The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Nemesis by Agatha Christie

Book #52 of 2024:

Nemesis by Agatha Christie (Miss Marple #12)

This 1971 title was the last Miss Marple novel that author Agatha Christie ever wrote, although Sleeping Murder, published posthumously in 1976, was the final entry in the series to be released. It functions as a fairly direct sequel to #9 A Caribbean Mystery, featuring the quasi-return of its major supporting character Jason Rafiel. That qualifier is because he’s dead at the start of this one — but remembering how he and Jane Marple previously collaborated as amateur detectives, he has left behind a request in his will for her to now turn her investigative attentions to a certain delicate issue. You don’t necessarily have to have read the earlier volume, as there are no relevant clues to be found there, but the extra background context and impression of light continuity are both nice if you have.

The worst thing about this story is that the exact nature and specifics of the immediate case remain vague for far too long. The old spinster eventually puzzles out what her deceased associate wanted her to look into, but the text never really justifies why he couldn’t spell it out for her or discuss it while he was still alive (or even whether he already had a suspect in mind). He’s certainly made all sorts of other arrangements to help her on her way: letters sent, tickets purchased, lodging reserved, assistants recruited, and so on. But for some reason, his instructions don’t just come out and tell her about the crime(s) she’s supposed to investigate, and the book is a little tedious before she’s solved that initial mystery and can focus in on the real one.

Once we get to the heart of the matter, it’s classic Christie for better and worse. The social commentary complaining about young people is dreadful. There’s rape apologia, homophobia, and an implausible homicide-by-falling-boulder, but also a few genuinely clever twists and a fun confrontation with the ultimate villain of the piece. The protagonist and her writer are each sharp as ever, despite their respective advanced ages (Dame Agatha being 81 at this point and Marple having somehow remained perpetually elderly across the four decades since her first appearance). It’s definitely not a high watermark or meaningful sendoff for the character, but it’s not the clunker that it could have been, either.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Book of Oceans by John Peel

Book #51 of 2024:

Book of Oceans by John Peel (Diadem: Worlds of Magic #8)

Unfortunately the weakest Diadem title yet. This next sequel finds Pixel’s new girlfriend Jenna still squabbling with Helaine, despite six months having passed since they left their homeworld’s rigid class system behind them at the end of the previous volume. Oracle recommends a vacation to Brine, a world largely covered with water, but neglects to tell the teen wizards about the rash of recent pirate attacks its residents have been experiencing. Later he admits to their other adult friend Shanara that he’s terrified the kids are going to grow up to be as cruel as the Triad whose powers they inherited, and so has set them a challenge that will confront them with true wickedness: “Their discovery of further evil in the Diadem will cement their determination to fight it, not to succumb to it. If they fight evil in others, they will not allow it in themselves.”

It’s a bit too abstract of a concept to land well, although we learn in the same scene that Shanara has an intriguing secret history with the Three Who Rule(d) that she doesn’t want the heroes to discover. Mostly, though, the premise is just an excuse for some swashbuckling adventure that ultimately does bring the girls closer together. Helaine and Score’s own budding relationship is a relatively strong factor, as it has been for the past few stories, but it’s disappointing how author John Peel twice has them blithely torture a captive prisoner for information. (These books are on the younger side of YA in tone, so the pirates each give up and start talking after the first cut to their neck/face. But still! I feel rather firmly that good guys shouldn’t be doing / threatening that at all, or at least not without considerably more nuance than this. If their actions somehow tied back to Oracle’s fears that the protagonists have the capacity for darkness in them, that could be an interesting plot point and character note, I suppose. But as written, it doesn’t seem like Peel thinks the torturing is over the line — or is aware that it could result in false confessions, as it’s known to do in real life. This novel was published in 2005 during the height of the George W. Bush administration and the popularity of the show 24, and it’s hard not to wonder how much of that atmosphere was subconsciously sinking into his writing.)

There’s an unfortunate vein of misogyny running through the text too, in the form of Score regularly wishing that the girls would wear bikinis for him and Pixel. The topic of different modesty norms between Earth and Ordin was handled pretty well in books 5 and 7, but here, he just comes off as skeevy. The worst part is that the ending basically validates his lechery, with Helaine agreeing to do it because, “Score has behaved exceptionally, and I think I owe him some enjoyment.” It feels gross and wildly out-of-character for her, even given her steady softening towards the boy.

