The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart

Book #120 of 2022:

The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart

The Paradox is a hotel for the clients of the world’s only time travel agency, which the government runs next door, and January Cole is its head of security — which means that in addition to all the regular service industry headaches, she also has to deal with more particular problems like guests smuggling dinosaur eggs out of the distant past. Or radiation spillovers that cause time to suddenly lurch forward. Or both at once, so that there are now full-grown utahraptors stalking the halls. She’s also journeyed throughout history so much herself that her mind is starting to come causally unstuck, seeing visions of previous and future events that she can’t always distinguish from her immediate reality. But since those glimpses are often of the dead girlfriend who’s the lost love of her life, she’s doing everything in her power to downplay her medical condition and keep the job that lets her stay there to see her. Of course, she needs to find a way to avoid her own death that she’s now seen coming, too.

Oh — and the feds are preparing to sell the wormhole technology to a private bidder, several of whom have gathered with their respective entourages at a moment when the Paradox is already overcrowded due to a rash of canceled and delayed departures. And someone seems to be trying to kill them, in a way that the security cameras somehow can’t detect. And there are reports of ghost sightings, including that of the hotel’s founder who mysteriously vanished years ago but may have hidden clues to the secret project she was working on beforehand. And soon everyone is trapped inside by a snowstorm, which is always a nice touch for any sort of murder mystery.

So this novel has a lot going on, and that’s not even mentioning the protagonist’s AI drone companion or the social commentary that author Rob Hart includes about the entitlement of the uber-wealthy. Despite all the chaos and the mind-bending plot, however, it all just about works to tell a remarkably distinctive techno-noir. Strip away the sci-fi trappings, and our heroine is the traditional hardboiled detective figure, doggedly pursuing her investigation whilst getting progressively bloodied and battered both by suspects and by the bureaucratic interference protecting their interests. It’s altogether a neat blend of genres and a fun story, albeit one that can sometimes seem a bit hard to follow.

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

★★★★☆

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TV Review: The Lincoln Lawyer, season 1

TV #37 of 2022:

The Lincoln Lawyer, season 1

Netflix’s adaptation of this twisty legal thriller is a lot of fun, aptly capturing and balancing the protagonist’s brilliance in court and vulnerability outside it. I’m particularly impressed with how the program has turned out, given some of the unusual production constraints placed upon it. This first season is based on Michael Connelly’s second volume in the series, The Brass Verdict, which I imagine was done in part to minimize comparisons with the 2011 Matthew McConaughey film, since that covered the events of book one (although this is intended as a reboot, not a sequel to that). The novel also heavily features hero Mickey Haller’s half-brother, LAPD detective Harry Bosch, whose TV rights belong to Amazon for their own streaming shows, so he’s had to be replaced with a brand-new cop character here with less of a built-in connection for Mickey or the audience.

Despite these setbacks, the title delivers, and arguably better than its source material. I love that — unlike in the movie — Haller has been faithfully written and cast as Latino, and actor Manuel Garcia-Rulfo does a great job in the role. But I also really enjoy how the story is given time to unfold over the entire 10-episode run, resulting in a procedural that can explore each distinct stage of a trial at length, rather than rushing through a new case from start to finish every hour. The lawyer’s explanatory conversations with his towncar driver — likewise a new/composite figure — add a nice regular framing device, too. Executive producer David E. Kelley has clearly learned from his experience heading up The Practice and Ally McBeal back in the 90s, and the result is a real thrill for viewers.

[Content warning for drug addiction, gun violence, domestic abuse, and human trafficking.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Mrs McGinty’s Dead by Agatha Christie

Book #119 of 2022:

Mrs McGinty’s Dead by Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot #32)

I generally enjoy a good Agatha Christie mystery, but the eventual solution to the case at the heart of this story from 1952 feels a bit too convoluted and contrived for me. As its alternate title Blood Will Tell might suggest, there’s a lot of hogwash throughout the book about children being fated to follow in their parents’ footsteps, adoptions not representing genuine relationships, and other such tedious bits of pseudo-psychology. (Poirot is only even brought in to consult on the matter because the investigating officer thinks that the suspect initially arrested and convicted for the crime just doesn’t have a killer’s demeanor, whatever that means.)

