The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

Book #155 of 2022:

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik (The Scholomance #3)

Because of the way that this YA fantasy trilogy has been structured, the concluding volume is at a bit of a disadvantage right from the start. Book one introduced a magical boarding school in a pocket dimension where Lovecraftian monsters feed on unwary students, and book two brought the conflict there to a crescendo as our prickly heroine and her classmates / reluctant friends approached the end of their senior year and battled their way through to the graduation portal. When this final novel picks up immediately afterwards with El back in the relatively safe and mundane real world, it’s hard not to long for the dark and claustrophobic halls of the familiar Scholomance setting and the perpetual underlying thrum of tension that shepherded us through the previous stories.

There are a few continuing plot points — some drama with the enclave wizard communities here on the outside; the old family prophecy that the protagonist is going to turn evil someday; her trauma and grief over the companion who stayed behind in the last title and is now presumed dead yet eternally suffering — but in general, this is a big reset for the series. New characters, concerns, and narrative rhythms are all required, and it’s a somewhat uneven transition until author Naomi Novik finds her footing again. Which she eventually does, to be clear! Once this finale settles into itself, it’s every bit as fun and violent as what’s come before, and it furthers the streak of righteous indignation at unjust systems that fueled El’s actions at school.

The writer has saved some wickedly Sandersonian worldbuilding twists for the last, as the whole enterprise of conventional magic in this universe turns out to rest on exploited children to a degree we never could have realized, and Galadriel Higgins is the perfect catalyst for upending everything about that dynamic whilst remaining sympathetic to the privileged individuals who didn’t know any better and will inevitably be hurt by the fallout. In one great early scene, a group of people she’s rescued are flabbergasted when she declines any personal reward to instead demand as payment that they open up their beautiful enchanted gardens to the public. There’s so much about this society of sorcerers that’s cravenly transactional in a not-especially-veiled metaphor for capitalism, and I love how our viewpoint figure rejects that compulsion so utterly throughout, in an ever-escalating sense of outrage and determination to find a kinder alternative. Not since Red Rising have I cheered this much for a character ripping a civilization’s sins out at the root.

So I can forgive the meandering filler in the initial stages of this volume, like those interminable visits to one enclave after another or some weightless speculation about the nature of unreal spaces, since the endgame works so well once it finally arrives. (And El gets a new female partner too, bringing a note of queerness to her story that fits perfectly but I don’t remember being indicated beforehand.) On balance I’d have to say that this is my least favorite of the three books — I just miss the Scholomance itself so much! — but it’s a fittingly epic and satisfying conclusion to this remarkable coming-of-age saga.

[Content warning for gore.]

This volume: ★★★★☆

Overall series: ★★★★☆

Volumes ranked: 2 > 1 > 3

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TV Review: She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, season 1

TV #48 of 2022:

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, season 1

Origin story. Spinoff. Legal comedy. Rom-com. Fourth-wall-breaking commentary on typical TV and comic-book tropes. Straightforward MCU entry itself. Feminist critique of chauvinism in fandom. This first season of She-Hulk is trying to be a lot of different things all at once, and they unfortunately cut against one another in their effectiveness at times. But generally speaking: what a rush!

I’ve had a blast with this introduction to Bruce Banner’s cousin Jen, and both the looseness of the plotting and the sometimes-dodgy effects work on her are helped immeasurably by the decision to cast as charismatic an actress as Tatiana Maslany in that role. It’s the big break for the performer that Orphan Black fans have been clamoring for ever since that show ended, and her practice playing off alternate clones of herself surely helps her sell whatever motion-capture wizardry is employed for her Hulk form here. Even seven-foot tall, green, and bulging with muscles, the star has effortless chemistry with everyone else on the screen.

The plot has its ups and downs. The supporting cast could have been fleshed out better, particularly a criminally under-utilized Renée Elise Goldsberry, but the program does a great job at welcoming back into the franchise both Tim Roth as Emil Blonsky / Abomination and Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock / Daredevil — 14 and 4 years respectively since their last proper MCU outings, albeit with brief film cameos last year for each. And I appreciate how often the scripts live up to the series subtitle and center the fact that their protagonist is a working lawyer rather than a superhero, finding neat legal avenues to explore in most episodes.

