The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

TV Review: Bob’s Burgers, season 11

TV #59 of 2022:

Bob’s Burgers, season 11

Maybe a slight step up from the year before? Most episodes of this family cartoon remain unchallenging comfort television with a group of characters we know and love, but there’s at least some effort here to occasionally push one or another of them into unfamiliar growth territory. Like Gene accidentally locking himself in the basement in “Mr. Lonely Farts,” or Linda stumbling into her version of 127 Hours in “Die Card, or Card Trying” or getting arrested in “Sheshank Redumption”… There’s a certain darkness to these predicaments that has a real edge to it, despite the overall goofiness of the series and its well-established sitcom inelasticity of status quo. The Belchers have changed over the years, but they’ve always done so gradually and without any loss of life or limb. While that safety net remains, it feels more tenuous than it has in quite some time.

Generally, though, this is the same old program, for better or worse. “Fingers-loose” goes for a distinctive voiceover elementary noir vibe that I appreciate, but otherwise, these are conventional storylines presented straightforwardly enough. Bob’s Burgers could coast for eons with this energy, and so far, I’m still laughing along.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel

Book #192 of 2022:

Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel

There are hints in this 2009 debut novel from author Emily St. John Mandel of the talents she’d bring to later works like Station Eleven, but on the whole, it’s a bit miserable. This is a story about sad people acting inexplicably even to themselves, told in a split timeline that’s far more interesting in the past than the present. Back then: a father kidnaps his seven-year-old daughter from his ex-wife’s custody and raises her on the road, changing towns and identities again and again over the years. We experience that unusual childhood along with her, always haunted by the question of what the pair have left behind and why. It’s a pretty good hook for a plot! But it’s subordinate to the framing narrative, in which her adult self abruptly walks out on her boyfriend of six months, and he travels from NYC up to Canada to seek after her.

Eli is a terrible character, despite how relatable I found him as a linguistics graduate student fascinated by endangered languages and unable to make much headway on his thesis. Through his eyes, Lilia is nothing but a manic pixie dream girl animating his quarter-life crisis — one of two such waifs he somehow winds up being drawn to — and the book never really digs into him enough to explore why he thinks he needs to track down a partner who’s obviously over him, or what he hopes will happen once he does. I feel totally checked-out of that thread, as I do towards his other love interest, the child of an obsessive detective who was frequently absent from her life during his long quest to find the runaways.

Taking a step back, I think there’s an alternate version of this title that could have sharply critiqued male entitlement and the peripheral damage anyone careless can cause in their wake. Individual passages sometimes lean in that direction, and the writer’s prose is effective enough that I wouldn’t rate this any lower than three-out-of-five stars overall. But it is very clearly an early attempt from an artist who would luckily go on to do better.

[Content warning for domestic abuse and suicide.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Star Wars: Brotherhood by Mike Chen

Book #191 of 2022:

Star Wars: Brotherhood by Mike Chen

A good but not great Star Wars novel, taking place after Anakin and Padme get married at the end of Episode II but before he takes on Ahsoka as his padawan in the Clone Wars movie. The premise / goal here seems twofold: to show Obi-Wan and his own former apprentice adjusting to their new status as equals now that the latter has been promoted to a full Jedi Knight, and to finally explain what Kenobi meant in Episode III when he said, “That business on Cato Neimoidia doesn’t count” as one of the times the younger man saved his life.

Yes, this story is set partially in the heart of Trade Federation territory, and I actually think it does a pretty decent job of deepening the characterization of that faction and establishing a viewpoint for all the Neimoidians who aren’t its members and reject its tactics. Readers likely still won’t side with their grievances against the Galactic Core, but they at least feel better defined than they ever have on screen. The text falters more in depicting its nominally central relationship, however, given that the “brothers” wind up spending most of the book apart from one another until the obligatory heroics at the end. I’d honestly say there’s more insight here into Skywalker managing his new secret marriage and his first robotic replacement limb, rather than his shifting interpersonal dynamic with his old master.

