The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Dark One: Forgotten by Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells

Book #40 of 2023:

Dark One: Forgotten by Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells

[Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with the first author.]

I’m torn between three and four stars for this title. I have enough critiques and reservations that I think I’ll go with the lower rating, but I have enjoyed it, for the most part. It’s an audiobook original, presented in the form of a six-part podcast series, telling the story of a missing-person cold case (subsequently confirmed to be murder) whose victim seems to have been entirely forgotten. Not just lost in the system: the police officers don’t recall investigating and the dead woman’s surviving friends and family can barely even remember her. As the college student protagonists pursue the matter decades later, they uncover similar slayings, the work of a still-active serial killer with the supernatural ability to be utterly forgettable. In the process, of course, they also learn that they’ve forgotten things they already know about him and his crimes, and ultimately start becoming unmemorable to others themselves.

But let me back up a second. I’ll try to avoid the obvious memory jokes, but if that premise sounds somewhat familiar, you’re not mistaken. From the movie Memento to novels like The Sudden Appearance of Hope or The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, there have been plenty of tales presenting fantastical riffs on something like perpetual amnesia, and this one struggles to feel distinctive within that genre. Doctor Who literally just put out its official Redacted podcast last year about people being erased from history and forgotten, which by coincidence — I assume — hits a lot of the same plot beats. (Speaking of that august sci-fi franchise, it gets namechecked in this project when the main heroine reflects that she’s seen every episode and wishes the Doctor were there to help her sort out the weirdness. But she makes no mention of the villains the Silence whose power resembles what she’s up against, and she uses he/him pronouns to refer to the Time Lord, despite the fact that actress Jodie Whittaker would have been playing the role for most of her adult life in 2022 when this all takes place. It’s an odd authorial/editorial misstep to find in a narrative that specifically cites the program for inspiration.)

Anyway. The storyline here is largely predictable but not bad. I haven’t read the 2021 Dark One graphic novel, which I understand is more of a straightforward portal fantasy to another realm, yet I suppose that puts me in the same headspace as the characters, who are getting oblique hints of a larger Lovecraftian mystery behind their adversary but no real explanations of the wider worldbuilding. I think it still more or less works as a standalone piece regardless, although I guess I should get around to the previous volume at some point now. All in all, I’d say that this has been a successful experiment in medium/style for the two coauthors, if only I hadn’t remembered seeing so many of its best ideas elsewhere beforehand.

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: Star Trek: Enterprise, season 2

TV #9 of 2023:

Star Trek: Enterprise, season 2

I will grudgingly allow that this sophomore season represents a degree of improvement over its shaky predecessor. While the early 2000s Trek prequel series remains the weakest iteration of the franchise that I’ve seen to date, the typical episode in this second year generally approaches the baseline quality level of the previous shows. In other words, the writers are figuring out how to tell decent science-fiction stories with this cast, even though those characters remain jingoistic and xenophobic in a way that doesn’t always feel like an intentional creative choice. They assert that their human morality gives them the right to meddle with the rest of the universe’s intelligent species, and make no mention of how it doesn’t seem to have progressed much from America’s attitude of a century-and-a-half before (most egregiously in the episode where Trip is dumbfounded by the concept of beings with a third gender and refuses to use the correct pronouns for it, which the script frustratingly treats as a brave stance on his part). Sometimes, the parallels are so direct that it hurts, as when the season finale introduces a surprise attack on earth framed very much like 9/11 — although I imagine I’ll have more to say about that as it influences the plot going forward.

The hour when Archer is on trial before a Klingon tribunal is pretty good, as is the one where he helps negotiate a Vulcan/Andorian ceasefire. Against these, however, you’d have to weigh the absurdities around space princess Padma Lakshmi in “Precious Cargo,” or how the camera continues to sexually objectify Hoshi and T’Pol, gratuitously filming them naked or nearly so on multiple occasions. The latter figure, easily the second-most important role on the program, additionally sees her telepathic assault from 1×17 revisited and its subtext as rape reemphasized, all for a clumsy but probably well-meaning AIDS allegory. It’s a show with a lot of problems.

But I’m halfway through it at this point, and I’ve heard that it gets even better later on. I’m not happy that it’s taking this long to reach that stage, especially so soon after the serialized highs of Deep Space Nine, but at least things are moving in the right direction. Two-and-a-half stars, rounded up.

