I have gotten behind on posting book reviews lately (I did get one last month), so I thought I should get around to that now that the spring semester is over and grades are entered.
And today just happens to be May the 4th, aka Star Wars Day (as observed recently based on the pun on the date), so I figured I would add a little bit about the latest season of the Star Wars show, Andor. Also, like many other people, I saw and had a lot of thoughts about Ryan Coogler's Sinners.
Books reviewed here: She Who Knows by Nnedi Okorafor, A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, The Waste Lands by Stephen King, The 1619 Project, edited by Nikole Hannh-Jones, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, John Dies at The End by Jason Pargin, and How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley.
There is also a super secret Star Wars day review hidden in here...
Let the reviews commence!
Andor, Season 2 so far (episodes 1-6)
Like a lot of Star Wars fans, I love Andor. But I think some of the praise goes a bit too far, at least when people say things like, "Star Wars should always be like this!" or "This is way better than [insert some/all other Star Wars content of the last 10-40 years]." I love that the Star Wars franchise is big enough for a show like Andor. It's deep, serious, and extremely well-done. But I wouldn't want all Star Wars to be like Andor.
One of the key ingredients in Star Wars has always been a bit of silliness and whimsy to it, along with deeper philosophical ideas (mainly drawing on Buddhism and Daoism). And you don't get much, if any, of all that in Andor. Even the cute robot is depressed in season one. In season two so far, without giving any major spoilers, I can say there's a big drunken dance party and Cassian Andor pulls a bit of a Star Wars James Bond from time to time, but even these things are morose and depressing. And so intense. I mean, you don't cast heavyweights like Stellan Skarsgard and Forest Whitaker in your Star Wars show to tell jokes.
That said, I love Andor and how it shows there's room for a show like this in the Star Wars franchise. Galactic civil wars, after all, are likely to be as soul-mangling for everyone involved as are wars here on Earth. And it's good for us to see that. But I hope we remember that there is also room for other kinds of Star Wars. It's a big galaxy!
Star Wars Day surprise secret review:
I also watched Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith for Star Wars Day today. I missed its 20th anniversary rerelease in theaters last week, so I figured I'd check it out. The downfall of a democratic republic into fascism is hard to watch (especially right now living in the US; see the last review below), and some of that patented George Lucas dialogue remains stilled-to-groan-worthy. Still, on this latest rewatch, I maintain that I actually like Episode III, or at the very least, I continue to think it's by far the best of the prequel trilogy.
Sinners (2025)
I was excited about Sinners as a fan of Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan. The trailer looked great. But I don't think I was quite ready for this movie. In the best possible way. I've seen it twice in theaters, once in the full-size IMAX. Definitely see it in theaters if you can!
I don't want to say too much about the movie itself, both because you need to experience it for yourself, and partly because I'm not sure how much the internet needs another white guy's opinion about this movie.
Twins Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) return to their hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1932 after a sojourn in Chicago. They open a juke joint, with some amazing local musical talent. There are vampires, but not a lot of gore. This is definitely a horror movie, but it's one I think a lot of non-horror fans will enjoy.
What does the vampirism represent? That's the fun of Sinners. Is it white supremacy? Is it the desire for immortality or domination? Is it hierarchical thinking in general? Is it power? Is it ultimately a kind of false freedom or false community?
Without getting too much into it, I've been thinking that at root this movie is about freedom... in many possible senses. It's also about the blues, both as music and cultural experience.
Those are just some of the fun questions that Sinners asks, but without quite answering for the audience--this is what makes this not just a fun movie, but a great film and a deep cinematic experience.
There is one particular scene (you will know it when you see it!) that's one of the greatest explorations of humanity, music, community, and history that I've ever seen on film. It literally brought me to tears. Simply breathtaking filmmaking.
Go see Sinners in the theater on the biggest screen with the best sound system available! You'll want to hear the music! Hint: be sure to stick around until the very end of the credits....
