The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: The Tower at the Edge of the World by Victoria Goddard

Book #17 of 2024:

The Tower at the Edge of the World by Victoria Goddard

This 2014 story was one of the first titles published in author Victoria Goddard’s massive Nine Worlds fantasy setting, and is also one of its earliest to take place chronologically. It’s relatively short at 62 pages in paperback — it apparently began as a prologue for the effort that eventually became last year’s Derring-Do for Beginners — but since it’s only available as a standalone volume, I figured I would go ahead and review it as such. (It all evens out, as most people’s entry into this loose saga is probably The Hands of The Emperor, which weighs in at over 900 pages in hardback itself.)

If you’ve read Hands and recall a certain character’s backstory, you will likely soon recognize the protagonist of this tale, although we find him here as a young man without any sort of name. He lives alone in the titular desolate structure, going about a strange daily routine that appears to function Omelas-like to keep the magic of the Empire functioning even while he is kept apart from its wonders. This carries shades of The Slow Regard of Silent Things to me, and is pleasant to simply observe a person’s quiet existence in all its peculiar minutiae. As we watch, the hero drifts around his library and meager living quarters dreaming of adventure, too sheltered to even identify his patent loneliness.

One day, of course, something happens to jolt our Rapunzel from that complacency, but the plot as such maintains its cozy and low-stakes appeal while he undergoes a subtle transformation and grows belatedly curious about the lands and peoples beyond his horizons. By the end, the lad has left his familiar tower and struck out for parts unknown… or partially known to returning readers, I suppose.

These peripheral Nine Worlds books are sometimes hard to review without spoilers, and this one ends with the revelation of a particular piece of continuity that may or may not surprise you, depending on which other volumes you’ve tackled first. On the other hand, any folks who start their journey here will be able to enjoy a certain element of dramatic irony in Goddard’s other works that’s only accessible to the rest of us in hindsight or on an eventual reread. Like Discworld, there’s really no wrong angle of approach, in my opinion.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia E. Butler

Book #16 of 2024:

Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia E. Butler

This collection of short stories (originally published in 1995, then revised in 2005 with two additional entries) was the last work of author Octavia E. Butler’s fiction that I hadn’t yet read, so it’s been a bittersweet experience for me this week to finally check it off my list. But that’s Butler’s writing in a nutshell anyway: an intoxicating blend of the acrid and the wonderful, using the speculative toolkit of science-fiction to raise challenging questions about consent and other power dynamics for marginalized peoples under occupation of a stronger force. Across these titles, there are clear echoes of such themes that she explored at greater length in her novels, but none of them feel exactly like a repeat or a false start. In fact, the horror elements often work better for me here, where the pessimistic nihilism inherent to the dystopian genre seems presented as a purposeful thesis statement and we do not have to share the headspace of any sympathetic rapists for too long.

The book also contains two nonfiction essays, one a miniature autobiography and the other a short advice piece on honing one’s authorial craft / career. These understandably aren’t quite as gripping as the narrative contents, but they still represent an interesting look into the late writer’s mind, as do the brief afterwords she’s included to accompany each tale. Of those stories themselves, I like some more than others, but at worst I am merely lukewarm on the closing installment “The Book of Martha.” Overall I think this would be a good introduction to Butler’s style for newcomers, and a definite treat for any readers who are already fans.

[Content warning for racism, sexism, eugenics, body horror, self-harm, torture, rape, incest, gun violence, suicide, and gore.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Book of Signs by John Peel

Book #15 of 2024:

Book of Signs by John Peel (Diadem #2)

This sequel retains the juvenile feel befitting its middle-grade audience, but it’s enough of an improvement over the previous volume that I’ll bump my rating up from three stars to four. The story is more straightforward, with a minimum degree of recap for readers who skipped the series debut: young teenagers Score, Helaine, and Pixel have been drawn from their respective worlds deeper into the cosmological Diadem, to a succession of new realms where their nascent magical powers grow ever stronger. They spend the entirety of this second adventure on the planet Rawn, facing a variety of classic fantasy creatures like goblins, centaurs, and trolls, all of whom they struggle to defeat without killing. That commitment to preserving intelligent life is a theme that wasn’t really explicit in the first novel, but it fits the heroes well and winds up earning them some valuable unexpected allies.