The fantasy worldbuilding for the new setting is fine, but nothing special. I don’t know that the villains ever appear as monstrous as their reputation — though there’s an as-yet-unrevealed magic-user behind their scheme — but they do take slaves, beat them with lashes, and work them to death, so their eventual downfall registers as a proper victory. Overall, however, this is definitely a bit of a filler installment for the series, mainly notable simply for the frustrating elements I described above.

★★☆☆☆

Book Review: Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra

Book #50 of 2024:

Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra

This 2024 thriller reads like vintage Stephen King — I’m thinking specifically of books like Cujo or Misery or Gerald’s Game — for placing a protagonist in a simple untenable situation and watching them frantically scramble for a way to escape. In such a work, the space is confined and the action internal for the most part, but the terror is no less real for those constraints upon the story. Here, a single mother is heading back to bed after settling her five-year-old from a nightmare when she hears a creaky floorboard from across the house. Realizing that someone must have broken in, she has just enough time to wake the little boy and his sister and lead them into a secret crawlspace to hide. The glimpses they see of the intruder through the vent are terrifying: the manager at a local restaurant who had made the woman uncomfortable for how he touched and looked at her eight-year-old daughter, now prowling their home wearing gloves but no mask (implying that he doesn’t want to be caught but isn’t afraid of their recognizing him, which doesn’t bode well for their chances of surviving the encounter).

And of course, he’s stolen her cell phone from its charger, the nearest neighbors are a half-mile away, and he’s planned his arrival for the night before a long holiday break. No one is expecting to hear from the family for days, and none of them are dressed for the blizzard conditions outside, further hampering an easy exit beyond the inherent logistics of sneaking away unnoticed with two small kids in tow.

As new author Tracy Sierra spins out that plot, we also learn more about the heroine’s backstory — much of which isn’t immediately relevant to the crisis at hand, but at least helps to strengthen her characterization and explain why she’s so paralyzed with the conviction that she’s powerless. (When this novel gets its inevitable film treatment, that’s the element I expect will rightfully get dropped in adaptation. I don’t feel like we benefit from keeping her husband’s absence in the present as a mystery for so long, for instance.)

Mostly, though, we are right there in the moment with the nameless woman, experiencing the same nervous suspense as she tries to both keep the children quiet and rack her brains for a solution to the threat before them. Even after they narrowly escape about halfway through the book, she finds she is unable to convince the police that the danger was real. The man left no evidence behind — he doesn’t appear to have even worked at the place where she met him — and her injuries leave her confused and apparently misremembering key details, though certain he’s going to return to finish the job. Was the whole event all in her mind? She’s had previous mental health issues, so did she hurt the kids herself during a psychotic break? Or do the strange inconsistencies in her story mean that the assailant was stalking the house well in advance of that evening, moving things around to gaslight her for his own amusement while everyone slept?

Given the genre, I hope it’s not too much of a spoiler to confirm that she’s right and the villain really does exist. What emerges is a thrillingly vindicating tale of female empowerment for a character who’s had her complaints of unease brushed aside by various patronizing men all her life, along with the troubling implication that she herself has dismissed her children’s valid worries and observations in turn. It’s altogether a great read, although one wonders if the true-crime addicts out there will take it as justification for their own statistically-unlikely fears of victimization from such a predator. Regardless, as a work of fiction divorced from any broader societal implications, it’s a strong debut that already has me eagerly awaiting the writer’s next release.

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

★★★★☆

TV Review: Star Trek: Picard, season 2

TV #11 of 2024:

Star Trek: Picard, season 2

Not great, but a noticeable step up from the blandly underwritten chaos of this modern Star Trek show’s first season. Picard’s old superpowered tormentor Q is as maddeningly inscrutable as ever, but bringing him into play as the new big bad for the year is a solid choice, as is the plot that strands the protagonist and his friends in 2024 after some initial shaky setup to get there. (The whole first episode is spent basically just reminding us who these people are and throwing them up against the latest Borg queen, after which Q arrives to shunt them into a dystopian parallel timeline for no clear reason. They and the alien enemy then find a way to travel back in time to the point where this reality diverged from the correct one and set about trying to fix it.)

Visiting the past to preserve the proper flow of history is a premise that this franchise has gone to before, but generally in the span of a single movie or an episode or two, not an entire season of television. The storyline drags a bit when stretched out that far, although a conflict with contemporary ICE and an appearance from young Guinan are standout developments. Rather less successful, unfortunately, are the arcs of Jurati’s infestation by the Borg, another Soong’s mad science ventures, and another Soji lookalike’s discovery of her secret origins.