I’m sure that the very meta ending is going to prove divisive, but I like it, up to a certain degree. It is definitely an unexpected and thrilling take that we haven’t seen from Marvel before, but its winking playfulness masks how the creators are essentially scoring points by critiquing their own writing decisions. There’s something a little too self-congratulatory in calling out the flaws in a story you’ve just spent nine weeks building up, you know? Like, Jen is right when she complains that the premise of a villain stealing her blood to copy her powers is overdone… but we still devoted a lot of time to the development of that angle week over week that could have been used more productively instead. If the only reason to include an element is to ultimately acknowledge that it’s a dud, why not simply steer the season in a different direction all along?

So I’m not ready to call this experiment an unmitigated success, but it mostly acquits itself — attorney pun! — and skates by on charm when it can’t. Overall, I’ve enjoyed the show’s spunky ambitions and am looking forward to a hopefully more relaxed and confident round two.

[Content warning for stalking, revenge porn, and suicide.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: After the Funeral by Agatha Christie

Book #154 of 2022:

After the Funeral by Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot #26)

The setting: a wealthy man’s funeral, at which his estranged family has gathered to hear the will, when his sister awkwardly suggests that his death of apparent illness might in fact have been a murder. The next morning, she is found brutally killed herself, with no clear motive beyond that tenuous link to her brother. Everyone’s unrelated lies and secrets form the usual red herrings, and about halfway through this book — published under the title Funerals are Fatal in the US — Hercule Poirot is brought in to investigate and resolve the case(s).

It’s another Agatha Christie story that I like but don’t love, in part because I can’t buy that a) the killer would go to the elaborate lengths eventually revealed, b) such a deception would have actually fooled anyone, or c) once pulled off successfully, it could have ever been deduced in the manner described. Even though my hunch toward a suspect proved correct, I haven’t enjoyed seeing the puzzle of this mystery come together as much as I’d prefer. The author’s typical assortment of big personalities and British class drama suffices to entertain, but the spark exhibited by her best creations is lacking.

[Content warning for sexism and ableism.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Black Bird, Blue Road by Sofiya Pasternack

Book #153 of 2022:

Black Bird, Blue Road by Sofiya Pasternack

Another outstanding middle-grade Jewish fantasy novel from #ownvoices author Sofiya Pasternack, who had previously dazzled me with her Anya and the Dragon debut. I love this one even more, from all the subtle authentic touches of lived-in Judaism and lesser-known mythological nods to the fierce twelve-year-old heroine willing to take on the entire world and the literal Angel of Death for a chance to heal her twin’s leprosy. I appreciate how there’s no discernible antisemitism anywhere here too, after that was such a major tension in the Anya series. (Realistic bigotries in fiction have their place, as it can be empowering to see characters overcoming obstacles similar to our own. But it’s also nice for some works about marginalized identities to not depict their oppression, and reassuring to note that this particular writer can do either effectively.)

My biggest concern about the disability plot of this book was that Pesah would be problematically healed by magic and/or reduced to an inspirational figure with no agency of his own, but Pasternack skillfully avoids both those traps throughout. The fantasy element doesn’t even arrive until a quarter of the way through the text, giving us ample time to settle in with the blunt reality of the boy’s condition. Although this is largely Ziva’s story — we open on her grimly preparing to amputate another of his fingers, as the only family member still comfortable getting close enough to care for him like that — the narrative always finds space for her brother to assert his own preferences for his life and treatment, which are often quite different from hers.

When the children learn that their parents will be sending Pesah off to an isolated leper colony, they run away together, looking for a doctor who might be able to cure him. Instead they cross paths with a shedim (a folkloric being somewhat analogous to an Islamic djinn), who encourages them to find the mystical city of Luz, where no one ever dies. There the milcham (a giant bird granted immortality in the Garden of Eden) is said to protect its fellow inhabitants, while the angel Azrael waits patiently outside. But reaching that destination isn’t necessarily the solution to their crisis that it seems to be, as the unlikely trio of companions eventually discover.