The children are also functioning as more of a cohesive team now, while still receiving plenty of individual moments to shine according to their particular archetypal strengths — tomboy Helaine fighting bravely with her sword, street kid Score using sneaky tactics to outflank their enemies, and blue-skinned VR adept Pixel intuiting greater strategic matters. I like how none of this is exactly a repeat of what we’ve seen before, especially when it comes to the shapeshifting wizard in charge of this latest domain, whose castle they’re attempting to reach. She’s mentioned but unseen in her true form for most of the plot, leading to some justified paranoia of her having infiltrated the group, which the protagonists consciously choose to set aside in favor of trusting their friends. Again, it’s a great take-home message that author John Peel has crafted here, coupled with a rejection of bigotry against someone over an identity feature like their species that they cannot control.

On the downside, we continue to get a sequence of tiresome riddles and codes for the magic-users to crack, in addition to the introduction of sorcerous gems that interrupt the way the characters speak, rendering their dialogue written backwards, or without vowels, and so on — more of a boring exercise for the reader to decipher than an actual difficulty within the scene. That silliness remains my least-favorite aspect of these books, and I’m looking forward to the point when it finally drops away. But luckily, it isn’t enough to detract much from the quality of the rest of this tale.

★★★★☆

Book Review: What the Dead Know: Learning About Life as a New York City Death Investigator by Barbara Butcher

Book #14 of 2024:

What the Dead Know: Learning About Life as a New York City Death Investigator by Barbara Butcher

A morbidly fascinating look at an unusual job, but a bit too bogged down in unrelated asides on author Barbara Butcher’s personal life, especially near the end. (A little bit of memoir in such a work is fine, and it’s certainly relevant to hear how her alcoholism and mental health struggles originally led her to the coroner profession. But the politics surrounding her eventual departure and her new intended career path as a television actress are a bizarre note to close on, even if I hadn’t gotten curious and learned on IMDb that her only credit was in the failed pilot she mentions here. Springing the fact that she was on the scene to process the devastation of September 11th in the last quarter of the text is also an odd choice, as that topic could easily have received an entire book-length treatment in and of itself.)

Still, the information on the cases that the writer investigated is interesting, if pretty gruesome. Homicides, suicides, accidents, and natural causes: Butcher — that name! — saw it all in stomach-churning detail as she was tasked with assigning each death in her New York City precinct into one of those categories. She has insights to share on the nature of violent crimes and what can happen to a corpse biologically over time, but she also captures the human element of what it was like for her to face that bleakness regularly for a living (no pun intended). She reminds us how close we all are each day to a twist of fate that could kill us with our affairs out of order, and she rages against the despair brought on by murders she’s seen go unsolved or without enough evidence to prosecute and convict the apparently-guilty party.

There’s something quietly moving and dignified in the lives she encounters only at their terminus, but this title as a whole could have used another pass of editing to truly shine. Although it succeeds at conveying its true-crime subject matter, it’s repetitive and chaotically-organized throughout and ultimately doesn’t build to much of a grand statement or theme. I liked it, but didn’t love it.

[Content warning for pedophilia, rape, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: The Woman in Me by Britney Spears

Book #13 of 2024:

The Woman in Me by Britney Spears

Three-and-a-half stars, rounded up. The personal story that Britney Spears has to tell is a moving one, centering the pain she felt over decades of mistreatment in the music industry and the public eye. Between releasing a succession of chart-topping hits, she was emotionally abused by the men in her life, including romantic partners like Justin Timberlake and Kevin Federline, and ultimately trapped in a restrictive conservatorship managed by her dishonest father, who profited tremendously off her talent while giving her a pittance of income and barring her from seeing her children. The news media was likewise horrible, publicly sexualizing her from a young age, gleefully speculating about her love life and mental health issues, and chasing her with cameras every time she left the house.

Much of that information had already trickled out before the author published this book last year — I think the only piece that surprised me was the bombshell that Timberlake pressured her into having a dangerous at-home abortion in 2000, when they were both still teenagers — but it’s valuable to hear it straight from the person most affected and understand why our paparazzi-fueled celebrity gossip culture is vastly overdue for a reckoning, even if things have likely improved somewhat since the experiences that Britney relates.

The writing itself isn’t particularly exceptional or insightful, and it’s hard not to compare this title to Jennette McCurdy’s searing work I’m Glad My Mom Died, a far sharper show-business memoir that came out around the same time. But Spears has been a household name for most of my life, and reading about the dark side of that fame in her own words (give or take a probable ghostwriter) does carry a certain undeniable power.