She Who Knows by Nnedi Okorafor
More interesting stuff from Okorafor! This is a prequel to her novel Who Fears Death. It has been a long time since I read that one (it was in my pre-blog days!), so some of this probably didn't connect with me as much as it would have if that had been fresh in my mind. But still, I enjoyed getting to understand some of the world and background of this universe. The main character Najeeba is great. And the magic is fun, and also a little terrifying (as magic probably should be).
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
I've been wanting to check out this series ever since it (and its many imitators) took over the fantasy shelves in the last few years. If any single book started the whole wave of romantasy, it seems to be A Court of Thorns and Roses.
So, how is it? Pretty good! People often say it's a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, which I suppose is not entirely unwarranted, but does in my opinion downplay Maas's own world building.
I tend not to like fantasy as much as science fiction unless it gets super weird (like Stephen King's Dark Tower--see the next review!). I'm also not a huge fan of "retellings" of myths or fairy tales. Fairies aren't my favorite mythological beings. I appreciate romance as long as there's also something else going on. So, I was bound to have some mixed feelings going in. But I have to say I was a little surprised here how much I liked the world building and the writing.
Feyre is a typical fantasy protagonist: she's interesting, if a bit annoying, but then she is 19, which is just an annoying age to be. She accidentally murders a fae person, who was disguised as a wolf at the time, and for mysterious fae reasons, she has to go live in a fairy realm as punishment. There she meets a super hot, but annoying older man, who turns out to be, okay, I won't spoil it, but you get the romance trope of "they didn't like each other at first and then they fell in love." I guess I can spoil that, because that's why they call it romntasy!
I enjoyed learning more bout the fairy realms and fairy politics. I felt like I never completely understood anything the fairies were doing, especially all their bizarre rules, but maybe that's because the ways of the fae are mysterious to Feyre's human mind. Or maybe I just don't have enough mythological background to get it.
I suppose Feyre, like all of us, thinks she knows what's going on most of the time, but she quickly, yet not quite fully, learns what she doesn't know and the world is more simultaneously opaque and dangerous than she knows. Is this human? Or just being 19? I'm not sure.
So, overall I enjoyed this a bit more than I thought I would. I might check out the sequels if I feel up to it. I've heard the world (and the romance) opens up quite a bit. I feel like the first book gave me a glimpse of why some people are so obsessed with these books.
The Waste Lands by Stephen King
This was a re-read in April 2025 (you can read about my previous re-read here).
I don't have much to add on this re-read, other than the fact that I love this series more deeply every time I read it. Book Three, The Waste Lands. really does have almost everything I love about the Dark Tower: the ka-tet takes on its full form, we see more of Roland's bizarre and terrifying world, and the plot moves along nicely, but not too fast to drown out character development. I still find a "certain scene" a bit much, but I think now that I've been living with the whole series for a while, I do understand it better--at least how it fits into the overall whole.
Two more things on this re-read: 1. I probably noticed more of the little connections to the rest of the series, King's other works, and our world even more than I have in previous reads; I'm sure there are even more I will notice in future re-reads. 2. This is probably the closest this series gets to full-fledged standard fantasy (book seven is close, but it gets weird in ways I don't need to spoil here); still, The Waste Lands is plenty weird, with heavy doses of science fiction, horror, and that patented Dark Tower element of WTF? that I love so very much.
Until the next re-read: Long days and pleasant nights.
See my Goodreads review, which includes reviews of previous reads.
The 1619 Project, edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones
The 1619 Project is a worthwhile reorientation of US history around the experience of Black Americans from the first arrival of Africans in 1619 to the present. In the face of the current "DEI" backlash in the US (after previous, almost identical backlashes against "political correctness" and "wokeism"), this is an essential task. It's only by understanding the history of all Americans that I think we can finally make a fairer, more just society for all of us. The 1619 Project doesn't do this all on its own and it's not always academic history (Hannah-Jones is a journalist, not a historian, and there are photos, poems, and bits of creative writing as well), but I wholeheartedly recommend this for anyone who wants to understand the United States.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
An MFA meditation on the overview effect.