As usual for this franchise’s spin-off works, there are a few too many protagonists thrown into the mix, when a simpler narrative probably would have helped clarify and strengthen the most important elements. It’s definitely a fun read overall, with Obi-Wan up to his old detective tricks again and meeting Asajj Ventress for the first time, but it’s not going to radically reorient your understanding of key series figures or events or anything.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott

Book #190 of 2022:

Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott

It’s apparent early on that there are two opposing threads in this story, and while I hoped they would eventually align and synergize, the narrative never really gets there for me. The stronger element is the #ownvoices presentation of Russian Jewish history, specifically concerning the pogroms of the early twentieth century, in conjunction with nods to traditional Judaic folklore of dybbuks, golems, and the like. Then against this backdrop, the weaker main plot includes two modern descendants of Baba Yaga who inherit her wandering chicken-footed house, and the villain who comes after them in search of it.

The latter piece falters in part due to a lack of clear worldbuilding. I don’t entirely mind author GennaRose Nethercott’s decision to move the fabled crone forward a few centuries, but both her inclusion and the overall mythic angle of the text sets up an expectation that the Baba Yaga legend itself will matter. Surely, a reader might reasonably think, her great-great-grandchildren will discover their heritage and be astonished! Instead, she turns out to be simply an old woman like any other, who once worked a wonder to transform and animate her home in a moment of severe anguish — a feat we are told vaguely has been attested in other such stressful situations around the world. Her scions do have powers of their own — one sibling to bring smaller inanimate things to life and her brother to flawlessly mimic the mannerisms of anyone he meets — but they are known from the start and likewise not incorporated into any larger conception of how magic is supposed to work here. It’s hard to worry about what might happen next, when there’s never any firm sense of what the rules are.

The characters themselves are also a problem, though. The stakes against them seem fairly meaningless, since all the bad guy wants to do is destroy the house they just found out about, and he’s too flat an antagonist to take seriously, even after the explanatory late reveal of his true nature. And beyond escaping him and keeping the hut safe, what do our protagonists even desire for themselves? Well, one is mostly trying to ignore his guilt over a dead friend (misplaced, in my opinion), while his sister is angsty about her attraction to a statue she ensorcelled and worried that the formerly-stone girl is being forced by the spell to reciprocate her affections.

In other words, these are all pretty petty and juvenile concerns that a good conversation could probably clear up, and the dramatic crux of the novel involves basically just that, along with the overdue and perfunctory answers about their ancestor. I hate how negative this sounds, because I could tell how the debut writer had poured her heart into the historical sections even before I saw an interview mentioning her own family’s experience with antisemitism in the region. And I would still call it a good book overall: a 3-star “I liked it” on the Goodreads scale. But the better parts are severely undermined by the framework around them.

★★★☆☆

TV Review: Dead to Me, season 3

TV #58 of 2022:

Dead to Me, season 3

The first year of this show started off relatively grounded and serious before escalating wildly into a succession of ridiculous soap-opera twists, which then took center stage in season 2. This final run seems aimed to split the difference, with more of the identical twin / murder / Greek mafia / lying-to-the-police hijinks placed alongside a major cancer diagnosis, but I’ve found myself largely checked out throughout — unable to either enjoy the wacky comedy in such a somber context or invest again emotionally in characters who have so thoroughly established themselves as clowns.

I might feel differently if I could have seen these last ten episodes closer to when the previous batch aired, but the two-and-a-half-year delay — brought on by COVID filming difficulties and star Christina Applegate’s own health concerns — really sunk how much I both cared and remembered about the series, and there’s not enough effort in these final scripts to ever get me back on-board. Watching this in the end became something of a chore, and that’s not the note you want any story to go out on.

[Content warning for gore and alcohol abuse including drunk driving.]

This season: ★★☆☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Seasons ranked: 2 > 1 > 3

Book Review: The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin

Book #189 of 2022:

The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin (Earthsea #3)

The Earthsea Cycle was originally presented as a trilogy, published from 1968 to 1972, and in that context, I think this concluding novel is a bit of a disappointment. It’s heavy on mysticism but light on plot or detailed worldbuilding, and while it structurally mirrors the first book in certain ways, only with the former child protagonist now an old man in his full power, it largely elides the stronger middle volume. I also don’t care much for our newest hero, whose primary contribution to the current quest is to gaze in wonderment at the archmage as the two embark along their journey. At best, we are simply asked to accept on faith that he is a special young person with an important destiny ahead.