The resulting tale is a fun adventure in the quasi-historical 10th-century Khazar kingdom, but also a deeply personal account of a young girl coming to terms with her sibling’s mortality. In true Jewish fashion this protagonist wrestles with pronouncements of fate again and again, and while the genre allows her to seek a miracle, Pasternack plays fair in not delivering one — and in helping her understand, to the extent that anyone can, why her kind and clever loved one will nevertheless soon die. It’s a powerful work that overcomes my natural hesitancy towards middle-grade drama by tackling such a big question, and I think I ultimately have to give it my highest rating for how it might help younger readers process illness and loss in their own lives. If every book is to be judged against the best possible version of itself, it’s hard to imagine any way that this particular title could have been improved.

★★★★★

Book Review: Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas: Long Live the Pumpkin Queen by Shea Ernshaw

Book #152 of 2022:

Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas: Long Live the Pumpkin Queen by Shea Ernshaw

With one bizarre caveat that I’ll get to below, this 2022 sequel novel to the 1993 stop-motion classic is a worthy follow-up and a great adventure in its own right. It’s certainly far better than I expected for a belated media tie-in with such an awkwardly-long full title! Centering on the somewhat-underutilized love interest from the film, this book explores newlywed Sally’s anxieties at becoming queen, a surprising retcon of her origins, and her heroic efforts to save the whole world from a threat she unknowingly unleashes. I like how author Shea Ernshaw has taken this opportunity to not only revisit the Halloween Town and Christmas Town settings of the movie, but also to depict for the first time their Thanksgiving, Easter, St. Patrick’s Day, and Valentine’s counterparts. She expands the worldbuilding further as well by introducing the concept of ancient, pre-holiday lands whose portals are overgrown but still accessible, with our protagonist inadvertently opening one and letting in an eldritch monster that proceeds to put everyone else to sleep in order to steal their dreams.

It’s a fantastic premise and a strong showcase for the main character, and generally retains throughout that effervescent blend of quirky darkness that makes the original animation (and the Tim Burton brand more broadly) such a timeless delight. I don’t want to spoil the revelations about the heroine’s past, but I’ll simply note that, as with the project as a whole, I was initially skeptical yet swiftly won over. The ensuing examination of found families, conflicting heritages, and chosen home communities is very well-done, and a neat thematic extension of Jack’s old interest in bringing elements of Christmas into Halloween.

As for the clunkiness: this is going to sound ludicrous in summary, but at one point, Sally winds up in the human world, where everyone has likewise been cursed into perpetual slumber while she searches for a cure and tries to avoid the Sandman herself. Thinking thoughts about royalty, the ragdoll arrives in the bedchambers of England’s Queen Elizabeth II, and spends a few minutes marveling at how “polished” and “courtly” and “elegant” the sleeping monarch looks. As readers, we are forced to sit through several paragraphs like this, each one seemingly more cringeworthy than the last:

“There is still something about her. A magnificence that cannot be measured in the weight of the silk that makes up her gowns, or the jewels draped over her pale human skin. She has the soul of a queen, sleeping or not. Adorned and bejeweled or not. It’s in the breath that rests in her delicate lungs, the refined features of her face, the firmness in her jaw. She is dignified and stately and noble. I suppose some people are just born with it in their veins… I swear I can feel the nobility of her through her skin — like a golden, shimmery light. The strength of a woman who has seen many things, overcome much in her long life. A woman who was meant for this role.”

Published about a month before her death, that is an offensively hagiographic and simplistic treatment of a colonizer directly responsible for countless acts of bloodshed and theft around the globe, not to mention an apparent eugenicist argument for the reality of noble genes. And if you think I’m bringing politics into this cute little YA story…. No, actually Ernshaw and Disney Press did that, by literally writing a real person with a very complicated legacy into this plot only to shamelessly fawn all over her. The royal figure is not even just an obvious winking stand-in for Elizabeth; she is identified by name at several points — a distinction given to no other living soul by this franchise. It’s an embarrassing miscalculation of a scene on every level, and if the writer or editor ever sees my review, I do want you to know that you should feel bad about including it in the finished novel.