[Content warning for gun violence and suicide.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Mysteries of Thorn Manor by Margaret Rogerson

Book #39 of 2023:

Mysteries of Thorn Manor by Margaret Rogerson

A fun novella-length follow-up to Margaret Rogerson’s earlier fantasy novel Sorcery of Thorns. With minimal plot and a fairly narrow scope, it’s not a full-on sequel — she describes it on Goodreads as “author written fanfiction” — but simply a chance to spend a little while longer with the charming characters of the volume before, now firmly and goofily in love. Swapping the gothic Garth Nix mode of its predecessor for more of a domestic Diana Wynne Jones vibe, this story finds the protagonists dealing with a fusty household curse that seems to be punishing them (with minor nuisances like locked doors and stormy weather on the manor grounds) for not observing the proper courting protocols in their new relationship. There are still demons and murder and such in the background premise, but overall, it’s just a cozy interlude where the heroes get to grow even closer with one another whilst continuing to upend traditional gender roles in their dynamic. Although I do hope for a legitimate sequel someday, this title is everything I could want from a bonus epilogue to book one.

★★★★☆

Book Review: Shōgun by James Clavell

Book #38 of 2023:

Shōgun by James Clavell (Asian Saga #1)

I went into this 1975 bestseller somewhat skeptically, both for its length at 1152 pages and for its potential Orientalism, being a white British writer’s take on feudal Japan circa the early 17th century. And it is firmly a work of historical fiction, albeit one based upon the life of the first Englishman to visit the island nation and the local warlord who rose to power around that time. Yet author James Clavell seems to have done his research and approached his subject with care and respect, such that the various technical inaccuracies tend to register as deliberate creative choices and not anything especially stereotypical or offensive (at least to this white American reader a few decades later).

I think it helps that Clavell presents us with a large cast of fleshed-out characters, most of them Japanese, with clear differences of philosophy and temperament across the lot. While the novel engages in some broad East/West dichotomies, neither side of the cultural exchange is portrayed as wholly good or bad, and the primary arc of the piece involves the European protagonist gaining a deeper understanding and appreciation for the people around him. Likewise, his own reputation gradually shifts from that of an uncivilized curiosity to a strange but honorable outsider, particularly after he agrees to start bathing more than once a year.

Against that framework, the story is a slow-burning coil of intrigues and oblique threats punctuated by sudden outbursts of graphic violence a la Game of Thrones or Red Rising, with tensions among rival samurai factions as well as the respective representatives of the Anglican, Catholic, and Shinto religions. Plots are hatched, vengeance is wreaked, seppuku is required, and honor is upheld. It’s definitely a romanticized view of the era, but as an immersive and swashbuckling adventure, it holds up pretty nicely.

[Content warning for slavery, rape, torture, suicide, gun violence, gore, pedophilia, racism, and homophobia.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: The Redemption of Althalus by David and Leigh Eddings

Book #37 of 2023:

The Redemption of Althalus by David and Leigh Eddings

A good fantasy novel but ultimately not a great one. I still like it in parts, just not nearly as much as I did in high school, and I suspect that this will probably be the last time I ever reread the thing, particularly given its length (almost 800 pages in my paperback copy). While the core of the story remains sound, detailing how an incorrigible rogue improbably winds up as divine champion and repeatedly outsmarts his goddess’s enemies, in practice it all feels too easy for the protagonist and his band of allies. They’re rarely significantly challenged, and the bad guys walk into their clever schemes at every turn. Even the structure, wherein Althalus recruits his team one-by-one and then they each take the spotlight to pick off their respective counterpart on the opposite side, seems too pat and preordained.

There’s a weird vein of gender essentialism running through the volume, as well. Although it’s arguably an improvement over the minimal female representation in the likes of Tolkien, the women in this text tend to be characterized as petulant brats whose emotions must be tiptoed around, and a lot of talk goes into pairing them up with the default romantic partners, cloyingly referred to “that boy-people and girl-people stuff” throughout. The ensuing relationships have as little spark or tension as the main plot, and certainly offer no room for queerness and/or asexuality to exist within this setting: we are told of the deity simply that “it’s part of her nature to bring boys and girls together.” Even compared to other genre books from the year 2000, it’s a bit disappointing on that front.

The tale does have its charms, from a talking cat to time-travel and doors that can open to anywhere in the world. It includes a heavy deal of military strategy, if that’s your thing, and I especially enjoy the more folkloric sections depicting the hero’s time as a thief before his titular ‘redemption.’ But the flaws are more obvious with a few decades of hindsight.

[Content warning for ableism, fatphobia, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

Book #36 of 2023:

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

Kaiju are giant monsters like Godzilla, the subject of a thriving genre of fiction in Japan and elsewhere over the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond. The premise of this story posits that such creatures exist in a parallel world, accessible via nuclear energy — either from engineered explosions on our end, or naturally as part of the inherent biological paradigm on theirs (the stuff that feeds their plasma breath). The protagonist is recruited to join the international organization that maintains an outpost in that other earth to study the beasts, although it’s so clandestine that the exact nature of the job can’t be shared before arrival beyond a vague mention of fieldwork and animal rights.