We also get the return of the writer’s transparent stand-in Ariadne Oliver, previously seen in 1934’s Parker Pyne Investigates and 1936’s Cards on the Table, and that’s a character I’ve never wholly loved, especially when her primary function seems to be to air the novelist’s own grievances about how her works have been adapted. It’s overall a somewhat unsatisfying read, with only the detective’s fussiness over his quaint lodgings standing out as particularly remarkable — and that not exactly in his favor, either.

[Content warning for homophobia and xenophobia.]

★★☆☆☆

Movie Review: Live from the Space Stage: A HALYX Story (2020)

Movie #13 of 2022:

Live from the Space Stage: A HALYX Story (2020)

This feature-length documentary, produced by Kevin Perjurer of Defunctland and available free on that YouTube channel, is a loving deep dive into an incredibly obscure topic: the rock band HALYX, a sci-fi themed act that performed nightly on the stage in front of Disneyland’s Space Mountain throughout the summer of 1981. The music and the talent were real, but the entire ensemble was manufactured by executives at Disney, who cast the performers and dressed them up in a vibe clearly indebted to Star Wars. The bassist was costumed as an off-brand Wookiee, the keyboardist a robot, and the percussionist an acrobatic amphibian who cartwheeled and flipped around the stage. The guitars shot lasers. It sounds like something I absolutely would have adored, though it disappeared into obscurity after a record deal fell through and the seasonal engagement at the park was never renewed.

For this film almost four decades later, director Matthew Serrano has tracked down and interviewed nearly all of the parties involved, from musicians to producers and a few super-fans, all of whom seem thrilled to share their memories of the short-lived but beloved project. There’s an unfortunate hole in the retrospective in the person of lead singer Lora Mumford, who passed away in 2011, but her surviving bandmates honor her in their recollections, and the movie is well-constructed to weave everyone’s contributions together into a clear, informative, and entertaining narrative about the group. This is likely to remain the definitive account of HALYX, given the age of its participants and the scarcity of preserved documentation from that era, and I’d say it’s well worth a watch for anyone interested in theme park history.

[Content warning for a poorly-aged song entitled “Jailbait”]

★★★★☆

Book Review: The Diversion by K. A. Applegate

Book #118 of 2022:

The Diversion by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #49)

I’m surprised that series author K. A. Applegate didn’t claim this volume to write herself, and particularly that it was assigned to ghostwriter Lisa Harkrader, who had previously only penned Cassie’s eminently skippable Australian visit in #44 The Unexpected. Here, the plot is much more critical, finally delivering on the tension that’s been inherent in this franchise from the start. The Yeerks have at long last discovered that the resistance fighter “Andalite bandits” stymying their invasion of earth are actually human, and the team must flee for their lives, sacrificing the final vestiges of normal teenage existence they’d been able to preserve until now. (For Marco and especially our narrator Tobias, of course, that threshold has already been crossed a while ago.) Because their enemies are everywhere, the kids will now live out the rest of the war in hiding: unable to go to school, or hang out with friends, or essentially do anything that isn’t directly related to the mission. They’ll never again gather for strategy briefings in Cassie’s barn either, which really feels like the end of an institution.

So it’s a major coming-of-age moment, doubled by the fact that the heroes are also coming clean to their families, realizing that they’ll be taken as Controllers if not extracted to safety too. Those scenes have likewise been on the horizon for forever, as seems necessary for any teen like Buffy or Spider-Man who moonlights at saving the world under the noses of their loved ones but must eventually fill them in about that mature responsibility and risk. Only here, there is the added danger that the Animorphs still don’t know if any of their relatives have already been compromised when they spring the news on them. I won’t spoil precisely how that plays out, but readers who have made it this far can probably guess that the effort will result in some collateral trauma rather than a clear-cut success.

Still, any of the protagonists could have headlined this stage of the story, and Jake might even have seemed the most appropriate choice, given the complicating factor of his brother Tom, the known Controller. The reason it’s a Tobias novel — the last one narrated solely by him — is that it also sees the return of his absentee mother Loren and a belated explanation for why she abandoned him as a child. It turns out she was rendered blind and amnesiac in a car accident when he was a baby, which is an okay retcon, I suppose (and at least isn’t as random as Rachel’s own short-lived amnesia back in Megamorphs #1 The Andalite’s Gift, although there is some definite ableism in how the woman’s disabilities are treated by the authors). Because she lives locally and can be traced to her son via his blood and her medical records, the hawk boy elects to save her even as the villainous forces are closing in. And thus, Elfangor’s old human companion from The Andalite Chronicles becomes the first new recruit since David to be gifted the morphing power, using it immediately in a desperate bid to evade capture and escape.

