The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: They Do It with Mirrors by Agatha Christie

Book #131 of 2022:

They Do It with Mirrors by Agatha Christie (Miss Marple #6)

In this novel, also published under the title Murder with Mirrors, the elderly Miss Jane Marple goes to visit a childhood friend whose sister reports feeling vaguely worried about her situation, in part because the woman’s latest husband has turned their estate into a reformatory school for criminal and/or mentally ill young men. While there the amateur detective meets a standard cast of Agatha Christie suspects, and eventually one of them strikes, killing another guest. That murder scene is an interesting one that remixes a few of the author’s earlier plots — the lights have blown out, there’s a loud argument at gunpoint that distracts everyone, and later someone else is found shot to death in a separate wing of the house — but it comes a bit late at 38% through the short text, leaving less room for actual investigation of the crime(s) and not much propulsion in the story beforehand. I do like getting to hear a bit about the heroine’s younger days, and I’d say overall that this is a decent mystery with plenty of red herrings and a not-implausible solution, but it doesn’t ever feel quite as clever or memorable as it could.

[Content warning for ableism and racism including slurs.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Absolute by K. A. Applegate

Book #130 of 2022:

The Absolute by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #51)

Another thrillingly propulsive installment of the ongoing Animorphs endgame. Since the Yeerks gained the alien cube that bestows morphing powers at the end of the previous story, this one immediately feels like no other volume before it in the saga. Though the team’s ability is still powerful, it is no longer a guaranteed advantage over their foes, who are now shown adopting a variety of animal forms themselves for both combat and surveillance. And finally knowing that the “Andalite bandits” are actually local humans, and that their own creeping infiltration of earth will soon turn into all-out war under the bloodthirsty Visser One, the Controllers are more willing to openly engage and fight the kids, too. Thus, a routine visit to the Gardens to acquire new duck morphs instead becomes a bloodbath, as the troops stationed there either morph into something violent or pull out Dracon beams and open fire.

On a continuity level, I guess we’ve skipped over Tom’s reconciliation with the visser and delivery of the cube, when it seemed before like he might be splitting off into his own faction. But I wouldn’t call that a plot hole, and the ratcheting up of the stakes here proves well worth it. The Animorphs are even intentionally and explicitly causing human Controller casualties now, which is a pretty major escalation even without Cassie around to call it out. (She’s on a separate mission with Rachel and Jake, who doesn’t trust her out of his sight after she stopped him from killing his brother to secure the morphing device. But that tension mostly simmers unresolved in the background as our narrator Marco spends the majority of this novel off with Tobias and Ax.)

Their goal is one they’ve debated pursuing in the past but regularly decided was too risky: approach a high-level government official, in this case the state governor, explain the truth about the Yeerk invasion, and enlist their help against it. This turns out to be just as dangerous as the group had always feared, and results in the trio having to flee with the politician in a wild scramble across the capital city, pursued both by their actual enemies and by uninfested authorities who think they’re witnessing some sort of bizarre kidnapping scheme. Ultimately, however, the heroes do manage to barricade inside her office and have her order the National Guard to stand down all mobilization activity, thus thwarting Visser One’s plan to gather them together for infestation. Meanwhile, the other half of the team is out attacking the temporary Yeerk pool with the auxiliaries and some free Hork-Bajir, further slowing that effort and I’m sure infuriating the visser, though we don’t yet see his reaction or discover how he’ll retaliate.

It’s a good thing the stakes are so clearly deadly throughout, and the plot so fast-paced, since otherwise, readers might stop to ask author K. A. Applegate / ghostwriter Lisa Harkrader a few awkward questions. Like… How is it that the high school teens who understood specific details about a previous governor’s agenda and political ambitions all the way back as middle-schoolers in #6 The Capture don’t even know the current one’s name or gender? And why don’t they do the bare minimum of research to learn those things before setting out, as well as hatch a better advance escape plan for their meeting with the woman? And why on earth would the Yeerks have infested — spoiler alert — her husband and not her?

These are the issues that stick out a bit on an adult reread, although perhaps the poor strategizing underscores how young and foolish our protagonists can still be, despite all the trauma they’ve experienced to prematurely age them. I also wish we had stronger thematic material for Marco’s last stint as solo narrator, rather than just jokes and gorilla hijinks, but I suppose his deeper arc has come to a natural conclusion already. Regardless, the book as a whole is a thoroughly enjoyable rush, and because the governor does go on live TV and tell the world what she’s seen, the series plot takes another big step forward. While the story here concludes without revealing to what extent she’ll be believed, the momentum is plainly building towards crisis on a global scale.