As that last sentence might indicate, the biggest problem here is the cast. Although this title feels pitched to be a direct sequel to Jean-Luc’s original show The Next Generation, the only fellow established characters in his ragtag crew last season were Seven of Nine — who came from an entirely different series and had never before met Picard on-screen — and Data, along with cameo appearances from Riker and Troi. I didn’t mind the newcomers for the most part, but their journey together reached a logical endpoint in that first finale, which is why this follow-up season has to struggle so hard to reunite them. Even those characters that the writers fail to justify bringing back inevitably appear again anyway, with their actors playing distant ancestors, holograms, hallucinations, and the like. It’s a poor creative impulse that indicates how the production team probably never even stopped to consider which elements worked well and which ones didn’t when breaking the new story.

(Seven is surprisingly strong on this program, despite her lack of any prior relationship with Picard! A version of this season that kept the two of them and jettisoned the rest of the returning cast could have been a lot more fruitful. There’s no reason that the Picard show has to automatically be the Agnes and Elnor show as well, you know?)

The other big new idea that this string of episodes raises is that the Starfleet admiral is haunted by something from his childhood, which initially seems like domestic abuse but turns out to be his mother’s mental health struggles and eventual suicide. It’s the kind of backstory addition that’s a little odd to introduce on the character’s ninth season of television, and I wish it wasn’t framed as such a mystery / gotcha, but it’s overall a reasonable approach for a series that’s ostensibly built around its elderly lead figure looking back on the legacy of his life. It’s just sort of an odd match for the whiz-bang Q/Borg/time-travel action that otherwise dominates the plot.

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

★★★☆☆

Book Review: The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

Book #49 of 2024:

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

A brutal piece of historical fiction about an abused servant girl in colonial Virginia who flees that famine-struck settlement into the nearby woods. Author Lauren Groff’s prose is as wickedly sharp as ever, and she pulls no punches in describing both the natural and human horrors of her nameless protagonist’s young life. There’s extreme gore and repeated sexual assault or threat thereof, not to mention an overall atmosphere steeped in sexism, racism, ableism, and any other -ism you can imagine for how seventeenth-century British society viewed deviance from its perceived norms. That environment is explored via flashbacks, while the heroine’s ordeal in the present constitutes an even more harrowing wilderness survival tale. The book contains an element of magical realism as well, with the animals and spirits of the forest seeming to come alive and aware around her, although the character is suffering from such fever, concussion, and further woes at that point that she’s not necessarily perceiving her surroundings objectively.

It’s a quick enough novel, and definitely won’t be to every reader’s taste. It depicts a ragged sort of existence that is, to borrow a phrase, rather nasty, brutish, and short. But I’m pleasantly reminded of Stephen King’s lost-in-the-woods story The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, which I remember enjoying several decades ago (and should probably reread now after this), and I can honestly say it’s my favorite title from this writer yet.

★★★★☆

TV Review: Seinfeld, season 5

TV #10 of 2024:

Seinfeld, season 5

This season of Seinfeld doesn’t have a major arc like the meta show-within-a-show factor of the previous year, but it’s nevertheless a strong run of episodes made distinctive by the development of George moving back in with his parents, which allows for new kinds of story premises and more hilarious appearances from the two older Costanzas. Even outside of direct plot serialization, the sitcom is also experimenting more with callbacks that reward a loyal audience, such as when the ultimate punchline in 5×15 The Pie involves cutting away to a character from 5×10 The Cigar Store Indian, with no additional context for viewers who missed that one. (There’s a fun running thread involving Kramer writing a coffee table book about coffee tables, too.) With moves like that, coupled with the overall quality of the comedy scripting, it’s no wonder that this series gained such a cult following. I’m really starting to understand how the program inspired certain successors in the genre like Arrested Development.

A few big pop culture moments associated with the show are present in this season as well, from “shrinkage” in 5×21 The Hamptons to Judge Reinhold’s “close talker” in 5×18-19 The Raincoats — bits like the still-upcoming soup nazi or Festivus that everyone always references whenever discussing Seinfeld. Luckily, those elements are no less funny to finally see in their original context, even if you’ve been hearing people talk about them for seemingly all of your life.

