The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

TV Review: True Detective, season 4

TV #8 of 2024:

True Detective, season 4

Officially subtitled Night Country, the latest installment of this sporadic anthology series takes place in a remote section of Alaska, during the time of year when it stays dark for weeks on end. Unsurprisingly, that turns out to be a great setting for showcasing the program’s typical themes of violence, corruption, conspiracy, and potential Lovecraftian horror. There’s even another cold case (no pun intended) weighing on the protagonists in the present, although unlike in previous seasons, the action unfolds pretty linearly, without the actors having to portray the same roles across multiple decades.

The initial premise is so reminiscent of John Carpenter’s movie The Thing as to feel like an intentional homage: a secluded research base uncovers something primordial deep in the ice, which seems to have turned the scientists against one another, or perhaps just driven them out of their minds. There’s also an unexpected connection to the unsolved murder of a local native woman from several years beforehand, which reunites the former partners who had worked on that case together. It’s a tour de force for the top-billed Jodie Foster as the jaded police chief antiheroine, but relative newcomer Kali Reis (better known for her boxing career) playing the bitter junior officer more than holds her own in the many scenes they share. Shout-out to the supporting cast too, including a put-upon Christopher Eccleston who’s somehow even less recognizable than he was as a pointy-eared Marvel villain.

The supernatural-leaning elements are of mixed effectiveness for me. That piece of the show’s fabric has never been more explicit than it is here, but in practice, it largely boils down to a few jumpscares and the hallucinations brought on by one character’s hereditary mental condition. Technically, it’s ambiguous whether these visions are originating from a higher plane or not, and the Alaskan environment admittedly invites a liminal reading where the rules of reality are more permeable than we might expect of the crime thriller genre. But ultimately the scripts aim to preserve the conflicting interpretations of all the spooky business in a way I don’t find entirely satisfying, much as I don’t think the minor links back to Rust’s philosophical ramblings from season one are at all necessary here.

For me, the story is better without all the mumbo-jumbo. Just two dogged cops, dealing with their personal demons and complicated professional history as they seek the truth that will bring an overdue measure of justice on behalf of a slain innocent, opposite the entrenched powers of the area with a vested interest in keeping things buried. That may sound similar to where this show has already gone twice before — let’s not talk about the misfire of season two — but it’s different enough to be worth the watch, and as electrifying as ever in this new female-led permutation.

[Content warning for gun violence, suicide, domestic abuse, death of a child, racism, torture, and gore.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Book of Thunder by John Peel

Book #27 of 2024:

Book of Thunder by John Peel (Diadem #4)

The third Diadem story wrapped up the major plot arcs that had been driving the action thus far, which means that this next volume has to function as a bit of a proof-of-concept for the saga moving forward. What are these books about, now that the threats of Sarman, the Triad, and the universe’s unbalanced magic have all been addressed and neutralized?

The answer, at least for now, appears to be a sequence of standalone crises. The previous novel ended on a sudden reveal that the protagonists’ unicorn friend Thunder was in some unspecified danger, which this sequel takes as its premise and resolves before springing its own dramatic cliffhanger out of nowhere: Score has been struck with a curse orchestrated by his gangster father back on Earth, where the other heroes will now have to visit in order to save him.

But first, the child sorcerers must help the unicorns against their latest enemy, who presents himself as one of their kind challenging Thunder for control of the herd but turns out to be a body-hopping magician up to vaguely nefarious ends. (His plan is basically to earn the animals’ trust, kill them for the magical properties in their horns, and then find another human life to take over. It’s a solid idea, but both deployed and defeated way too quickly. He even could have succeeded in goading Helaine into killing him — the act that triggers the switch — if he hadn’t monologued his whole M.O. at her beforehand. And no, there’s no mention of how she’s only just escaped a similar threat to her personhood from her past/future self on Jewel.)

As an episodic adventure, this is largely fine, especially given the intended middle-grade audience. I have my quibbles, like the fact that post-Triad we’re still seeing pictographic puzzles for the kids to solve, some without any justification for who would have written them and why (but not treated as a mystery or ever returned to, so far as I can remember). But it’s not actively bad for the most part; it’s just sort of blandly generic fantasy storytelling. And I’m sure the ‘horse girl’ demographic would likely feel more strongly towards the interlude when our warrior heroine transforms herself into a juvenile unicorn to secretly infiltrate the villain’s circle.