The premise is solid in conception and creepily conveyed: from the most distant regions away from the wizard’s home, word is spreading about people losing their magic, sometimes to the point of insisting that they never really had any at all. (I’m reminded of the endtimes in Narnia’s The Last Battle, an apocalyptic tone that fits the overall eeriness here.) As the man and the boy pursue these rumors across Earthsea’s waters, they travel beyond the islands they know and ultimately into the land of the dead, the depiction of which seems likely to have helped inspire Garth Nix’s Sabriel and its sequels. This could be a touchstone for other genre works like The Magicians in its thematic treatment of depression, as well.

It’s all effective enough, and provides some fine material for when the series would later resume with Tehanu in 1990. But to the extent that this title succeeds, it’s all down to atmosphere and philosophical takeaway, rather than anything particularly interesting on a story or character level.

[Content warning for drug abuse and slavery.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Hickory Dickory Dock by Agatha Christie

Book #188 of 2022:

Hickory Dickory Dock by Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot #27)

A weaker Poirot entry. The inciting event of a string of petty thefts, vandalism, and related mischief at a youth hostel seems well below the Belgian detective’s usual standards for investigation, and his premonition that the case will soon prove more serious — as of course it does, when the suspects and witnesses start dying — feels more like a random lucky guess than any true deductive insight. Likewise his triumphant moment later on, predicting that a certain dead man would have left a letter with his lawyer confirming the culprit’s identity. With such narrative shortcuts, it’s not a very satisfying mystery overall, and the solution is pretty convoluted and far-fetched by the end, even for Agatha Christie. The title bears no relation to the plot, either, although at least the author’s US publishers changed it to the cooler-sounding Hickory Dickory Death.

[Content warning for ableism and racism.]

★★☆☆☆

Book Review: The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard

Book #187 of 2022:

The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard (Lays of the Hearth-Fire #1)

A wonderful warm hug of a novel, and probably my top read of the year. It’s rare for a 900-page fantasy tome to feel so cozy, let alone to forgo any significant romance or acts of violence throughout its duration. But this self-published 2019 work is remarkable in any number of ways, each more endearingly quaint than the last. I am honestly not even sure that I would say it has a plot, although events do gradually unfold in support of the central character arc: a quietly effective middle-aged civil servant belatedly earning (or realizing he already has) the love and admiration of his colleagues, his far-off relatives, and his boss.

It’s an incredibly slow unveiling. Cliopher Mdang, personal secretary to the emperor of the world, spends the first quarter of the text escorting his liege on an incognito holiday, the result of a breach-of-protocol invitation blurted out upon a stroke of insight about how lonely the other man must be in his peerless existence under elaborate courtly taboos, unable to be touched or looked directly in the eye. The two have known each other for decades — or possibly even millennia, as time has fractured in the cataclysmic backstory and now passes slower in some parts of the empire than others — but their relationship has previously only ever been professional. We essentially get to meet His Radiancy the individual as Kip does, whilst simultaneously getting a feel for the viewpoint protagonist himself and the dazzlingly intricate worldbuilding details that author Victoria Goddard has devised for the various cultures of the setting.

The tone here is something like The Goblin Emperor crossed with The West Wing. Or the musical Hamilton, if it weren’t a tragedy and showed its title figure as more in touch with his island origins like Disney’s Moana. It turns out that in his rise through the levels of government, our hero has been subtly reworking that system, pushing for law and policy changes that will contribute to a more equitable society. Inspired by his egalitarian homeland, he’s rooted out corruption, instituted a universal basic income, improved the postal and transportation services, and implemented countless further such ideas that in an aggregation of small ways have functionally revolutionized the realm. It’s a rejection of grimdark cynicism, a hopepunk ode to the fundamental principle of good governance’s ability to help people, and it’s absolutely riveting to see in action, especially once its unassuming architect starts being openly acknowledged and rewarded for it.

This is also a story about cultural conflicts: about coming from a small backwater province to the capital of the known universe and facing misunderstanding and scorn for the customs of home. About keeping those folkways kindled inside as a guiding beacon, and ultimately proving that oral traditions are not primitive but rich and meaningful and preserved over generations as a powerful representation of identity. About finding a way to make Kip’s family understand why he left and everything he’s accomplished in the wider civilization, and about his personal journey to realize how he needs to be a better advocate for himself in their eyes.