With all that being said: the entire rest of the tale is really rather good! I don’t believe the one off-moment merits changing my rating overall, so I’m going to go ahead and give this work the four stars that I feel it generally deserves. But I did hate that passage in London so much that I couldn’t in good conscience review the title without addressing it.

★★★★☆

Movie Review: Werewolf by Night (2022)

Movie #17 of 2022:

Werewolf by Night (2022)

This is a weird one! Marvel Studios dropped the hour-long “special presentation” on Disney+ today with very little fanfare, but it is apparently an official Marvel Cinematic Universe release. I say apparently because, like the Moon Knight miniseries earlier this year, there are exactly zero explicit canonical ties that I can see here to anything else in the sprawling superhero continuity — or to Moon Knight either, even though that comic book character originally launched in a 1975 Werewolf by Night issue and their shared history was presumably part of the inspiration for making this adaptation now.

I learned that on Wikipedia. I don’t actually know much about this corner of comics lore, beyond the sheer fact that the improbably-named Elsa Bloodstone, Man-Thing, and (sigh) Jack Russell are all established protagonists there. And this standalone mini-film seems like a pretty clear labor of love towards them, so I’m happy that we live in a time when even such obscure figures are getting their moment of glory. I just don’t know that the result needed to be labeled and marketed as belonging to the MCU, you know? It doesn’t seem to set up the Mahershala Ali Blade movie, or tie in with anything horror-adjacent already in the canon. It’s just some random side adventure with an all-new cast.

On its own terms, then: a group of monster hunters gather together after a prominent colleague’s death, to earn the right to claim his namesake talisman (and household, I guess?) by stalking a beast that’s been let loose on the manor grounds. It’s Hammer Horror meets The Hunger Games, since the participants are encouraged to attack one another as well, and that plays out about as bloodily as you might expect. We don’t even get to learn most of their names, underscoring who we’re supposed to be rooting for but also weakening the element of interpersonal drama. It’s filmed mostly in an old-timey black and white with everyone adopting a somewhat stylized manner of clothing and speech, although the ending suggests we might be in a more contemporary period after all.

And it’s… largely fine? Probably more fun if you like creature features and/or slasher thrillers a bit better than I do, but my brain couldn’t stop niggling over the franchise thing or find enough to take away from this exercise in its absence. The MCU’s “Phase Four” has been incredibly scattered in its plot momentum anyway, so I suppose it’s both fitting and puzzling for one of its final chapters to be this self-contained throwback romp.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Book #151 of 2022:

Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (The Locked Tomb #3)

I am starting to feel about this no-longer-a-trilogy the way I do towards HBO’s Westworld program, where I continue to enjoy the premise and the general vibe — in this case, snarky queer interstellar necromancers — but am often too frustrated by needlessly convoluted and obfuscating narrative choices to especially care for the story at hand. Both series also now feature body-swapping as a regular plot device, so that it’s not always clear whether a given character is actually the same individual from scene to scene — or book to book, as our newest protagonist has different names for certain people than we’ve heard before. I quit that TV show after the first two seasons when it showed no signs of ever planning to answer its big mysteries rather than spinning endlessly contradictory new ones. Author Tamsyn Muir in contrast seems to have a tight enough grasp on where everything is going that I’m willing to stick it out for the fourth and hopefully final volume. But I can’t say that I’m loving the execution here (pun very much intended).

The second novel was already pretty daring by switching to a narrator with perceptual gaps and a compromised memory of prior events, which we then witnessed through the filter of her distortions. In this third installment, which reportedly grew out of the writer’s outline for the conclusion until it needed to become its own distinct title, we are again situated with a newcomer: quite literally a person who woke up six months ago in the body of a teenage girl. She knows someone else wore this face before her and sometimes has flashes of recall, but isn’t sure whether she herself came from elsewhere or is simply amnesiac. And of course, she has her own particular way of seeing and understanding the world, with the childlike wonder and confusion of something like Piranesi or The Slow Regard of Silent Things, leaving us to read between the lines to see the wartime climate beyond her happy domesticity.