All in all it’s a pulse-pounding adventure that still finds time for its lead character to stew over his abandonment issues and seek some measure of confrontation and catharsis. I just wish we were told more about how the Yeerks figured out their opponents’ species, not to mention the reactions of Tom or Chapman or Visser One (né Three) when they learn of their exact identities and ages. And I don’t remember, perhaps that’s ahead in a sequel! But the only bad guy with any personality in this book is a one-off flunky, and the omission of any antagonist with an established history against the group represents an unfortunate weakness in the telling of this momentous turning point in the series narrative.

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

★★★★☆

Book Review: The Verifiers by Jane Pek

Book #117 of 2022:

The Verifiers by Jane Pek

A story curiously out of time. There’s a lot of talk in this debut book about online dating, corporate collection/abuse of confidential user data, and artificial intelligence, but it’s all conveyed in a fairly breathless manner to the characters and reader alike when none of the revelations strike me as all that unusual. Even the central premise of a top-secret, by-referrals-only detective agency specializing in verifying the details shared in dating profiles feels like it stems from a place of serious misconception about how the industry operates. If this novel were published over a decade ago, or were framed as a clear period piece of that era, I might be more forgiving towards this misplaced preoccupation. But for a seemingly-contemporary title released in 2022, it’s hard not to greet each would-be troubling or shocking bit of information with a, “Well, yeah. So what?”

That aspect of the text aside, I’m also not terribly enamored with the protagonist, a bookish naïf who keeps prying into a closed client file just because she’s nosy, and I don’t like how the narrative ultimately validates her wild speculation that there’s a conspiracy and murder plot behind events that could have so many more plausible alternate explanations. The most successful element is probably the depiction of the heroine’s dysfunctional family, rich in #ownvoices observations of Asian American heteronormative ‘model minority’ expectations, but this is so distinct from the rest of what’s going on in her life that it sometimes appears lifted in from an entirely separate work.

The volume ends without really resolving its main case, which I guess means a sequel is on the horizon. Personally, I won’t be bothering with it.

[Content warning for suicide and domestic abuse.]

★★☆☆☆

TV Review: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, season 7

TV #36 of 2022:

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, season 7

A curiously bifurcated run. The first half of this last year almost seems to sputter, with some episodes that are absolutely up to the usual high dramatic standards of the series and others that represent some of the laziest, most self-indulgent writing ever. (I’m especially looking at you, “Take Me Out to the Holosuite” and “Badda-Bing Badda-Bang.”) At least it’s not a total letdown, and I want to call out “It’s Only a Paper Moon” in particular as maybe the only holodeck-centered story in any series of Star Trek that actually uses the concept well and doesn’t make it seem like just a silly dress-up game or absurdly deadly piece of malfunctioning tech. Here, it really is a great way to explore Nog’s trauma and prolonged recovery from the events of “The Siege of AR-558.” Such darker themes of war, enemy occupation, and intolerance are maintained, despite the occasional underbaked attempts of levity around them.

And then the back half of the season arrives in a new and unexpected format, telling roughly one long, serialized sprint for ten hours straight, in which the demarcation between one episode and the next practically falls away. It’s an exciting change of pace befitting the climactic stakes of the Dominion War, and it builds to an excellent finale that neatly manages that tricky task of resolving the major narrative, imparting a sense of conclusion for certain aspects, arcs, and relationships, and yet simultaneously suggesting how life will go on in altered form once we’re no longer watching.

It all works, more or less. I’ll confess that the new character of Ezri never really clicks for me, although I understand her on paper as representing a different side of the Trills after six seasons spent with Jadzia. And the mysticism with the Prophets and their supernatural opponents the Pah-wraiths has always struck me as rather abstract and bloodless, so I’m not terribly invested in it here beyond the immediate impact on long-standing characters like Sisko, Winn, and Dukat. But for the most part, seven years of developing plots, political situations, and characterizations pays off in dividends. We even get a phenomenal slow burn of a redemption story for Damar of all people, possibly my single favorite thing that this final season accomplishes.