[Content warning for racism, stalking, and domestic abuse, all minor but basically played for laughs. The 90s!]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Terec and the Wild by Victoria Goddard

Book #48 of 2024:

Terec and the Wild by Victoria Goddard

For most people within the boundaries of Astandalas, the magic that flows out of their ruler to knit the empire together is either unnoticed or experienced like a gentle balm. A select few with their own strong powers chafe against it, however, and for young Terec, that manifests in feelings of intense discomfort and an inner fire that threatens to spill out if/when his control should ever falter. Aghast at waking up with singed bedsheets each morning and terrified of what further damage he might cause, the teenager flees for the nearest border without telling his family or his best-friend-turned-lover Conju (whose tale continues in The Game of Courts and, much later, The Hands of the Emperor).

And that’s basically it, as far as the plot of this novella is concerned. It’s primarily a character study, and like many of author Victoria Goddard’s more peripheral Nine Worlds stories, it ends without particular climax or resolution to its affairs, although an afterword indicates that additional installments with Terec will be coming at some point. I especially wish that this one could have devoted more time to its aforementioned queer relationship — which the adult Conju lingers over poignantly in his memories — instead of relegating that romantic interest to backstory exposition and a breakup letter that the protagonist sends once he’s on the road.

I do like the early scene where the hero’s father knows his son is leaving but can’t bear to openly acknowledge it, and the general tone of the piece is well-crafted in a slightly-mournful spin on low-stakes cozy fantasy. But overall, it hasn’t added much to my enjoyment or understanding of this saga and its characters.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson

Book #47 of 2024:

The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson

[Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with this author.]

I’ve read most of author Brandon Sanderson’s published writing, and this Hugo Award-winning fantasy novella from 2012 remains my absolute favorite, a title I’ve returned to and reread on multiple occasions (both as a standalone feature and as part of the Arcanum Unbounded collection). His pet themes are all here: inventive magical systems explained cogently and brought to life with ingenious exploits of the underlying rules, aspirational models of effective leadership, twisty heists pulled off with expert precision, and more. There’s even mention of the tripartite split across the Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual Realms, a theoretical framework that underpins and loosely connects the writer’s various Cosmere stories (though you don’t have to read any of the others first, or even realize that this one is set on the same world as his novel Elantris). All of that in a slim volume of only 167 pages in my paperback copy.

The distinctive Chinese- and Korean-inspired worldbuilding elements are fun too, but it’s the characters who really make this work shine. We start from the irresistible premise of a con artist given a reprieve from her imminent death penalty in order to assist her captors with a secret task, which turns out to involve healing the empire’s ruler from a head injury that’s left him catatonic. Privately she doesn’t think it can be done at all, let alone in the hundred days she’s been granted, but she gambles that playing along will hopefully give her enough time to plot an escape. As she outwardly complies and talks more with the grandfatherly man overseeing the assignment, however, she reluctantly starts to believe in the good that could come of their project if she could somehow manage to pull off a miracle. Simultaneously, he and the reader are learning more about the prisoner and her art, which is far deeper and more philosophically-minded than the simple process of forgery it initially seems.

In essence, Shai’s hand-carved stamps rewrite the history of the person or object that they mark, for instance convincing a shattered window that it’s instead been lovingly maintained or persuading manacle chains that they contain a flawed link that will break the next time they get struck. The blueprint must be plausibly near enough to an observer’s recognized reality for the change to take hold, so if she’s to produce one that will restore the fallen emperor, she needs to know all she can about him to essentially recreate his entire personality from scratch. It’s a sorcery that the imperial advisors consider to be the utmost heresy, though they’re desperate (and hypocritical) enough to employ her services regardless.

What unfolds from there is a deeply humane tale, about as cozy as the genre can get with a looming execution date hanging over the protagonist’s head. It asks profound questions about art and human intention, and it shows how honest individuals who passionately disagree can slowly find a way to see things from the other’s perspective. Perhaps most importantly, it’s a book that believes wholeheartedly in people’s ability to surpass their limits, rise to a challenge, and ultimately prove better than they ever were before — to become the version of themselves that’s needed to meet the present moment. I’m moved anew by its powerful ending, as I find that I am each time.

★★★★★

Book Review: Doctor Who: The Giggle by James Goss

Book #46 of 2024:

Doctor Who: The Giggle by James Goss

This. THIS is what I’ve been hoping for from these recent Doctor Who novelizations, a winking adaptation that elevates its source material into something even madder and ever more brilliant. Don’t get me wrong: this James Goss novel obviously owes its existence to the original Russell T. Davies script, and there are elements of the TV special that can’t be captured well outside of that medium, from the visual effects and a certain memorable dance number to guest star Neil Patrick Harris’s intentionally broad accent work (though the audiobook narrator Dan Starkey does his best to channel that). I wouldn’t recommend it as a substitute for actually watching the episode, if any potential reader out there were remotely considering that approach. But it is a lovely way to revisit the story and find a new spin on its events, beginning with the author’s audacious choice to write everything from the perspective of the omniscient villain the Toymaker.

