The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

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.

★★★★★

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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.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Dark Heir by C. S. Pacat

Book #44 of 2024:

Dark Heir by C. S. Pacat (Dark Rise #2)

I loved the twist at the end of the first Dark Rise novel, but felt like the majority of the book leading up to it was too slow-paced and generic for my tastes (shadowy riders chasing a young farmboy from his home into a wider world of danger, and so on). Luckily, this sequel dives right back into the action, with ramifications for that big revelation that considerably reshape the plot ahead. I still want more clarity / distinctiveness from the worldbuilding — it’s distracting to hear references to Italy and France alongside commonplace magic and worries that the ancient evil king is resurfacing — and the large cast of supporting characters with mostly modern English names like Elizabeth and Violet remains a bit unwieldy. But the core of the story surrounding the protagonist is incredibly sound.

It’s the tale of that hero Will recognizing and repudiating a certain capability for cruelty within himself, while scrambling to keep it a secret from his closest friends. It’s in the slow-burn romantic pull he feels towards his companion James, complicated by his concern that such a relationship could never truly be consensual given particular elements of their half-remembered previous lives. And it’s in his dedication to be better than his history, with a definite narrative tension in the question of whether the tragedy he’s caught up in will ever ultimately allow that.

Via flashback, we also learn more about Sarcean and Anharion — much stronger fantasy genre names, I must say — and their own doomed romance, and a new character in the present turns out to be a warrior of that same distant era resurrected to inhabit a fresh corpse. To author C. S. Pacat’s credit, all of this business of mind/body dissociation — distinct prior incarnations of souls that have left a legacy for their future selves, personalities from the past walking around in the forms of random dead folks now, and a magical ability some people can wield to temporarily possess their sworn servants — is never confusing or hard to follow, and given his/her genderqueer identity, there’s ample subtext for trans readings of such forces as well. Overall, it’s exactly the step forward for the series that I was hoping to find.

[Content warning for gun violence and gore.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: The Forest Demands Its Due by Kosoko Jackson

Book #43 of 2024:

The Forest Demands Its Due by Kosoko Jackson

I was initially drawn in by the protagonist of this work, a troubled gay Black teen struggling to settle into his new Vermont boarding school when the forest just outside its grounds keeps whispering at him. Unfortunately, the novel that follows doesn’t really live up to that promise of YA dark academia fantasy, and instead shuffles along with unmotivated plot stakes and unclear worldbuilding rules to its magic. The PG romance plays a large role in the text, and yet the connection between the two boys feels like it’s based on nothing but instantaneous attraction (and I suppose being apparently the only queer kids in town). I kept waiting for the storyline to find its footing and truly show off the interesting hero at its core, but the whole enterprise stays stubbornly untethered from anything we could meaningfully invest in all the way through to the end.

I primarily put praise and criticism alike of a book on its author, but in this case I’m more inclined to blame the editor after a scene where the headmaster of the prestigious academy uses the word “infer” to mean imply: “I never said I couldn’t enter the forest, Douglas. I simply inferred that I couldn’t.” That sort of usage is widely regarded as a nonstandard / incorrect definition, but it’s common enough in casual speech and probably an easy mistake to make in writing. This particular character wouldn’t be the type we’d expect to say it, however, and a competent professional edit should have caught and revised that. It’s a small detail that didn’t affect my rating, but I do think it’s a handy example to encapsulate my overall frustrations with the title in microcosm.

[Content warning for homophobia, racism, bullying, gaslighting, and gore.]

★★☆☆☆

Book Review: Aurelius (to be called) Magnus by Victoria Goddard

Book #42 of 2024:

Aurelius (to be called) Magnus by Victoria Goddard

From what I’ve read so far, the majority of author Victoria Goddard’s Nine Worlds saga takes place in and around the time of Artorin Damara, the hundredth and final Emperor of Astandalas. This prequel novella, by contrast, is set many centuries prior, and functions primarily as a character study of His Radiancy’s distant predecessor, the forty-ninth personage to hold that title. We find him here early in his reign, but already tired of constantly waging war to expand and preserve his empire’s borders.