The ensuing tale takes a heavy and acknowledged cue from Jurassic Park, right down to the dangerous fallout when someone’s capitalistic greed interferes with the regular safety protocols. It’s not the most complicated plot — when the antagonistic figure from the beginning of the novel pops up again around the middle, it’s easy to predict he’ll be the eventual big bad — but it’s also not aiming to be. In an afterword, author John Scalzi likens the book to a pop song, a bit of lightness that he needed as a palate-cleanser after living through 2020 and the end of the Trump presidency in general. It’s quippy and perhaps a bit self-satisfied over how cool everything’s supposed to be, but it’s undeniably pretty fun. It feels ready-made to be adapted into a decent popcorn flick someday.

The writer’s casual approach to gender diversity is appreciated, too. The main character is depicted in first-person perspective and never explicitly identified by pronoun or other gendered description, representing an ambiguous blank that anything could be reasonably read into. A new colleague uses they/them for themself, and our narrator Jamie has a passing thought regarding another acquaintance’s deadname. Such cues signal these folks’ identities and the rest of the cast’s acceptance of them without taking over the narrative, allowing for welcome representation in the midst of the gratuitous kaiju element.

[Content warning for gun violence and gore.]

★★★★☆

TV Review: Classic Doctor Who, season 5

TV #8 of 2023:

Classic Doctor Who, season 5

I guess I have to concede, based on the average ratings I give its seven component serials below, that this season of old Doctor Who is still narrowly more good than great overall. But it’s easily my favorite of this rewatch yet, with some fun minor continuity across it: The Web of Fear is a direct sequel to The Abominable Snowmen, revisiting its antagonist, minions, and a helpful ally after four decades away (or a few weeks, for the Doctor and his friends), and the first and last adventures of the year both find the TARDIS team going up against Cybermen. For a modern fan, this run also introduces the sonic screwdriver, Ice Warriors, and major recurring character Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, each of which is neat to see debut even though absolutely nothing at the time indicates they’ll have any future importance to the franchise.

Victoria is in most of these stories, and she’s not my favorite companion, since her role seems often reduced to a screaming hostage and/or wet blanket. But dependable Jamie remains for the physical action, the fish-out-of-water / culture clash element, and his verbal sparring with the Doctor, and in the final installment, brave sheltered neurodivergent genius Zoe stows away to join the crew as well. The two of them will be with the Second Doctor for the remainder of his tenure, and she’s already showing more personality and initiative than her predecessor. While I don’t remember the following season too clearly, I’m feeling optimistic that this is where Classic Who is really settling into a groove of consistent quality sci-fi.

Serials ranked from worst to best:

★★☆☆☆
FURY FROM THE DEEP (5×29 – 34)

★★★☆☆
THE ICE WARRIORS (5×11 – 5×16)
THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMEN (5×5 – 10)

★★★★☆
THE WEB OF FEAR (5×23 – 5×28)
THE WHEEL IN SPACE (5×35 – 5×40)
THE ENEMY OF THE WORLD (5×17 – 5×22)
THE TOMB OF THE CYBERMEN (5×1 – 5×4)

Overall rating for the season: ★★★☆☆

Book Review: Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Book #35 of 2023:

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I went through a brief Heinlein phase in high school, and I suspect that if I had read this book back then, I probably would have liked it better. (Even today, I’ll note that I prefer it over Slaughterhouse-Five, the only other Vonnegut work that I’ve read, but that’s unfortunately not saying very much.) In their favor, both golden-age science-fiction writers have plenty of interesting ideas and occasional pieces of beauty that stop me in my tracks. Here, for instance, it’s the last rites in the fictional religion of Bokononism, each sentence intoned by the officiant and repeated back by the person who’s dying:

“God made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, ‘Sit up!’
‘See all I’ve made,’ said God, ‘the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.’
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God.
Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly couldn’t have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn’t even get to sit up and look around.
I got so much, and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honor!”

The ritual exchange is perhaps a bit simple, but it strikes a chord with me much as elements of Stranger in a Strange Land’s own weird faith once did, and is easily my favorite part of this novel. Against that, however, are the other ways that this author resembles his contemporary that gradually turned me off the latter: the smugly self-satisfied perspective of the intellectual able-bodied white man, so confident that everyone else in the universe is his inferior and present only for his amusement and/or sexual satisfaction. Again and again, the narrator of this story is casually, cruelly bigoted in the way he perceives others (or specifically, Others). He claims to have fallen in love with a woman upon seeing a photograph of her. He reacts to everything about her dark-skinned island nation with a wry disdain. He brushes off the arrival of a little person on his plane with the mental note that such folk* “are, after all, diversions for silly or quiet times.”