Personally, I’m more struck by the quieter domestic moments of series continuity here. Pixel, Score, and Helaine return to the castle of the foe they vanquished in the last book, and start treating it as their home. The blue-skinned boy still canonically has a crush on Helaine, but we’re starting to see more subtext of developing feelings between her and Score. Meanwhile their allies Oracle and Shanara each pop up again, and even work together for the first time. Those are the dynamics that keep me reading more than the current quest of the day, but it’s not exactly a gripping narrative.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: King: A Life by Jonathan Eig

Book #26 of 2024:

King: A Life by Jonathan Eig

This 2023 title is a major new biography of the assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., representing the first such work to be published in over three decades. It draws on extensive interviews with his surviving loved ones and colleagues, as well as recently-uncovered archival material like declassified FBI surveillance files and the manuscript to his father’s unpublished memoir. These documents help author Jonathan Eig paint an in-depth portrait of his subject, walking readers through every stage of the reverend’s fraught career pursuing equality for Black folks and other marginalized populations.

There are few big revelations here, although I was interested to learn both the extent of the Bureau’s monitoring of King and the fact that it primarily stemmed from his friendship with Stanley Levison, a Jewish man with former Communist ties whom J. Edgar Hoover erroneously believed was somehow using the preacher’s activism to subvert American capitalism. (While Eig doesn’t make the point explicitly, there are definite echoes to the modern conspiracy theory that accuses Jews of secretly fomenting social unrest amongst other minority groups.) The writer also places King’s radical commitment to non-violent protest in the context of his contemporaries, indicating when the wider movement generally supported his tactics as well as those moments when criticism flared and he seemed to have lost a clear moral mandate. Above all, the book illustrates what a disservice we do to King and his evolving philosophies — at the time of his death encompassing objections to the Vietnam War, a fear that racism in the north might be more extreme and intractable than in the south, and a mission to eradicate poverty nationwide — when we reduce him to his most famous “I have a dream” soundbyte (stirring though it was and remains).

Eig shows us the human Martin too, an individual with his share of uncertainties and weaknesses. He cheated on his wife with multiple women, was rarely home to spend time with his kids, and plagiarized many of his early speeches along with a significant portion of his doctoral dissertation. Like Marvel’s Stan Lee, he lied about elements of his personal history as he retold it, strategically shaping a larger-than-life persona that would render his arguments more appealing to his growing national audience. He was also attacked and severely injured several times over the years, and spoke bitterly / prophetically that he would likely be killed before achieving his goals. This account captures all of that, as well as the background violence of the era — the rapes, the lynchings, the police brutality, and more — that Black people and their allies were experiencing. It all weighed heavily on his soul every time he considered orchestrating a new demonstration somewhere that would inevitably spark such backlash among the most outspoken local racists.

Although the book doesn’t dwell too long on King’s legacy, it does a fine job of conveying his organizing and oratorical skills and everything they helped him to achieve. He did not originally set out to become a leader — or even a clergyman at all — but he was repeatedly in the right place to step up when various opportunities arose. He had friendly working relationships with US presidents even while their intelligence officers spied on him, and he used his platform to continually shine a light on injustice everywhere. While the movement started before him and continued on after his murder, he was utterly instrumental in a way Eig’s writing makes plain.

★★★★☆

TV Review: Animorphs, season 2

TV #7 of 2024:

Animorphs, season 2

At just six episodes in length (following 20 the year before), this second season of the late-90s TV adaptation of Animorphs plays out rather like a cheap afterthought. While I ultimately found some of the first run‘s quirks to be mildly endearing, it’s harder to mount a defense for any of the new choices that this one adds. The biggest plot element drawn directly from the K. A. Applegate books is the introduction of Erek the android, but that turns out to be merely the latest piece that’s bungled beyond all recognition in the transition to the screen, rendering a poignant critique of pacifism and chilling dose of childhood trauma into a simple chase through the woods and a string of goofy technobabble. This version of the character, a putative new ally for our heroes, also only appears once more, in the episode right after his debut — although I suppose perhaps he might have kept on recurring, if the series hadn’t been canceled.