As he relates this adventure, the antagonistic creature from beyond our reality regularly breaks the fourth wall, offers wittily snide remarks about his opponents, and just generally seems to be having a great time. It’s in line with the overall manic energy of the piece — which finds the character wreaking havoc across contemporary earth by means of a signal he planted back in the first television broadcast in 1925 and culminates in the Time Lord hero ‘bi-generating’ into David Tennant and Ncuti Gatwa alike, with the outgoing and incoming Doctors teaming up to defeat their common foe — and is packed with all manner of delightful turns of phrasing. We even get a few bonus scenes and flashback memories, which neither Gary Russell’s version of The Star Beast nor Mark Morris’s take on Wild Blue Yonder found much room for. All in all, a true triumph of its form.

[Content warning for gun violence and racism.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Book of War by John Peel

Book #45 of 2024:

Book of War by John Peel (Diadem: Worlds of Magic #7)

The Diadem series had its ups and downs, but when it ended its initial six-book run with Scholastic in 1998, there weren’t really any major lingering plot threads that made its continuation seem likely or at all necessary from a creative standpoint. Surprisingly, the sequence did later get revived by the publisher Llewellyn, with reprints of the original stories and the release of four subsequent sequels, beginning with this one in 2005 (all under the new series subtitle, Worlds of Magic).

The primary task of this volume, then, is to justify its own existence and convince readers that the basic premise of the franchise still has legs. It’s also an opportunity for author John Peel to flex his talents, showing both how he’s grown as a writer in the years away and how he was probably constrained by his previous editors. Thus, although it’s not especially evident how much time has elapsed since we met our three returning protagonists, they feel like richer and more mature characters — perhaps in their mid-to-upper teens now, rather than the tweens they were to start. The tone of the narrative around them has also deepened, to the point where I’d classify this and the remaining novels as Young Adult fiction instead of middle-grade like what came before. (At long last, all the hokey puzzles and speech distortions are gone!) It’s a glow-up I love to see.

This installment finds the trio of magic-users journeying to Helaine’s homeworld, where we’re reminded that she left considerable unfinished business, including an arranged marriage betrothal, when she was first whisked away on her adventures. Although the feisty heroine has no intention of going through with the wedding, she regrets breaking her father’s agreement and opening him up to political fallout in the form of several rival lords now besieging his castle. A large part of the tale thus involves them mending that parent-child bond, with him eventually coming to respect and accept her as a warrior despite how it flies in the face of their medieval culture’s prescribed gender roles. This isn’t as strong an outing as Score’s return to Earth in Book 5 — among other issues, it’s bizarre that we don’t hear anything about the girl’s swordmaster Borigen, an even more important relationship in her original backstory — and the worldbuilding on Ordin isn’t particularly distinctive. But the character interactions are pretty worthwhile.

This title also introduces a new viewpoint protagonist Jenna, who soon joins the team with her healing powers. She’s the weakest element of the reboot so far in that she’s transparently here just to be a romantic interest for Pixel, with the two of them basically falling for each other at first sight, saying nice things while blushing a lot, and then kissing a few times. At least he’s finally over his old crush on Helaine, whose slow-burn mutual attraction with Score continues to develop nicely. I don’t have much patience for the stammering lovebirds in this book, but the others indicate why they work well as a couple despite all their bickering, as they continually push one another to improve their respective flaws. For Score, that’s his cowardice and rude manners; for Helaine, it’s her arrogance and the surprising degree of classism / racism she directs at Jenna for being a peasant. (The text describes the latter as having light brown skin, though the cover artist at Llewellyn doesn’t seem to have noticed.) Score and Helaine grow by holding each other accountable, and it makes their dynamic of trust feel real and gratifyingly earned throughout.

The teens ultimately resolve the military conflict in an ingenious way, and the conclusion opens up new questions about Score’s parentage as well as the role that Jenna will play in events moving forward, without ending on the sort of sudden random cliffhanger that Peel had sometimes employed in the past. Book of War isn’t a stone-cold classic by any means, but as a proof-of-concept for a series restart, it definitely gets its readers back on-board.

[Content warning for slavery, gore, and implied threat of sexual violence.]

★★★★☆