The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

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.]

★★★★☆

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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.

★★★★☆

Book Review: The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid

Book #160 of 2024:

The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid

I might have liked this novel better if I hadn’t first heard about it on a list of #ownvoices Jewish-inspired fantasy works, which definitely set me up for disappointed expectations. Debut author Ava Reid does draw on some folkloric elements from her religious heritage, but she writes the protagonist of the story as a young woman in her mother’s pagan tribe who never knew her father growing up and only starts learning about his cultural practices halfway through the piece. As a result, there’s no real Judaism here as an animating presence in the character’s life or community around her, which rather blunts the impact of that representation in my opinion. I’m also not a fan of the worldbuilding approach to thinly disguise such matters in genre fiction — it’s fine if inspiration comes from multiple sources and a specific allegorical parallel is less exact, but if you’re explicitly writing about rabbis and Queen Esther and such, please just use the word Jew as well, instead of making up new names for our people like “Yehuli.”

Even setting all that aside, this title is a struggle for me. It’s very YA in its heroine falling for the bad boy with the troubled heart, who never manages to interest me as either a companion or romantic partner for her. Their attraction feels pretty hormonal, with flushing cheeks and stolen glances over any meaningful connection of minds, and that cuts against the nominally high stakes of the various genocidal plots they’re facing. I actually increased my audiobook speed beyond its typical rate to finish reading this, because I was struggling so much to stay invested in the tale.

[Content warning for antisemitism, sexism, domestic abuse, and gore.]

★★☆☆☆

TV Review: The Umbrella Academy, season 2

TV #44 of 2024:

The Umbrella Academy, season 2

Categorically an improvement over the debut year of this comic book adaptation, which I rated at a frustrating 2-out-of-5 stars for all its elements that never really came together or lived up to their potential. The change for the better is felt immediately in the season 2 premiere, which works very quickly to reintroduce the main characters and establish each one’s fresh status quo, stranded back in time in the 1960s. (Initially scattered across multiple years, although they eventually all meet up again. But good luck to anyone trying to work out the new relative ages of these adopted siblings who previously all shared the same birthday.)

The writing and grasp of characterization is tighter, and the various predicaments the heroes find themselves in are pretty interesting — especially Allison, who goes from being one of the more underserved figures to the heart of the dawning Civil Rights movement. For the first time, everyone basically has a clear motivation driving their actions, which along with the rocking soundtrack does wonders to electrify the plot. There’s even another apocalypse on the horizon soon after the upcoming JFK assassination, which feels like an intentional effort on the writers’ part to mulligan the prior storyline in a more satisfying fashion.

Unfortunately, it all sort of falls apart midway through, and the back half of this run is substantially weaker (though still preferable to season 1, it must be said). If the scripts had been able to maintain the quality demonstrated right out of the gate, I likely would have awarded this batch 4 stars, but The Umbrella Academy — as both a show and a group of fictional people — instead succumbs to the kind of poor instincts that I so hated to see before. Vanya unleashes powers she can’t control or be reasoned with about, subplots pop up and go nowhere, character arcs like Luther’s angst are unceremoniously dropped, the time-travel stuff isn’t explained quite well enough to account for apparent plot holes, and the action turns into some generic CGI energy blasts at the end.

It’s fine! I’m intrigued by the ending and plan to finish out the rest of the series, which is only 16 episodes at this point. But now that I know the program has the possibility of such greatness in it, it’d sure be nice to see it reaching that consistently from here on out.

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

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Dragon by Steven Brust

Book #159 of 2024:

Dragon by Steven Brust (Vlad Taltos #8)

This 1998 title is a bit of an odd installment in the Vlad Taltos fantasy series. It’s not the first volume to take place earlier in the protagonist’s career, back when he was a low-level boss for the Jhereg criminal organization, but it’s unusual for enlisting him in a war as the central conflict of the book, rather than presenting him with a tricky assassination contract or any murky political intrigues surrounding a dangerous business rival. Vlad winds up joining the army basically as a favor for his friend Morrolan, and while he’s nominally there to conduct opportunistic sabotage on the enemy forces, he still trains and fights with a regular unit in the heat of battle. It’s a poor fit for the antihero’s skills and general self-interest that the plot never really manages to sell as plausible, much like when the second Gentleman Bastard novel sent its plucky con artist off to join a pirate crew for some reason.

Author Steven Brust juggles a few different timelines here, and the whole enterprise mostly comes together in the end with a few developments that either explain previously-unclear backstory elements or will matter more in subsequent sequels. I wouldn’t say that fans should skip it — and I’ll readily acknowledge it may play better for readers who are more into military sci-fi as a genre — but in my opinion the work can safely be approached as a weird diversion from the main Taltos storyline, functioning primarily to paper over those pesky continuity gaps.

[Content warning for gore.]

★★★☆☆