I’ll grant that this title is a broad satire — mostly on religion, but eventually on the possibility of modern technology and human error inadvertently causing the apocalypse — and that protagonists are not necessarily the mouthpieces of their creators. Yet overall, I’ve found this to be an unpleasantly mean-spirited comedy, in a way that doesn’t feel entirely intentional. It’s funny at times, in its meandering plot! And the Bokononist teaching that certain souls are intertwined by fate reminds me pleasingly of how Stephen King treats the concept of ka and ka-tets in his Dark Tower series. But in the final judgment, this is one classic that’s left me cold as ice-nine.

*Vonnegut even uses a term now generally considered a slur for people with dwarfism, although I’m not sure how that usage might have been different in 1963

[Content warning for suicide.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Sabriel by Garth Nix

Book #34 of 2023:

Sabriel by Garth Nix (The Old Kingdom #1)

A thoroughly excellent modern fantasy classic, published in 1995 but just as enjoyable now upon my umpteenth reread. (I can’t remember when I first encountered it, but I do recall thinking in amazement that it was like a written version of the Diablo games. And that assessment pretty much holds up.) I love the landscape that author Garth Nix has constructed for this novel: a snowy realm of magic and undead terror, located just beyond the border of a more ordinary-seeming nation roughly analogous to Edwardian England. His vision of the Old Kingdom feels so distinctive and intricately-designed, with its cultural practices of Charter Magic and its seven bells of necromancy, each of which wields a different power over the revenant spirits that hear it. Even the land of the afterlife itself is rigorously defined in its precise domains and the ways that a careful adept can delve there. Yet despite this massive level of worldbuilding detail, it’s all presented to us naturalistically as the story unfolds, yielding to few of those expository asides so common in the genre.

Sabriel herself is a great protagonist, the eighteen-year-old heir to her father’s role in putting down the dead, but raised away from any danger, where he would regularly visit and train her. As a result, she gets to be both competent at her family craft and a bit of a novice to whom things must be explained, letting readers learn the rules of the world alongside her. She’s brave and overwhelmed in equal measure, and the plot that kicks off when she goes searching for her missing guardian forms a terrific introduction to the series and its tone. That journey builds nicely in scope and stakes over the course of the book, and I especially appreciate how it returns full-circle to its initial setting by the end.

And have I mentioned Mogget, the powerful eldritch monstrosity bound by the heroine’s ancestor and presently taking the form of a sardonic but loyal housecat, begrudgingly dispensing wisdom with all the usual feline mannerisms? Truly one of the top fantasy sidekicks, and all the more so when he inevitably turns loose and becomes a deadly threat in his own right.

The one element that doesn’t entirely work for me is Touchstone, the other major character who joins the party about midway through the tale. He’s too important to events for the accidental way they stumble across him here, and I wish that that introduction could have been better motivated in the text and not such a randomly lucky coincidence. The romance that develops between him and Sabriel, while hardly the focus, is likewise rather under-developed in my opinion, coming across as frustratingly perfunctory and proximity-based rather than arising due to any genuine emotions via vulnerability, trust, or shared experiences.

Those problems strike me every time I revisit this title, but in the final analysis, I think they’re minor enough to let slide. Overall it’s fantastic, and while I’ve enjoyed the sequels that Nix has continued to write over the following years, none of them in my eyes have ever quite lived up to the original, which could have easily remained or been approached as a standalone adventure. Still, I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of them all again soon.

[Content warning for gun violence, child endangerment, slavery, and gore.]

★★★★★

Book Review: Ordeal by Innocence by Agatha Christie

Book #33 of 2023:

Ordeal by Innocence by Agatha Christie

A rather silly beginning, in which we learn that the stranger who could have corroborated an accused murderer’s alibi was hit by a truck, developed a case of short-term amnesia, and promptly departed for a two-year polar expedition, thus missing the publicity about the trial and the call for him to come forward. By the time the witness and his memory both return, the prisoner has already died of pneumonia, but the poor man feels honor-bound to inform the surviving relatives of the deceased that he was innocent of killing his mother. Of course, this means that someone else in her inner circle likely murdered her instead, and over the rest of the book, they descend into mutual accusations and tense suspicion.

I do like these elements of the psychological thriller, but the effect is weakened by author Agatha Christie’s need to bind it up with her typical whodunnit plot. If the dead man were guilty after all and everyone’s relationships were soured for nothing, or if the ultimate truth never came out in the end, that would have been a bolder and more effective writing decision, in my opinion. But as presented, the reveal seems arbitrary and perfunctory, especially after the apparent culprit runs away, everyone else swiftly reconciles, and the novel closes on an abrupt marriage proposal between two characters who barely know one another but are now confessing their undying love. With such a disappointing start and finish, even the livelier middle can’t save this title from itself.

[Content warning for racism and gore.]

★★☆☆☆