The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

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.

★★★☆☆

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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.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi edited by Tom Hoeler

Book #7 of 2024:

Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi edited by Tom Hoeler

Another batch of 40 stories to celebrate the 40th anniversary of a Star Wars movie, this one centered around the background characters and/or events of Episode VI, Return of the Jedi. Some of these entries expand upon the film’s minor roles, fleshing out elaborate backstories and rich inner lives for them, while others bring in figures from elsewhere in the franchise to populate the era, sometimes to ludicrous effect. (You’ve maybe wondered what The Rise of Skywalker‘s villain General Pryde was up to in the waning days of the Empire, but you likely didn’t need to see Obi-Wan’s four-armed diner friend Dexter Jettster from Attack of the Clones during the closing celebration / riot on Coruscant.) As in the previous titles in this sequence of retellings, there’s also a noticeable and welcome inclusion of queer representation, retroactively working to make the Original Trilogy a little more diverse.

It’s an uneven effort across the board, but there are some particularly fun pieces that are worth checking out, especially given that all of this is, apparently, canonical in Disney’s eyes. In “My Mouth Never Closes” by Charlie Jane Anders, for example, the Sarlacc is established as a vegetarian who keeps trying to tell the people of Tatooine to stop throwing living beings into its gullet — not an herbivorous species, just one particular entity that we now know would have preferred to abstain from meat — while “Then Fall, Sidious” by Olivie Blake presents the great Shakespearean-style soliloquy that runs through Emperor Palpatine’s mind during his final moments on the Death Star. Meanwhile Jabba’s torture droid gets a surprisingly-touching redemption arc after its brief time on-screen (“The Key to Remembering” by Olivia Chadha), and one of the barely-seen palace dancers is involved in a beautiful star-crossed love affair that’s only tangentially-connected to the rebel heroes and their struggles (“Dune Sea Songs of Salt and Moonlight” by Thea Guanzon).

Some of the other tales are a bit less striking and even repetitive, but as a milestone celebration, the book has plenty for fans to enjoy overall.

★★★☆☆

TV Review: Fargo, season 5

TV #3 of 2024:

Fargo, season 5

I like sporadic elements of this season of Fargo. The gas station shoot-out in episode one is a remarkably tense action sequence, and Jon Hamm and Juno Temple are both acting up a storm with those accents. As ever for this anthology series, the midwestern pleasantries masking dark feelings and the bumbling criminals getting in over their heads are a fun combination, as are the new ways that showrunner Noah Hawley has found to remix such themes from the original Coen brothers movie. I especially appreciate how much of this latest plot hinges on a domestic abuse victim who has managed to escape a terrible situation in the backstory and now must fight ferociously to avoid getting dragged back into it or letting it consume the new life she’s built in the meantime.

But that’s certainly muddled by a finale in which — spoiler alert — a powerful ally triumphantly condemns the villain to a lifetime of prison rape, and everything the season is trying to say about debt winds up feeling under-developed and contradictory. (The literal centuries-old sin eater turned hitman never works for me, either, although I acknowledge that reality on this program has been a little loose ever since that UFO showed up back in season two.) A strong conclusion perhaps could have served to redeem the aimlessness, but this one opts instead for a perfunctory wrap-up, a one-year time jump, and some unearned character epilogues. Overall a disappointing end to a promising start, which sadly seems like it’s been the case for Fargo more often than not at this point.

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

★★☆☆☆

Book Review: The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White

Book #6 of 2024:

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White

Another brutal story from author Andrew Joseph White, although just slightly less viscerally upsetting than his previous novel Hell Followed With Us. (The trans hero of this book is subjected to misgendering, institutionalization / conversion therapy, domestic abuse, and sexual assault dating back to early childhood, but at least he’s not literally turning into an inhuman monster.) As those themes would suggest, it’s a rather heavy read, depicting an alternate history only insofar as this version of 1880s London has vindictive ghosts and an order of wealthy mediums seeking to hoard the power to channel them. That leads them to restrict the lives and bodies of violet-eyed girls who show an affinity for that supernatural gift — or boys like Silas whom society misassigns to that category — but as the writer notes in an afterword, the elements of eugenics and extreme sexism, transphobia, and homophobia there aren’t too far removed from our own reality.

If you can make it through all the gore and character pain, it’s a surprisingly uplifting tale by the end, including a sweet romance for the protagonist with a trans girl whose family likewise can’t bring themselves to acknowledge her real self. The conclusion is a bit open for my liking, with some villains getting their comeuppance but others escaping and the wider system remaining unchallenged, but the personal arc is empowering and the #ownvoices transgender and autistic representation is phenomenal. Recommended for any readers who can stomach it.

