with having to balance all those different developments, but it generally manages to juggle everything successfully, answer a few lingering questions, and set up the final installment rather nicely.

★★★★☆