As always for an adaptation project like this: I don’t really mind if the conversion to a new medium results in changes away from the source material, but it’s frustrating when the replacement story simply isn’t very good on its own merits. And this is pretty far from great.

We get no follow-up on Tobias regaining access to his human form at the end of last season: nothing about what that development means for him, or his love interest Rachel, or the rest of their friends who had thought him forever trapped as a hawk. Theoretically, as in the novels, he’s still primarily a bird and can only become his old self again for the usual two-hour limit. In practice, however, we basically now only ever see his teenage actor, just as we spend almost no time with Ax or Visser Three outside of human morph. (That enemy, confusingly, is given a new primary morph here, with the explanation that ‘Victor Trent’ was lost in the collapsing Yeerk Pool. But clearly the Visser escaped, which renders that justification completely nonsensical. Behind the scenes, I’m guessing that the Trent performer couldn’t return to the show for whatever reason, but the issue isn’t handled well by the scripts.)

Other weaknesses from the early episodes remain. The kids are still talking openly about all the alien invasion stuff when they’re out at the mall or wherever, and we aren’t seeing battle morphs so much as lots of little creatures like lizards and mice that can be used for surveillance and are, crucially, much easier / cheaper to film. There aren’t even any attempts this time to depict non-human Controller species like the Hork-Bajir, and there are certainly no heavy themes like the guilt and angst that regularly pained the child warriors on the page. Again, these are all divergences from the Applegate text that add up to a cartoonishly flimsy overall effect.

I can’t find any clear accounts of why exactly the series was canceled — though I imagine both the morphing effects budget and the low critical reception played a role — or when the writers learned the news, so I don’t want to judge too harshly that the program ends without any major resolution to its ongoing storylines. As with the last Classic Doctor Who serial in 1989, there’s a quick closing voiceover suggesting that the adventures will go on without our watching, which in this case means the protagonists continuing to find ways to fight back against the Yeerk invaders. But that’s not much of a takeaway for a show that’s never managed to sell the threat as convincingly as those Scholastic paperbacks sure did.

This season: ★★☆☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Seasons ranked: 1 > 2

Book Review: Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott

Book #25 of 2024:

Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott (The Sun Chronicles #1)

The hook for this 2020 space opera is that it’s loosely based on the life of Alexander the Great, as represented here by the female heir to a future queer-normative interstellar empire. In practice, however, I find myself wanting more of that princess character, and less of the other POV narrators, most of whom eventually make up her retinue. (The additional viewpoints aren’t redundant per se, but I feel as though the story could have been channeled more productively by keeping them to a minimum.) There are mentions of the royal heroine’s secret romance with one of her handmaidens, for instance, but neither woman is given enough clear characterization for that to especially matter to readers. Instead, we spend a lot of time on the instant and forbidden attraction between two different protagonists — he’s neurologically programmed to go into a murderous frenzy whenever he sees her face for some reason — and don’t really get to know Sun as a driving force in her own destiny.

Overall the political intrigue of the plot isn’t bad, but the historical model restricts its possibilities, and the worldbuilding never rises above its vague pan-Asian influences to allow the setting to register as anything remarkable. I probably still like the novel more than I dislike it as a whole, hence my three-star rating, but I doubt I’ll ever get around to the sequels.

[Content warning for gun violence, eugenics, body horror, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Movie Review: The Marvels (2023)

Movie #1 of 2024:

The Marvels (2023)

A bit of a strange sequel to 2019’s excellent Captain Marvel film. In addition to teaming up the returning cosmic superheroine with the now-adult Monica Rambeau (introduced and given powers on WandaVision) and teenage fangirl Kamala Khan (introduced and given powers on Ms. Marvel), this title takes place in the present-day of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, forgoing all the period-piece fun of its 90s-set predecessor. There’s still plenty of comedy, especially where Goose the flerken is concerned or whenever the three leads get to share a space together without fighting anyone, but I miss the charming retro throwbacks like pagers and Blockbuster stores that the last movie offered.