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

★★★★☆

Book Review: Upgrade by Blake Crouch

Book #129 of 2022:

Upgrade by Blake Crouch

Unfortunately the weakest and least mind-bending of author Blake Crouch’s recent string of sci-fi thrillers. The premise here of gene-editing increasing a person’s intelligence to superhuman levels is too straightforwardly similar to so many other stories, from Flowers for Algernon to the movie Limitless to the Ted Chiang novella “Understand,” and the action/spy sequences feel likewise derivative of something like the Jason Bourne series. I’m also just not a great fan of the trope where a family man has to nobly leave his wife and child(ren) behind to go be a violent loner somewhere else, generally whilst faking his death and/or continuing to spy on them without their knowledge, and this book never really justifies going down that route to my satisfaction.

It’s not a terrible read overall, and I’d probably recommend it for fans of Michael Crichton or maybe the early seasons of Fringe. As with any post-2020 work, the sections on a new pandemic outbreak are appropriately chilling (though regrettably leaning into the paranoid idea that such medical crises are caused by unsafe laboratory research), and the writer definitely knows how to keep the plot at a pulse-pounding pace. But ultimately, I’m only lukewarm on the title as a whole.

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

★★★☆☆

TV Review: Bob’s Burgers, season 7

TV #41 of 2022:

Bob’s Burgers, season 7

Here’s my original review of this season from when it aired in 2017:

“There are typically few real surprises this late into a show’s run, and although this particular show is still making me laugh, I’d probably be okay if it got canceled. I’ve always loved how the humor on Bob’s Burgers is so specifically character-based, but at this point, I don’t really feel like the characters are still growing at all. It’s getting harder and harder for anything on the series to surprise me, so it would probably be for the best if it bowed out now before it got too stale. The season 7 episodes were solid enough, but there’s no real classics that jumped out at me.”

I’d maybe be a little bit more charitable today — the episodes “Ex Mach Tina” and “Bob Actually” are pretty great, and Tina and Louise both do show some growing confidence toward their romantic interests (or maybe just base acknowledgement on the younger girl’s part, which is still a solid development) — but overall, I stand by that. This run also crams a lot of holiday episodes into a short span of time, with Halloween, an out-of-order Tax Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter, and Mother’s Day all getting their moment, which is a bit counterproductive in terms of the effectiveness of conveying each distinctive festive spirit. The show’s definitely still worth watching at this stage, but I’m sticking with my initial 3-star rating for the year.

★★★☆☆

TV Review: What We Do in the Shadows, season 3

TV #40 of 2022:

What We Do in the Shadows, season 3

Another hilarious and eventful year with the Staten Island vampire crew, this time taking a page from the final season of Angel and placing the heroes in charge of the organization that had previously been opposing them (although the delta of morality between the two groups is far slimmer in this case). With the household heading up the local vampiric council, the show has shifted to become more of a supernatural-tinged workplace comedy, although in actual practice these plots mostly involve “co-leaders” Nadja and Nandor, along with Guillermo — now promoted from familiar to bodyguard — and the nameless guide played by Kristen Schaal in one memorable season 1 episode, who’s now a full guest star appearing every week.

Rounding out the cast, Laszlo and Colin Robinson spend a lot of time hanging out with one another more or less by default as they avoid the new responsibilities, but the dynamic of their particular friendship turns oddly charming by the end of this stretch, especially given the momentous nature of that arc’s conclusion. This is honestly a great showcase for the energy drainer all-around, deepening his characterization and giving him a clear motivating drive, all without sacrificing his terribly funny/boring/annoying personal quirks. Meanwhile, Nandor is also doing a fair bit of soul[less]-searching at this point, to the continual frustration of the human lackey he’s still finding excuses not to turn. Theirs is a relationship that grows thicker in its romantic subtext by the moment, but we might well be reaching a stage where it needs to actually be addressed out-loud one way or the other.

My main critique here is the lingering one I’ve had from the start of this program, which is that the storytelling is just a bit too loose and meandering to wholly satisfy my narrative itch. I think this third round offers the biggest improvement in that area yet, but there remains a sense that these decadent immortals are too unconcerned by developments in general to ever serve as effective protagonists. It’s possible to simultaneously care about sitcom characters and laugh at their antics, and this series isn’t quite hitting that proper balance for me throughout, much as I tend to enjoy it on a scene by scene basis.