There are characters, but there's not really a plot. There are beautiful sentences--indeed, mostly beautiful sentences. There are some deep thoughts, but nothing all that Earth-shattering. This book (is it really a "novel"?) orbits around the beautiful sentences, which exert their own gravitational pull on everything else. And that's fine for what this is.
Maybe this is just me, but I was always inclined to dislike this book a little bit based on what I had read about it. After searching the science fiction section of my local bookstore, I found this in the "fiction" section. Orbital seems like the kind of thing that pretentious "Literature" snobs would read while in their next breath denigrating science fiction, ignoring the fact that most of these ideas have already been explored in more depth in science fiction. Is Orbital science fiction? Sort of. Maybe it's just its own thing.
But, again, maybe that's just me. I did enjoy reading this, maybe more than I expected. It's a meditative reading experience: the words and ideas flow by like the Earth below our astronauts. And those sentences really are quite beautiful.
John Dies at The End by Jason Pargin
I enjoyed John Dies at the End, but not quite as much as I thought I would. (I watched the movie several years ago, but just got around to the novel now, hoping for something weird and fun).
First, the good stuff. This is weird, and I like weird. The narrative style takes some getting used to (bizarre things happen with little fanfare, continuity is toast, etc.), but it's entertaining in an unpredictable, WTF? sort of way. The protagonist, Dave, and his best friend John find a drug called "soy sauce" that does more than just mess with your perception of reality, it seems to alter reality itself. And scary weirdness ensues. It's a fun take on a Lovecraftian premise of eldritch beings from other dimensions. And it's just delightfully bonkers, somewhat like if Hunter S. Thompson and H. P. Lovecraft did shrooms together.
What didn't work as well for me: The humor is a bit juvenile, lots of jokes about balls, sexist descriptions of women, slurs aplenty (especially the "r word"), etc. Some people have called it "frat boy" humor, but really it's a kind of young white male nerd humor that feels dated. This was published in the late 2000's, but it feels more like the 1990's to me, which is maybe when much of it was originally written. I can deal with this type of humor okay, but it just gets old, especially when the vast middle of the book just kind of goes on and on without much resembling a plot. And I would like a little more detail on the Lovecraftian stuff.
It might sound like I'm being hard on a book I claim to have mostly liked, but I think that just shows how much I loved the bizarro weirdness of it all. I may have to check out the sequels.
How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them by Jason Stanley
I sometimes hesitate to use the word "fascist" for contemporary politics, because many people assume this means "exactly like Nazi Germany." Stanley gives a wider definition that can and does fit a lot of our politics today in many places around the world. He defines fascism loosely as a type of ultranationalism focused on an authoritarian leader. Chapter titles such as "The Mythic Past," "Propaganda," "Anti-intellectual," "Hierarchy," "Victimhood," and "Law and Order" fill out a lot of the details, along with plenty of examples from recent politics around the world.
The deepest part of the book for me is captured in the subtitle: "The Politics of Us and Them." This gets at what I personally find so morally heinous about fascism: it always relies on a strict dualism of value between us and them. This is also, in my opinion, metaphysically mistaken: no creature in the universe, least of all social ones such as we, is totally separated from others. Like it or not, we're all in this together (a theme I'm exploring more in my work on classical Buddhist philosophy; no, really!). So, fascism is ultimately morally and metaphysically bankrupt, and (as characters in Andor point out; see review above!) fascism is too unstable to last, even though it seems to keep popping up here in this galaxy, at least. As I strive to fight the fascism of the second Trump administration here in my native USA, I find Stanley's book helpful for identifying the problem and calling it what it is.
(Incidentally, it may be a bad sign that Stanley recently left the US for Canada...)
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