The premise, as set up in the Ms. Marvel season one finale: for some reason, the ‘Marvels’ have begun switching places with one another any time they activate their respective abilities. Or something. In truth, although we eventually get a nice training montage of the team learning to do this more intentionally, the exact logic of how the effect triggers or not escapes me, which robs this element of much impact. (It’s supposedly consistent enough that the protagonists can strategize accordingly, but there are lots of moments when the CGI lightshow flares and nobody swaps around.)

We find out that the proximate cause behind the anomaly is a bland villain trying to destroy other worlds in order to save her own. Again, the plot mechanism here is fine, but poorly executed — opening stable portals in spacetime to siphon off natural resources like air and water and, uh, sunlight doesn’t seem like it would actually accomplish much in the long run? It’s also another example of this franchise’s weird reactionary politics: yes, Carol Danvers unleashed catastrophic climate change on your planet and feels bad about it, but it’s an activist seeking to reverse that fate who turns to gleeful murder and has to be punched to death for her crimes.

The best parts of this movie are the character interactions, and specifically those involving Kamala and her family, all ported over from the Ms. Marvel show. And it’s neat that this adventure features a predominantly female-led cast, with Nick Fury — thankfully not so grumpy as he was on Secret Invasion — as the largest supporting male role. The MCU still struggles with representing diversity both on-screen and behind the camera, but this is the latest indication of how far we’ve come from its macho early days.

But there’s just not much of a story here, unfortunately.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Strong Female Character by Fern Brady

Book #24 of 2024:

Strong Female Character by Fern Brady

I’m not familiar with author Fern Brady’s comedy work, but she’s written a heartfelt and eye-opening memoir about her experiences as a woman on the autism spectrum: how getting that diagnosis as an adult in her thirties both helped her navigate her life going forward and explained elements from her younger years that had never made sense before. While hers is very much a personal narrative, including anecdotes about her working-class Scottish Catholic upbringing, troubles at university, and temporary career as an exotic dancer, she accompanies her account of how her condition has affected these events with facts she’s since learned about neurodivergence in general, such as how it’s under-recognized in women and girls, where it manifests differently than classical male-skewed textbook descriptions.

For Brady, being autistic has meant feeling overstimulated by loud environments and other sensory issues, finding comfort in routines and corresponding panic at unexpected interruptions, having difficulty interpreting social cues, white lies, and unspoken implications, and occasionally erupting into violence — at herself, at other people, and at her physical surroundings — when put under too much stress. Even today, she regularly has trouble asking for help or understanding things that seem to come intuitively to others. Throughout her childhood and early adulthood, these reactions were chalked up to her being an odd kid (true!) or just obstinate (false!), with the expectation that eventually, the writer would settle down and conform to the world around her. Instead, she has remained steadfastly herself, coming through some significant traumas to finally share her story with us here. It’s well worth a listen, whether you can directly relate to the mental and behavioral patterns she describes or not.

[Content warning for racism, sexism, homophobia, drug and alcohol abuse, self-harm, domestic abuse, pedophilia, and rape.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: In the Company of Gentlemen by Victoria Goddard

Book #23 of 2024:

In the Company of Gentlemen by Victoria Goddard

I’ve been bouncing around the timeline of author Victoria Goddard’s Nine Worlds cozy fantasy series, the volumes of which are interconnected but pretty forgiving of any specific reading order. This novella recounts one particular tale of the Red Company, her infamous band of outlaw folk heroes: the time that expert swordsman Damian Raskae defeated one-hundred-and-forty-nine enemy combatants in back-to-back duels, an incident that’s been referenced in some of the writer’s other works. We learn about it here from the mouth of his final opponent that day, who is telling the story long after the Fall of Astandalas, when the magical realms that made up that Empire became inaccessible to one another, time grew a bit fuzzy, and many such events passed into legend.