[Content warning for gore.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Star Wars: Shadow of the Sith by Adam Christopher

Book #128 of 2022:

Star Wars: Shadow of the Sith by Adam Christopher

This new Star Wars novel is intended as a bridge into the sequel trilogy of films, which means it’s unfortunately saddled with fleshing out some of the stranger plot decisions introduced by The Rise of Skywalker. So Rey’s parents are — spoiler alert — the clone son and daughter-in-law of Emperor Palpatine, and most of this book follows their ongoing attempt to flee from Sith agents with the unlikely team of Luke Skywalker and Lando Calrissian seeking to protect them but somehow continually a few steps behind. We also get a subplot of that latter protagonist agonizing over the daughter who was kidnapped from him as an infant, a concept that featured in early promotional materials for Episode IX but was ultimately cut from the finished movie.

Overall, the story is fine if a bit long and tedious. (We know that the heroes can’t actually catch up with six-year-old Rey’s family, for instance, since it’s important to her later character arc that she doesn’t know any Jedi yet here. And this is a lot of pages spent just to explain why she’s alone on Jakku at the start of The Force Awakens.) There’s some neat new lore surrounding the Dark Side — sythology, if you will — and of course the franchise’s requisite number of space battles. But generally speaking, I don’t think this is a title that casual fans need to particularly worry about picking up.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett M. Graff

Book #127 of 2022:

The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett M. Graff

A mosaic firsthand account of how Americans in their own words experienced the unfolding tragedies of September 11th, 2001, drawing on author Garrett M. Graff’s interviews with hundreds of subjects as well as several thousand pre-existing statements, ranging from the days immediately following through Spring 2019. My lone complaint about this methodology is that it becomes exceedingly hard to track each speaker’s identity and recall exactly who they are throughout the text, particularly in audiobook format. (I also wish that that version had not mixed traditional narration with available archival recordings, as some of those are quite grainy and rapidly spoken, and the transition between the opposite styles/speeds is somewhat jarring.) But if you relax that need for attribution and take in the composite narrative as the gestalt chorus that the writer intends, it’s a profoundly moving rendition of a familiar story.

I think the effect would succeed even for readers too young to remember 9/11 themselves, but for those of us who do, this work offers a steady ping of recognition alongside harrowing details likely too specifically personal to have ever encountered before. Two decades on and in the face of the numbing daily death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s only natural for the horrors of the unprecedented terrorist attack and its aftermath to have receded into abstraction, and this title brings them roaring back in all their immediacy. From lost loved ones to unfathomable chance escapes to the ordeal of rescuing survivors from the burning towers as they collapse, this is certainly far from an easy read. But it’s an important testament to a moment that changed the course of history for so many individual lives, not to mention the fate of entire nations.

[Content warning for gore, suicide, claustrophobia, Islamophobia, etc.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: How to Raise an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

Book #126 of 2022:

How to Raise an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

A thoughtful guide on modeling conversations about race and racism for young kids, in recognition of the fact that they will be exposed to a lot of prejudiced situations and ideas that can be internalized if not actively confronted. This book definitely builds on author Ibram X. Kendi’s previous works like Stamped from the Beginning or especially How to Be an Antiracist, suggesting a framework in which individual actions either uphold or oppose bigotry — with neutrality always defaulting to the former in a bigoted society like ours — but I think it would still succeed for readers entering the curriculum here. (My advice for parents/caregivers might even be to start with this title, and only backtrack to those others if you find yourself resisting or confused by the writer’s definitions and assertions.)

Some of the material can be a bit off-topic. The medical racism experienced by Kendi’s wife during her first pregnancy, for instance, although harrowing and illustrative of a widespread problem driving Black maternal mortality rates, doesn’t have much to do with raising children in an antiracist mindset. And there are a lot of passages that might be better suited for memoir, given how they reflect on moments in the author’s childhood when adults did not push back on racism that he was encountering then. But generally speaking, this is a valuable text for prompting proactive household discussions, featuring plenty of real-life examples to draw on and illustrating why a so-called “colorblind” approach of ignoring race and other human differences tends to reinforce bias rather than diminish it.

[Content warning for gun violence, lynching, and racial slurs.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Two Kinds of Truth by Michael Connelly

Book #125 of 2022:

Two Kinds of Truth by Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch #20)

A disappointingly underwhelming Bosch story. There are two parallel cases that the semi-retired detective is working on here, and we spend too long on the less interesting one, which is obviously author Michael Connelly’s attempt at tackling the hot topic of the modern opioid crisis in his fiction. Thus, Harry is sent undercover to investigate a drug ring of phony prescription pushers, in a highly sensationalized approach to a legitimately serious problem in our society. This plot also has him acting as a white knight to a random woman that he meets on the job, forcing her into treatment she clearly isn’t ready to seek for herself and generally denying her agency in order to act as a savior.