Like its immediate predecessor, this turns out to be a gamble that doesn’t entirely work for me as a reader. I like Nona a lot! She has a deep love for her family and friends that is both charming and an interesting change from the barbed and jaded dynamics that have been our only previous impression for the inhabitants of this setting. But I find I’m unable to focus on any of that when I’m spending so much time fumbling to unlock the puzzle of what should be plain plot logistics. The flashbacks explaining how our universe originally transformed into that of the Ninth aren’t even remotely necessary for my engagement with the worldbuilding as it’s been presented throughout, but they’re so relatively straightforward that they’re easily my favorite part of this book. I hope we finally have enough pieces in place that the next one isn’t nearly so taxing to parse and gets back to the core strengths of foul-mouthed skeleton magic that initially drew me into Gideon. But at this point, I have my doubts.

[Content warning for gun violence and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

Book #150 of 2022:

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

A powerful and soul-baring memoir that completely earns its provocative title. I’m not familiar with Jennette McCurdy as an actress — her Nickelodeon hit iCarly launched when I was already a sophomore in college — but as a writer, she is immensely talented at conveying scenes from her early life with an unsettling immediacy. The primary subject in these recollections is the author’s mother: an abusive and controlling bully who wouldn’t let her wipe herself or bathe alone, who forced her into a child acting career she wasn’t comfortable with, and who encouraged an unhealthy relationship with food that eventually turned into full-blown anorexia and bulimia. The recurring issues of guilting, gaslighting, and ignoring stated boundary preferences are thoroughly awful in their details, as are McCurdy’s descriptions of how she typically reacted by dissociating from her body, developing obsessive-compulsive tics, and giving in utterly to the parental pressure. This book contains horrifying red flag after red flag in her mother’s behavior, and while it’s great that Jennette has finally been able to recognize and reject these in hindsight, it’s chilling to observe how long past the woman’s death from cancer in 2013 her daughter continued to reflexively defend her and the thought patterns she’d instilled.

Even outside of that toxic household environment, the performer relates how she encountered workplace abusers like a tyrannical producer (unnamed in the text but clearly now-ousted executive Dan Schneider) or a succession of inappropriately-interested older men, who collectively left her with anxiety attacks and an alcohol addiction, in addition to the poor coping habits she’d picked up at home. McCurdy makes no claims that hers is a typical Hollywood experience and regularly highlights her close friendship with costar Miranda Cosgrove, but the overall account is pretty damning of the child star industry, especially in light of the $300,000 she says she was offered as a preemptive non-disclosure agreement when her shows went off the air. Simply put, there were not enough safety mechanisms in any area of her life to protect the young actress, and she was hurt in profound ways that she’s still recovering from today. Although she’s emerged as an insightful and caustically funny memoirist and found the strength to quit the field she never wanted to enter in the first place, no amount of success is worth what she was put through by the adults who should have nurtured her. Ultimately, hearing her story has made me glad her mom died too.

[Content warning for stalking, rape, and graphic descriptions of disordered eating.]

★★★★★

Book Review: The Night Fire by Michael Connelly

Book #149 of 2022:

The Night Fire by Michael Connelly (Ballard and Bosch #2)

Another solid but unspectacular detective thriller, as so many volumes in this franchise have turned out to be. (At this point, I am almost reading less for the actual mysteries and more for the minor updates on Harry Bosch’s personal life, like the fact that his daughter is nearing the end of college and considering law school now, or that the old cop has been diagnosed with leukemia stemming from the radioactive materials he was exposed to all the way back in The Overlook twelve years earlier.) This second team-up between author Michael Connelly’s long-standing protagonist and his relative newcomer Renée Ballard finds the pair investigating three separate cases, but the similarities among them feel more frustrating than productive for me as a reader.