Above all, I would say that this is a book about being seen and accepted and loved for who you are. The evolving dynamic between Cliopher and the Last Emperor is not romantic — and I’ve heard that in the new sequel, the gentle bureaucrat is more explicitly characterized as asexual — but it is deeply intimate and a model of trusting fealty as the lord and his loyal servant come to reveal more and more of themselves to one another. The meaning of the title is twofold: Kip both serves as the metaphorical hands of the Emperor in interpreting and enacting his will across the kingdom and yearns to be able to grasp His Radiancy’s actual hands in friendship. The catharsis of when he finally does, along with several other key moments in the long path there, is emotional and soothing and genuinely heartfelt. Adults being competent at their jobs and earnestly decent to the fellow souls in their lives! Is that what people mean when they describe genre fiction as wish-fulfilment?

This has been my introduction to Goddard as a writer, but I am delighted to report that it is one of *22* available stories in this setting, with more announced as forthcoming on her website. Not all appear to be as lengthy as this one, and my general impression is that they function like Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series as a loose configuration with many possible entry points. I will certainly be reading more of them posthaste.

[Content warning for cannibalism]

★★★★★

Book Review: Even Though I Knew the End by C. L. Polk

Book #186 of 2022:

Even Though I Knew the End by C. L. Polk

Like most novellas, this fantasy story feels like it probably could have been improved by developing its plots, themes, and worldbuilding at greater length, but in the short space allotted, it gets by just fine on pure premise and tone. It’s a queer supernatural female-led noir in an alternate 1940s Chicago, starring a private-eye sorceress we come to learn is living her last days before the expiration of the deal she made with the devil to save her brother’s life at the cost of her soul. When a demon client offers to cancel her chit in exchange for help tracking down a vicious serial killer, she dares to wonder if she might have a future with her angel-possessed girlfriend after all.

If that sounds like a lot, well… it is! Again, there’s a little too much material for the scant page count here, and while it’s a breezily enjoyable read overall, only the heroine’s sexuality — and to a lesser extent, the historical setting — really seems to do anything to distinguish this title from the urban fantasy genre at large. I like it, but I haven’t been drawn in as I was to author C. L. Polk’s earlier novel Witchmark, and I don’t know that I’d necessarily return for any sequels if this one ever turns into a series.

[Content warning for homophobia, institutionalization, electroshock therapy, gun violence, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Seasparrow by Kristin Cashore

Book #185 of 2022:

Seasparrow by Kristin Cashore (Graceling Realm #5)

The loose Graceling series moves at unusual rhythms, both on the macro level of an ostensibly-cohesive ongoing saga and on the micro level within its individual books. These stories regularly zig where the rest of the fantasy genre tends to zag, and while the effect doesn’t always work for me as a reader, it succeeds here as it did back in Bitterblue by focusing narrowly on one soul processing a lifetime of abuse.

Our latest protagonist is Hava, the queen’s half-sister and spy who grew up witnessing their father the king inflict his terrible passions for rape and torture upon her mother. Long after his death, she’s still clearly traumatized by her childhood experiences, not to mention prickly, skittish, and likely somewhere on the neurodivergent spectrum. In other words, she’s the kind of character I absolutely love to read, and possibly relate to far too well. (When she wonders how other folks make friends so easily, or why anyone would want to be friends with her? When she wants to arrange for everyone on the expedition to get warm new coats so long as they don’t know the gift is from her? Whenever she panics at someone’s kindness and involuntarily puts up a magical illusion of herself turned into a statue? I know those feelings, more or less.)

As for the plot, we’re following up on the events of Winterkeep, with some political intrigue and worries about the dawning technologies for this world’s equivalent of nuclear weaponry. But mostly, we’re just observing the heroine on an ill-fated sea voyage and its eventual aftermath, going through the daily tasks aboard the ship and gradually learning to let people (and a certain few telepathic blue foxes) back into her heart again. If you don’t enjoy slow-paced nautical fiction, then this may not be the novel for you. But placing a tight and introspective character study in that environment is a great structural choice on author Kristin Cashore’s part, and I’ve personally relished the journey.

[Content warning for amputation, gore, drowning, homophobia, and death of a baby animal.]

★★★★☆