★★★★☆

TV Review: Star Trek: Lower Decks, season 2

TV #2 of 2024:

Star Trek: Lower Decks, season 2

I’m still not fully vibing with this cartoon’s irreverent tone, but it’s improved enough in this sophomore season that I’m willing to bump my rating up a notch from last time. My biggest issue in the program’s first year was the way the narrative seemed to punish Boimler for the sort of earnest striving that would be rewarded on any other Star Trek series, and while that appears to be somewhat baked-into the Lower Decks DNA at this point, the balance is eased just enough with occasional wins for him and a greater share of setbacks for the rest of the Cerritos crew to placate my objections on that front.

I think the humor has settled into itself too, especially when it comes to pinning a punchline on an esoteric reference from earlier in Trek history — normally either TNG or one of its sister shows of that era, like when Mariner guesses DS9‘s “sniper rifle that can shoot through walls” during a game of Clue or asks, “Is he still a salamander?” when told that Voyager‘s Tom Paris will be visiting the ship. I particularly love the new Tamarian bridge officer, whose comments like “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” represent not an incomprehensible linguistic divide as they did for Picard, but merely a bilingual periodically forgetting to code-switch into Federation Standard.

On the one hand, I suppose such callbacks are inherently alienating for audiences who don’t get them, rendering this show less effective — or at least less funny — for anyone who hasn’t seen / doesn’t remember the referenced episodes. On the other hand, it’s super-validating for my personal decision to watch through this entire franchise in release order from the very beginning!

So, sure. Four-out-of-five stars for an animated comedy that’s making me laugh pretty reliably in this second run, coupled with some light character growth and a slightly more elaborate ongoing plot than just Mariner keeping her family connections a secret. Hit the sonic showers, everybody.

★★★★☆

TV Review: Echo, season 1

TV #1 of 2024:

Echo, season 1

I’m torn in my reaction to this premiere ‘Marvel Spotlight’ production — a designation meant to indicate a series that, while canonical to the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe, should stand on its own for any audience and focus on smaller-scale personal stakes that don’t majorly affect any ongoing storylines. (Looking back, you can probably identify plenty of previous franchise entries that should retroactively qualify for the label as well.) The problem is, it’s not really true of this particular program, which is after all a spinoff of 2021’s Hawkeye miniseries that reuses a villain from Netflix’s old Daredevil run. The first episode is a jumbled mess that tries to recap a few key points from those earlier shows, present new material as backstory for the anti-heroine lead, and establish what all she’s been up to in the meantime. It sets Maya’s own plot off rather poorly, and I can’t imagine it tracking well for any viewer meeting her or her ‘uncle’ for the first time here.

And that’s a shame, because Echo has a lot going for it that becomes clearer after that debut hour. It’s specifically a great showcase for the main character’s Choctaw community and her status as a deaf woman, with she and her family primarily communicating via ASL throughout the series. It’s also a superhero adventure that emphasizes channeling the strength of one’s ancestors, which is a pretty neat metaphor for the genre. Overall this is a welcome addition of representation to the MCU, and I hope that fans won’t take the Spotlight tag (or the weakness of that initial episode) as an excuse to skip it. It certainly delivers on the visceral street-level brawler feel of the Defenders era, which has been somewhat lacking in the CGI-superpowered extravaganzas that Marvel has more typically been delivering of late.

On the other hand, even in its stronger sequences, this title has some issues. The antagonist’s motivation seemingly comes and goes, as does Maya’s, although she’s in reactive mode so often that it doesn’t register as much. The short length cuts against the effectiveness of the piece as well, since four or five episodes isn’t nearly long enough to get to know the supporting cast, despite some solid performances there. We do get gestures at arcs for a couple characters, but generally, they aren’t fleshed out well enough to land with much impact. You can practically feel the studio meddling at times, like front-ending certain cameos, when it’s inevitably the quieter moments that help sell the project the most. Ultimately, then, three stars seems fair for a program that starts rough, noticeably improves, but ends while it feels like it’s still figuring out what exactly it wants to be.

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

★★★☆☆

Book Review: The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet by Jeff Goodell

Book #5 of 2024:

The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet by Jeff Goodell

A harrowing look at the impact of climate change on human and non-human existence, really contextualizing how innocuous-sounding figures like a few degrees of global average temperature increase are in fact catastrophic for us. Author Jeff Goodell carefully walks readers through the science of rising heat levels, including the cascading effects on living bodies and on the public infrastructure that wasn’t built to withstand such forces. People quickly weaken and die from exposure in a heat wave itself, but the weather patterns have less visible ramifications as well: power outages become more common, leading to further deaths as residents are stuck inside hot buildings without relief, while rates of miscarriages and acts of violence go up, and so on. Soaring temperatures also force animal populations to migrate if possible in pursuit of the ‘goldilocks zone’ they’ve evolved to inhabit, which along with polar glacial melting can unleash devastating pathogenic outbreaks upon humanity.