It’s fine, but relatively straightforward in plot — we know the outcome before it begins, and it’s easy to guess the twist that one of the onlookers hearing the recitation has their own relevant history to eventually share. The most interesting element is the minor arc that the protagonist gets in the backstory, explaining how he was an underhanded cynic back then but was encouraged to start believing in honor and beauty again in the wake of the encounter. That’s a lovely grace note, but it’s not enough to elevate this title into the class of its saga’s best.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Doctor Who: The Star Beast by Gary Russell

Book #22 of 2024:

Doctor Who: The Star Beast by Gary Russell

Novelizations are a bit of an odd genre in terms of their target audience, especially in this day and age when the original piece of media that’s being adapted is generally accessible to all. (Decades ago, buying or renting a movie / show could be either expensive or impossible, and so low-cost novelized versions of those stories filled more of a clear marketplace gap.) For the recent line of Doctor Who books based on specific TV episodes, I tend to assume a given title isn’t being read by anyone who hasn’t already seen the adventure on-screen, and so the question turns to why we’d seek out this alternate format. And the plausible answer to that, I think, is that there’s an implicit promise that the new iteration contains something extra that will deepen our enjoyment of the work when revisited in this fashion.

Doctor Who: The Star Beast, author Gary Russell’s adaptation of the first Fourteenth Doctor special from last year — script by Russell T. Davies, loosely based on a 1980 comic strip series by Pat Mills and Dave Gibbons — isn’t an obvious success by that metric. There are a few bonus interludes, and more character interiority in the third-person omniscient narration, but ultimately I wouldn’t say that they add much to the overall experience of the tale. There’s also been no attempt to tweak any elements from the filmed version to retroactively improve them, as was the case in the novelization of 2005’s episode “Rose” or 2013’s “The Day of the Doctor,” both of which were published in 2018. Perhaps if this novel had likewise been written later, rather than rushed out the same week as the episode aired on television, it would have been able to factor in the critical reception and make minor adjustments — like not telling the Time Lord hero who was very recently played by Jodie Whittaker and has demonstrated a pretty nuanced grasp on gender fluidity that as a man he couldn’t possibly understand something, for example.

Plotwise, it’s as fun as ever, showing the Doctor getting used to the old David Tennant face again and reuniting him with his former companion Donna Noble, whose memory was wiped for science-fiction reasons at the end of their time together. This story functions to reverse that fate and send them off in the TARDIS once more, all while dealing with a crashed spaceship and an interstellar conflict arriving at earth’s doorstep. It’s better to watch than to read, though.

[Content warning for gun violence and transphobia including deadnaming.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Book of Magic by John Peel

Book #21 of 2024:

Book of Magic by John Peel (Diadem #3)

Somewhat surprisingly, this third Diadem novel wraps up the major plot arc that’s been driving the action thus far, and from what I can recall, things are pretty episodic from here on out. One wonders if the series was originally planned as a simple trilogy, though author John Peel would ultimately go on to write another nine sequels after this.

Like the first entry, this title feels overly busy, as if it could have benefited from stretching its story out over additional pages or even multiple volumes. We initially find our heroes on a new planet, Dondar, where they befriend a trio of unicorns and face a repetitive and easily-vanquished string of elemental constructs (a flaming being that they rob of air, a watery giant that they turn into mud and then bake with their own fireballs, and so on). At this point, the magical threats don’t register as particularly challenging, and even the wizard who’s been sending out these avatars falls without much of a fight once they reach his stronghold.

The back half of the book is significantly better, and would have earned four stars from me if I were rating it independently. At the central nexus of the universe, the teenagers finally meet the gloating arch-villain who’s been drawing them onwards this whole time, getting answers to some of the mysteries that have accompanied their strange interdimensional journey. He proves a much worthier foe for them, and even after he’s defeated, a further twist pulls the rug out from under us again with revelations about the children’s connection to the tyrannical previous rulers of the Diadem. It sets up some great hero moments for the young magic-users, and also works to rehabilitate their guide Oracle, who turns out to be a rather fun character once he’s been freed from the curse that kept him speaking in unhelpful rhyming couplets until now.

That final sequence clarifies and dismisses the bizarre riddles the protagonists have been encountering all along too, which have never really worked for me as a reader. For some reason we’ll continue to see similar codes and rebuses for a while yet after this — either Peel or his publishers erroneously thought they were fun, I suppose — but they thankfully do become less frequent before dropping off entirely.

The tale concludes with the three friends returning to Dondar, but only for a sudden cliffhanger that the elder unicorn is in unspecified danger. It’s kind of a silly way to end the present adventure… which is yet another reason I wouldn’t rate the novel as a whole too highly, despite rather enjoying its dramatic climax.

[Content warning for fatphobia.]

★★★☆☆