At the risk of light spoilers: the murder she’s assigned and the one he’s looking into turn out to have connections to the same legal firm and ultimately the same suspect — a device that could have been fine as the incitement to bring the two detectives together again, but seems pretty coincidental when discovered later, after each is already aware of what the other is working on. The third storyline involves an unrelated cold case of gang violence, but plays out along similar beats to the others, with a criminal conspiracy killing off the members seen as liabilities in response to police questioning.

A few neat flourishes are worth commenting upon, however, like the fact that the oldest investigation comes from a mysterious file that a colleague’s recent widow gives to Bosch, explaining that he must have snuck it out of the department decades ago without telling anyone. Or the fact that another crosses Harry’s path during a trial involving his half-brother Mickey Haller, whose client he helps exonerate. Since the police are convinced they arrested the right person even after charges are dismissed, Bosch is left as the only one still trying to find the real killer and get justice for the deceased. These are good plot generators to keep the guy in the game now that he’s fully retired from the force, and are easier to swallow than when Renée risks her own career on some bizarre stunt like faking a supervisor’s signature for a judge to approve a wiretap. But this all seems a bit like treading water for Connelly by this stage, and I am ready for the writer and his heroes to really wow me again.

[Content warning for gun violence, gore, homophobia, suicide, and rape.]

★★★☆☆

TV Review: The Shield, season 3

TV #47 of 2022:

The Shield, season 3

On some level, this season feels like it’s walking back many of the show’s recent plot developments, which is never a welcome sign. Aceveda has decided he’s not stepping down as precinct captain yet after all, Danny gets rehired and repartnered with Julien, Tavon is incapacitated and out of the rest of the strike team’s hair for much of the year, and so on. Even some complications that are now introduced, like the team having to report to Claudette and share their private office with an undercover decoy squad, are eventually undone again, leaving an overall feeling of regression to the status quo. As a fan attracted to TV dramas like this due to their inherent serialization, I’m mildly frustrated to see such thorough backsliding.

On the other hand, some fresh elements seem to be sticking around, like Shane’s new love interest Mara and the steadily weakening trust among our gang of outlaw officers. And I suppose that thematically, this Sisyphean inertia is somewhat apt. After all, the emerging ethos of the series is basically that no amount of traditional policing — or of the illegal variation embodied by Vic — can ever significantly curb the urban crime rate. We’ve also now got a whole season-long plot about how hard it is for the antihero and his crew to actually spend those millions of dollars that they robbed from the Armenian mafia in the previous finale. This should be their moment of triumph, but the suspicions of coworkers, the foresight of the US Treasury Department to inject marked bills into the money laundering operation, and the gangsters butchering their way across the city for answers cut against them at every turn. It’s enough to give Lem an ulcer, and it’s the sort of logistical headache that would make Breaking Bad such a hit a few years later on. You can’t just nab a fortune and ride off into the sunset, and there are great stories to be told in the frantic machinations of criminals trying to protect their ill-gotten gains.

Plus, even with the characters (and The Shield at large) chasing their tails a bit, this continues to be riveting television on an episode-by-episode basis. The humor is consistently dark and twisted, and the grimy storylines put everyone through the wringer. There are children raped and murdered, and there are elders raped and murdered, and in one horrifyingly memorable hour, there’s a main character who gets overpowered by a suspect and forced to fellate him at gunpoint. As an institution, the cops are as ineffectual as ever at stemming any of this; at best they can only clean up a situation after too many people have already been hurt, and their interventions generally make matters worse instead. Even the nominal good guys are murderers and enablers, and there are no effective safeguards in place to prevent abuses of the badge. I’ve said it before and I imagine I’ll say it again, but this is anti-copaganda through and through. It’s often uncomfortable as a viewing experience, but it’s in many ways a more honest look at law enforcement than nearly any other story out there.

So I remain hooked on seeing how the Farmington saga plays out, despite feeling that structurally, this is probably the weakest run of it yet.

[Content warning for domestic abuse, animal abuse, police brutality, gun violence, gore, racism including lynching, homophobia, ableism, drug abuse, suicide, and torture.]

★★★★☆