Deep Space Nine was inevitably going to be a risky departure for this franchise, consciously abandoning the titular “trek” of interstellar exploration in favor of a fixed home on a backwater station, the once and future battlefront where strange species and sci-fi emergencies wouldn’t necessarily be encountered each week, but local politics, tensions, and intrigues could in theory grow gradually into a potent boil. Luckily the program was given the time — and distance, with production attention shared with TNG and then Voyager — to do just that, and the worldbuilding achieved here by the end is staggering by previous Trek standards, which adds a greater pathos to the thought of leaving it and its well-developed cast behind. I cannot honestly say this is the strongest individual outing of DS9, but it certainly departs on its own terms and impresses me as a thoroughly modern piece of television, even at nearly a quarter-century off the air.

This season: ★★★★☆

Overall series: ★★★★☆

Seasons ranked: 6 > 3 > 4 > 5 > 7 > 1 > 2

TV Review: Bob’s Burgers, season 6

TV #35 of 2022:

Bob’s Burgers, season 6

I’ve now reached the point of this Bob’s Burgers rewatch where I’m caught up with the seasons that I reviewed the first time I saw it, starting in 2016. So here’s what I wrote then, at somewhat less than my now-typical length:

“I feel like Bob’s Burgers is comfortably past its prime at this point. This season was still reliably funny, but I can’t really point to any all-time classic episodes from it. It does seem like the character of Louise got fleshed out a little bit more this season, though – let’s hope that Gene is next, and that the writers continue to bring the jokes even if the plots aren’t as surprising anymore.”

And I do stand by that, for the most part! I suppose the show has proven it still has plenty of gas left in the creative tank, given that it just wrapped season 12 and a feature film, but this particular run doesn’t seem exceptionally exciting. That’s a shame after a couple of strong years, but even baseline Bob’s Burgers makes it worthwhile to check in on the Belchers and all the weirdos in their town.

★★★☆☆

TV Review: What We Do in the Shadows, season 1

TV #34 of 2022:

What We Do in the Shadows, season 1

A confident launch to a mockumentary sitcom with the simple yet irresistible premise of several vampires sharing a house in Staten Island. (I haven’t seen the movie that preceded this, but I understand it follows a different set of characters and isn’t directly related.) The storytelling is very shaggy, and rivaling Quentin Tarantino or Game of Thrones not merely for gore but also for how death can suddenly end — or at least radically reorient — a previously dominant plot concern. Indeed, the only major thread lasting throughout this first season is of put-upon familiar Guillermo meekly chafing under his master’s absurd demands and continued refusal to turn him into one of the undead.

Of course, the main appeal of any comedy is the jokes, and we certainly get that in the overlapping categories of oblivious culture-clash struggles, gross-out humor, and inventive descriptions of sexual depravity. There’s also a delightful recurring bit that I never tire of, where one of the protagonists yells out, “Bat!” every time he turns into a bat. It’s utterly inane, yet hilarious nonetheless. And I love the ‘energy vampire’ played by Mark Proksch of Better Call Saul fame, even though I think his inclusion in the group was funnier before the reveal that he really does have supernatural abilities to that effect and is not just a total buzzkill that the others have mistaken for a peer.

I don’t want to give away all the clever parts, but bringing in certain actors who have appeared as vampires on screen before for some glorified cameo work in one episode here is truly inspired. With moments like that and everything discussed above, I am wholly on board, though I do hope for a little more in the way of structure and character arcs going forward.

★★★★☆

Book Review: The Midnight Girls by Alicia Jasinska

Book #116 of 2022:

The Midnight Girls by Alicia Jasinska

A fun little queer enemies-to-lovers YA fantasy, but with some tonal and worldbuilding issues that are keeping me at a slight distance. The two antiheroines are teenaged assistants to rival witches, tasked with hunting down victims and ripping their hearts out to fuel their mistresses’ magic. They clash whenever they’re sent after the same target, but strike up a flirty friendship when they meet under cover identities and don’t recognize one another right away.

So that’s cute, but it’s hard to get too invested in the struggles of two adolescent mass murderers who are generally pretty remorseless about their slaughtering. It’s also not clear to me, absent fairy tale logic and/or implicit classism, why the witches need princely organs specifically, rather than those of any random peasants. And while I appreciate author Alicia Jasinka’s gesture at diversity by periodically mentioning Jews and Muslims in this fictionalized version of 18th-century Poland, I have serious questions about why the church prayers and holy relics are effective protection against the girls. (If Christian rituals are visibly potent as spells, that should have major implications for religious minorities in the area!) Considering those drawbacks, I’m ultimately only lukewarm on this title, but I’m glad that a sapphic teen romance like this — even a F/F/F love triangle at one point — has become no big deal in the modern publishing landscape.

[Content warning for gore.]

★★★☆☆