The action of the piece is minimal and somewhat underwhelming, even for a cozy fantasy series like this. The protagonist arrives in his mother’s homeland and honors her old teacher by asking for his advice to secure a lasting peace, but the former general’s response basically amounts to a suggestion that he try meditating as though going into battle within himself. When he does, he experiences a sequence of prophetic visions and ultimately unlocks the intuitive understanding to wield magic that had hitherto eluded him. It’s a gift we know will radically reorient his station and that of his lineage to come, but it doesn’t amount to much of a conclusion for the story currently at hand. Although an interesting picture of the reluctant young warrior and his era of the setting, this book isn’t the most satisfying installment on its own.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie

Book #41 of 2024:

Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie

Author Agatha Christie’s 80th book, published on the occasion of her 80th birthday in 1970, is one of only four of her novels that have never been adapted for television or film. I’ve already read two of the others, Death Comes as the End and Destination Unknown, and found each to be a halfway-decent curiosity. This, in contrast, is an absolute trainwreck.

I’m rating it as highly as two stars solely for my enjoyment of the opening premise: a man waiting for a delayed flight is approached by a stranger in the airport lounge, who notes that they share a striking physical resemblance. She claims she’s being tracked by enemies who want to kill her, and asks if she can borrow his passport and coat and put a drug in his drink. He’ll pass out and be able to claim he was robbed, while she will cut her hair and escape under his credentials. He agrees out of sheer boredom (and because this was several decades pre-9/11, I suppose), and later attempts to track her down again to learn more.

It’s absurd, but charming, and not too far off in tone from the spy thrillers this writer had previously penned. Once the two travelers reconnect, however, everything goes swiftly down into a swirl of conspiratorial nonsense and minimal plot. The protagonist’s new friend and de facto love interest — the story ends with their getting married, despite containing no evidence of romance beforehand and numerous observations that she reminds him of his sister — introduces him to her comrades, who are attempting to stop some nebulous international threat. According to them, all the populist youth movements around the world are secretly run by neo-Nazis, who are planning to bring them together into a global Fourth Reich under a charismatic leader who might be Hitler’s son, born after the führer apparently faked his death in the war (by switching places with a patient at a specialized insane asylum for people who all think that they’re Adolf, of course).

Much of this is delivered to us as feverish exposition rather than relevant action beats or interesting character decisions, and it culminates in the good guys visiting a mad scientist who’s been working on an airborne toxin that will cause its victims to be more benevolent-minded (and therefore resistant to caring about all the silly things kids these days protest over, one presumes). A half-century on, it’s hard not to read Christie’s own reactionary politics into this, but I have to emphasize that it also just fundamentally does not make sense on a basic story level. After a promising start, this title is nothing but a pile-up of kooky ideas that have been poorly shaped into a rough approximation of narrative. The main characters often aren’t even around for what passes as key developments, and the whole business concludes without any particular resolution beyond the reveal of a surprise traitor in the group. It’s a real mess that’s in dire need of a Poirot or a Marple to help sort out the jumble.

[Content warning for gun violence and fatphobia.]

★★☆☆☆

Book Review: Alien Terror by Chris Archer

Book #40 of 2024:

Alien Terror by Chris Archer (Mindwarp #1)

Another old middle-grade reread for me. As a series launcher, this title has potential, although it remains mostly setup for the future at this point. When wimpy kid Ethan turns 13, he gains super-strength and expert fighting skills during times of stress, but is cryptically warned that he should hide his newfound abilities before they bring on unwanted attention. Sure enough, a shapeshifting enemy is soon stalking him and reveals that the hero’s father was an extraterrestrial, though that’s all we really get for now besides a minor arc about standing up to a bully but pulling back from the urge to kill him once he’s at his victim’s mercy.

This book came out in 1997, and it’s fun to spot both the references like Marvel comics and Mortal Kombat that are supposed to establish the protagonist’s nerdiness and the clear but unmentioned plot influences of popular genre works of the era like The X-Files and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The storyline cribs from those a mistrust of authority and hints of a wider conspiracy, although that angle would have to wait for the sequels to develop any real specifics.