This book addresses all of that and beyond with heartbreaking real-life examples, but it moreover emphasizes the uneven distribution of harm. When local conditions render air-conditioning (and backup generators) a near-necessity to live in particular areas, for instance, those who can afford to have them — or to flee — will obviously be less affected than those who cannot. Existing privilege gaps are reproduced and magnified, and the writer urges us not to grow accustomed to these the way society has acclimated to a certain number of expected annual casualties due to gun violence, or car accidents, or COVID-19. As in those domains, there are parties responsible for recklessly endangering our world, and steps they could yet be taking to start mitigating the damage. Otherwise, it’s all going up in flames.

[Content warning for slavery, racism, and death of a young child.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse edited by John Joseph Adams

Book #4 of 2024:

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse edited by John Joseph Adams

This 2008 anthology collects 22 short stories about life after various apocalyptic scenarios, all but one of which had been previously published elsewhere (although Stephen King’s plague journal “The End of the Whole Mess” was the only entry I’d read before). The sole new contribution turns out to be one of my favorites: “Judgment Passed” by Jerry Oltion, in which a group of astronauts return to earth only to discover that biblical Armageddon has come and gone in the time they’ve been away, and all other humans are now presumably in either heaven or hell. Another highlight for me — and a reminder that I still need to track down the original collection it’s drawn from — is “Speech Sounds” by Octavia E. Butler, about an unraveling society where most people have lost the ability to either form or comprehend language.

As those selections demonstrate, the exact doomsday premises vary quite a bit from author to author, which is a good approach for a work like this. There’s also a range of tones here; although it’s easy to see this genre as exclusively a subset of horror, I tend to prefer the exercises that find some dawning hope amid the bleakness, rather than just humanity’s futile last gasps.

Overall, though, like many other anthologies, it’s a mixed lot quality-wise. I rated every individual title as I read through them, and the mean and mode ratings both came out to 3-out-of-5 stars for me. That’s a score that indicates I like a particular piece more than I dislike it but have not really been blown away, which is true of this book as a whole as well. I’d still recommend it for fans of this sort of fiction, but it’s not uniformly strong across its contents.

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

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Orion and King Arthur by Ben Bova

Book #3 of 2024:

Orion and King Arthur by Ben Bova (Orion #6)

This is a pretty good rendition of the classic Arthurian legend, especially in its emotional build-up to the king’s fated tragic end. (I like the initial wrinkle of him meeting Beowulf in his younger days, too.) It’s a little stranger as an Orion story, though, even setting aside the 2011 novel’s status as the de facto conclusion to that loose sci-fi saga in the wake of author Ben Bova’s death a few years ago.

Our reincarnated / time-traveling super-soldier is in his usual position of remembering bits of his past lives and future earth history, including some of Arthur’s coming exploits, and he’s set his will against the all-powerful Creators who want the young ruler destroyed. But he’s operating outside of a specific mission here, protecting his liege lord for seemingly no other reason than that he’s taken a liking to the guy, and neither the character nor the wider text offers any rebuttal to his opponents’ claims that King Arthur’s continued survival will disrupt the space-time continuum. There’s also an odd lack of engagement with the issue that in reality, everything concerning the knights of the Round Table is more myth than history. Whereas in his previous adventures, the protagonist could at least be implicitly on the side of keeping the timeline aligned to established events, he’s now fighting for a fiction that no one ever acknowledges. It’s quite a turnaround for the writer who once included a lengthy afterword to Vengeance of Orion justifying the historical plausibility of his version of the Trojan War.

Overall, that’s perhaps a minor flaw. The larger matter holding me back from loving this title is the repetitive nature of its prose. It’s not just that every plot problem / step on Arthur’s path seems to be resolved by Orion as his squire planting a suggestion in the right ear, or that the combat sequences tend to fall into the same predictable action beats again and again. We also get frequent rehashed summaries of recent developments or explanations of returning characters, as though we hadn’t just read about them a chapter ago. It feels almost like a serialized broadcast, providing regular reminders to people who have been away from the work for a while or might have missed an installment, but I can find no evidence that the novel was actually written or originally published that way. It’s a very strange writing choice that interrupts the narrative flow every time.

The book represents a functional finale for Orion and his star-crossed goddess lover — here cast as the mystical Lady of the Lake — though it’s not clear whether Bova intended it to be one, and the story itself appears to suggest a route for eventual further sequels. But this is as fine a place as any for us to stop following the demigod’s winding journey across the eons.

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

This volume: ★★★☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Volumes ranked: 1 > 5 > 6 > 2 > 4 > 3