It all feels like an unnecessary distraction from the other half of the novel, in which an old case gets dug up and our hero accused of planting evidence, which could lead to a convicted killer walking free from death row. Those stakes are more engaging and authentic to the character, but he doesn’t act any better, as the necessary proof against the charges largely just falls into his lap in lieu of any significant investigation or critical insights on his part. Even the denouement turns out to be a clumsy rendition of attorney Mickey Haller telling a judge all the details of a conspiracy we already know about by that point, in ways that any decent opposing counsel could easily discredit.

I like these guys enough that I have gotten some minimal enjoyment out of this title here and there, but overall it doesn’t showcase either half-brother at his best.

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

★★☆☆☆

Book Review: The Ultimate by K. A. Applegate

Book #124 of 2022:

The Ultimate by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #50)

The Animorphs franchise has a complicated relationship with disability, which I think can charitably be described as author K. A. Applegate occasionally straying into insensitivity while generally having her heart in the right place. Thus, “crazy” is used as a go-to insult, but the battle trauma and other mental health issues of the team are taken seriously throughout. Just last book, a character healed of her blindness by the morphing technology — yet expecting the condition to return upon demorphing — acted as though death would be preferable to losing her sight again. But Ax and the other Andalites are regularly called out for their bigoted attitudes towards wounded warriors like Mertil the vecol in #40 The Other, as are the parasitic Yeerks for disprefering disabled hosts overall.

That last detail is what drives the heroes’ decision in this volume to finally expand the human resistance corps by recruiting new members at a local children’s hospital. At a tense meeting in the woods where they’re all now living as refugees, the teens decide that their parents’ slowness to accept the reality of their situation is probably how any adult would react, and so they instead need to focus on their fellow youths — a viewpoint I find shortsighted as a grownup now, but which is wholly appropriate for the typical audience of a YA saga like this. And because their enemies have written off certain bodies as unattractive for potential Controllers, those are the exact kids they can safely reach out to without worrying about getting caught.

It’s a fraught debate, especially after Cassie’s dad overhears and makes his disapproval known, but the group (and the narrative at large) eventually comes down on the side of trusting disabled people with the choice of self-agency. Sure enough, the patients they talk to quickly overcome their initial skepticism and accept the mission to defend the earth, even though they don’t know whether they’ll be healed or not and might be exceedingly vulnerable anytime they’re between morphs. Before long, there are seventeen new additions: a nearly threefold expansion of the Animorphs we’ve followed up until this point, and the first since the ill-fated David back in #20 The Discovery. Not all of them get much characterization, and none of them ever gets to narrate the action, which again is arguably a bit ableist on the part of Applegate and returning ghostwriter Kimberly Morris, confining these newcomers to the second string. But the representation is still commendable in my opinion, and I appreciate that we’re explicitly told only three of them are made able-bodied by the process, a trope that could be problematic otherwise. It’s neat that they seem to have an easier time resisting the instinctual animal minds too, which is explained by their greater experience with managing bodily frustrations.

On a plot level, this is a pretty propulsive installment. Beyond the introduction of the auxiliaries, we see the emotional fallout of everyone’s secret identities being blown in the previous novel, which is hitting Jake particularly hard. Cassie is still the resident moralist, but she is far more jaded now than in the early days (as is evident by contrast with her naïve parents), and she spends a lot of this book manipulating her boyfriend into sticking with / reclaiming the mantle of leadership, longing for him to be the firm but compassionate commander that she recognizes their force needs. This leads to a rupture between the two lovebirds, and ultimately for the Yeerk infesting Tom to escape a deadly confrontation with the morphing cube in hand, since our narrator can’t bear for Jake’s soul to carry the weight of killing his brother. There’s also an epic showdown against Visser One — I believe the first since he got that promotion — and his apparent rage and fear at the growing size of their army, coupled with the great lie that they’ve actually always had that many soldiers in their ranks. It marks a major escalation in the invasion conflict, which will of course be responded to in kind over the few remaining titles. And the recruits acquit themselves well in their debut fight, with everyone surviving… at least for now.

I do wish we were getting Jake’s interior monologue in either this story or the prior one, given everything he’s going through in this period of the series, but his struggle is still compelling to observe from the outside, as is Cassie’s clear heartbreak over feeling him slip away. Her own final solo narration is a worthy sendoff to her unique perspective among the fighters, and possibly the last time there will be room to pause for her brand of ethical consideration here. After all, we are squarely in the endgame now, with our protagonists on the run with new allies but a villain holding the morphing power. Only four more books to see how it all finishes off.

[Content warning for body horror, gore, and a racial slur.]

★★★★☆