I dig the visual aspect of the boy’s eyes turning jet-black when his powers activate, the light body horror of the other changes he’s feeling inside, and the creepy implication that his adopted parents know more about his situation than they’re letting on to him. As I sometimes mentioned in my Animorphs reviews, books for this age range often traffic in metaphors for puberty and feelings of teenage alienation, and that element doesn’t get much more literal than this. It’s a solid start for a concept that I remember going in some interesting directions later on.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Book of Nightmares by John Peel

Book #39 of 2024:

Book of Nightmares by John Peel (Diadem #6)

This was the last of the original six Diadem books published by Scholastic from 1997 to 1998, after which the middle-grade fantasy series would lie dormant for almost a decade until getting revived under another publisher. Presumably that’s also why it’s the first volume to end without a cliffhanger lining up the next adventure, just our three exhausted heroes finally sleeping and starting to heal from their latest wounds.

The reason they’re so tired is that this story takes them on an endurance trek across the planet Zarathan, where the villain revealed at the end of the previous novel has fled with a kidnapped Pixel in tow and Score and Helaine in swift pursuit. It’s a cursed world where nightmares pulled from their subconscious fears come to life and anyone who falls asleep will reportedly never wake up again. That’s a particular danger for Pixel, who hasn’t exactly been briefed on the deadly circumstances by his devious captor.

It’s a fine premise and the atmosphere is spooky enough, but in practice, this title largely amounts to a sequence of episodic combat encounters, none of which seem as revealing as they could have been about the character currently under attack. The best part is that Score and Helaine are on their own for most of the book, which definitely draws them closer together, even if neither is ready to admit their feelings on the subject quite yet. But the overall plot is pretty threadbare, and when the team ultimately reunite and confront the antagonist, she’s dispatched fairly easily, without time for any of the last-minute revelations about her backstory and motivations (or Pixel’s breakthrough regarding the true nature of their surroundings) to register as especially important. If the saga had ended here for good, I can’t say that it would have been at a narrative high point or feeling of significant resolution.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Among the Bros: A Fraternity Crime Story by Max Marshall

Book #38 of 2024:

Among the Bros: A Fraternity Crime Story by Max Marshall

One part ethnographic history of the modern American college fraternity scene; one part true-crime reporting of a million-dollar benzodiazepine ring that operated within that ecosystem at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. To lay out my biases, I was active in a fraternal organization myself not too long before the events detailed in this book, although my experiences couldn’t have been further removed from the extravagant abuses that author Max Marshall relates. (As one of the 3% of frat members he notes don’t consume any alcohol, I witnessed plenty of underage drinking around me, but never any hazing or harder drug use.) My quiet university as a whole wasn’t exactly known as a big party school, either.

But I was aware of such extremes in the broader ‘Greek’ subculture, and was interested to see them described so analytically, especially in an early passage when the writer traces the impact of popular movies like Animal House and Old School on perceptions and expectations of fraternity life. Certainly the ‘bros’ he describes in this book seem to have taken the excesses of such works as aspirational, along with the cash-fueled blowouts depicted in The Wolf of Wall Street. It’s an element that merits widespread scrutiny from our cultural commentators, as does the racism, misogyny, and rape culture that’s often endemic in such spaces (though is treated only passingly here).

But most of this text is given over to the dealers and their illicit products, which they would buy off foreign suppliers on the dark web in powder form, press into pills themselves, and then market to their classmates as a way to curb anxiety and enhance the effects of alcohol and other drugs. If Marshall’s sources are to be believed, the blackouts that accompanied such usage were generally not intended as date-rape aids, but rather seen as a benefit for the buyers themselves, freeing them from the burden of having to remember any specific debaucheries in the cold light of morning.

The author’s insider view and years of dedicated research are appreciated, but his account at times veers into sensationalizing the glamor of the young men’s lifestyle — they hung out with rappers like Waka Flocka Flame! — and minimizing the real-world harm perpetrated by their actions. He also quotes heavily from text conversations and the comments section of websites like Total Frat Move, which seems more like an excuse to share scandalous off-color humor than providing any necessary support for his points. The fratty tone extends throughout his own writing in this book too, such as his repeated use of the acronym GDI (G** D*** Independent) for an unaffiliated student, in lieu of a more neutral alternative term.

Still, the title dwells on the case of one trafficker who wound up shot to death and another currently serving time in prison for his role at the top of the criminal enterprise, which ran in successively less lucrative layers like any multi-level marketing / pyramid scheme out there. That it took so long for the mostly rich, white, male offenders to be brought to justice speaks to the absurd degree of privilege in their community, but this work at least attempts to grapple with that and show how consequences did reach a few of the perpetrators, eventually.

★★★☆☆