★★★★☆

Book Review: Through the Groves by Anne Hull

Book #12 of 2024:

Through the Groves by Anne Hull

In this memoir, author Anne Hull paints an evocative picture of her childhood in central Florida — one I found poignantly familiar to my own, despite growing up three decades later and about 100 miles east of her. The orange groves already giving way to new construction, the ever-present mosquitoes and heavy humidity, the surprise encounters with alligators who thankfully weren’t feeling hungry enough to lunge right then… It’s all rendered tangible again for me upon reading these pages, even though I haven’t lived in the state for many years now myself. I’m even a bit nostalgic for the Publix chain of regional supermarkets and the faded highway signs she describes for Yeehaw Junction, a name none of my non-Floridian friends ever seem to believe is real.

Less successful for me is the larger thrust of the work. Is it specifically trying to recapture a bygone halcyon day, either for the writer or her setting? There’s not much here to suggest how things have changed after the events described, and while the book concludes with the deaths of Hull’s parents in her early adulthood, that isn’t framed as particularly reorienting for her life. A minor theme throughout concerns her status as a rural tomboy, but she doesn’t explicitly address her sexuality as a queer woman until the last 10% of this pretty slim title. And although we get a filtered child’s view of adult mental health troubles (including both a neighborhood flasher and a terrifying sequence when her father takes out a loaded gun in front of her), that’s not a topic that’s brought into focus and explored at much length.

In the end, while I see much to connect with in the author’s local experiences, I would not classify this as an exceptionally great example of its particular genre.

[Content warning for homophobia, racism, and alcohol abuse.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Derring-Do for Beginners by Victoria Goddard

Book #11 of 2024:

Derring-Do for Beginners by Victoria Goddard (The Red Company #1)

In the backstory to The Hands of the Emperor and the rest of author Victoria Goddard’s sprawling Nine Worlds fantasy saga, the Red Company was a roving band of friends whose infamous exploits have long since passed into legend. This prequel is the start of a new subseries documenting the early adventures of those folk heroes directly, although so far, it is every bit as cozy and low-stakes as the writer’s typical output. The main characters Jullanar and Damian are still shy teenagers at this stage, two outsiders who find comfort in one another and their growing platonic bond. (She’s led by circumstances to travel far from her familiar life; he’s there at her destination to teach her the local language and otherwise help her fit in.)

The plot is pretty light and character-driven — around a third of the text is devoted solely to the heroine’s placid journey from one realm to the next — but Goddard’s rich cultural worldbuilding and sense of personality make even the slower moments shine. And the story gets a serious jolt in its final quarter, when a certain figure named Fitzroy the Poet bursts onto the scene with all the manic cluelessness of a freshly-regenerated Time Lord. We don’t get much of him here, but it’s already clear how he’s igniting the wanderlust in his new companions that will result in their future glory. For readers who know more of his own later deeds, it’s particularly terrific to see the contrast with his wild youth and better understand the conflicts that must linger in his heart when he grows up to be a reasonably-responsible adult.

But most of this book isn’t about the runaway bard at all, nor is that absence felt in the narrative before his arrival. It’s instead about the neurodivergent young swordsman who has trouble with social cues but hones his body to be a perfect weapon, and the scholar whose poor test results can’t encompass the bravery and inquisitive spirit that lead her to walk out of the only world she’s ever known. It’s above all a gentle read, where the most emotional beat is the girl’s discovery that her tutor whom others think to be of lower intelligence is merely farsighted in a land without the technology to produce corrective lenses. When she’s able to provide him with that disability aid to finally see his surroundings clearly, he becomes capable of even more astonishing feats.

As a novel it’s a bit oddly-shaped, with a lot left unresolved at the end, and I can’t quite decide whether it would be a good launching point for anyone just starting the Nine Worlds sequence. But personally, I’ve rather enjoyed the feeling of sinking back into Goddard’s writing once again. I’ll give this volume three-and-a-half stars rounded up, and hope that the forthcoming sequels keep these vagabonds so delightful even as they age.

★★★★☆

Book Review: Beholder by Ryan La Sala

Book #10 of 2024:

Beholder by Ryan La Sala

At first glance, it seems like this fantasy horror novel should have too much going on its plot to be remotely effective: an orphaned teen protagonist with the magical ability to see backwards in time through mirrors and other reflective surfaces, a Lovecraftian entity lurking inside reflections and trying to push into our reality, bespoke wallpaper that drives people into a frenzy of murder and self-harm, a queer love story with a meet-cute at such a slaughter, an elaborate conspiracy involving a treacherous family friend and a kidnapped grandmother… the list goes on and on. And yet it does all work together, achieving a level of creepiness that honestly pushes the boundaries of YA fiction. (The sexual content between the two boys is nothing past PG-13, but the gore and suicidal ideation is pretty extreme.)

I love the characters and the great use of the New York City setting, and I’m also impressed with how well it avoids ever slipping into an incomprehensible fever dream despite author Ryan La Sala’s claiming that they wrote the whole thing “in a 24-day delirium.” On the contrary, the violence is rendered in uncomfortable detail: the threat of what’s back there in the depths of the mirror, copying the viewer’s form and movements almost but not quite exactly, is skin-crawlingly awful, and the scenes where its victims are compelled to graphically injure and kill themselves are even worse. I say that admiringly, but I did have to pause this audiobook at several points to give myself a break from it all.

★★★★☆

Book Review: Book of Names by John Peel

Book #9 of 2024:

Book of Names by John Peel (Diadem #1)

A solid launch to a fun middle-grade fantasy series about a trio of kids drawn from separate worlds into a magical mystery linking them together. The worst thing about this first title is that it burns through so many of its ideas so quickly — there are revelations that should sting, like Pixel discovering that his pampered existence is predicated on unseen slave labor, but are instead brushed aside in service to the needs of an overly-propulsive plot. This book has to introduce the three 12/13-year-old protagonists and their home lives, disrupt those to get them to their initial adventure off-planet, school them in the basics of their powers and the premise of the setting, and then squeeze in a betrayal and climactic final duel, all while laying breadcrumb clues in the larger storyline for the sequels to take up in turn.

I also don’t have much patience for the sequence of puzzles that the heroes have to solve in these early books, which feel more like a videogame challenge than a grounded element of the narrative. (I’ll grant that I’m far outside the target age range at this point, but even when I read these back in the 1990s, I thought it was silly for the teens’ mysterious benefactor(s) to be communicating important information to them as rebuses, codes, and rhymes that anyone could find and decipher.) Author John Peel thankfully falls away from that device as the saga goes on, but it’s pretty heavy-handed here and now.

Luckily the characters are interesting, both in their own right and in the relationships of trust that they’re starting to build as a team. Score is a mouthy New Yorker whose sarcasm masks his insecurities, ‘Renald’ is a girl from a medieval society disguised as a boy in order to defy their repressive gender roles and train as a warrior, and Pixel is a blue-skinned youth who’s lived most of his life in a virtual reality program, unsure if his closest friends are even real. They’re somewhat archetypal at this stage — present, past, and future; rogue, paladin, and wizard; etc. — but already showing welcome signs of growth as they interact. It’s nice that this isn’t primarily a Score-led novel too, despite him taking the first chapter and being the only one shown (albeit at a hilariously-inaccurate age) on the original cover. Instead we trade off equally among the three perspectives, which allows for greater shading of each.

None of the young wizards know about magic when the story begins, because earth and the other homeworlds are apparently out on the rim of the interdimensional landscape, where such things are notoriously weak. The closer you get to the center, the more your sorcery grows, and that’s the direction our travelers are heading, leveling up with new spells and mystical artifacts as they go. This volume is a good introduction and proof of concept for that, but I’m not blown away on this reread quite yet.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Endless Night by Agatha Christie

Book #8 of 2024:

Endless Night by Agatha Christie

This is not a mystery novel, although there’s a major death fairly late in the text and a subsequent twist that causes the reader to reevaluate what we’ve heard / understood about the story before that point. It could perhaps be seen as what would happen in a typical Agatha Christie plot were one of her handy detective figures not around to investigate and resolve the matter, which is an interesting change of pace for the writer this deep into her career. It also reminds me of her pseudonymous Mary Westmacott “romances,” in that the majority of the tale is just a slow-paced study of two characters and their star-crossed marriage.

Against all that, we have to weigh the fact that this is probably one of the author’s most racist books, built upon anti-Romani stereotypes and repeated slurs, including in the very name of the primary setting and its troubled local history. (That some of the supposed curses ultimately prove to be manufactured by outsiders doesn’t mitigate the problem or its impact.) And as usual, I personally find Dame Agatha’s brand of love-at-first-sight rather hard to accept or seriously invest in, which tends to blunt the effectiveness of the work at large.

It’s a difficult title to review in more detail without straying into spoilers, but I will say that I wish we got to spend more time in the final moments of the novel, following those certain revelations, given how they so radically reorient the narrative. This is no Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Christie’s masterpiece of four decades earlier wherein a puzzle’s ingenious solution invites us to reread particular passages and marvel at the hidden craft of her artful wording choices, yet it contains a similar pivot without enough supporting material on either side. It’s promising, but a mixed effort overall.

★★★☆☆