Tag Archives: bizarro

Book Review: Party Wolves in my Skull

Posted on October 27, 2012 | Leave a comment

Party Wolves in my SkullParty Wolves in my Skull by Michael Allen Rose
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Party Wolves in my Skull by Michael Allen Rose is troubling, but probably not in any conventional sense. I’ll have to explain that in a moment. But first…

Norman wakes up as his eyes are pushing their way out of his head to free themselves from his oppression. They’ve gained sentience and decided to free themselves and run off to get married. It’s a little more complicated than this, involving freedom of the proletariat and such, but it’s ultimately flavor without being that important to the plot. Anyway, Norman places a vacancy sign on his head, so the party wolves move into his skull, and they go with Norman to pursue his fleeing eyeballs. But the party wolves have a secret of their own. Along the way, they meet Zoe, a woman with a secret of her own who is being pursued by Walter, a giant talking walrus. Are you still with me?

Now for the troubling part: I don’t know if it’s because I’ve read too much bizarro fiction up to this point, but this novel makes a weird kind of sense. No, seriously! As I’m reading this book, I found myself stopping periodically and saying, “Yeah, I get that. It makes sense.” Or I just seriously need medication. I’ll have to figure that one out at a later date and not while working on a book review that involves a man with a wolf pack living in his head falling in love with a woman who previously engaged in human-walrus relations.

At the end, though, what I walk away from Party Wolves in my Skull thinking is that this book was just plain fun. It’s brain candy. It’s short, sweet, and fun. And the reveals of the characters’ secrets are themselves rather fun and add to the story and characters rather than detract from them. They don’t disappoint and add a couple of nice twists to the story and to the character development. Yes, the author manages to get some significant and believable character development here.

Party Wolves in my Skull by Michael Allen Rose earns 4.5 random pills out of 5.

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Book Review: Trashland A Go-Go

Posted on October 27, 2012 | Leave a comment

Trashland A Go-GoTrashland A Go-Go by Constance Ann Fitzgerald
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

When an “accident” takes out Coco the stripper in the club where she works, the club manager and the DJ dump her body in the dumpster. This is no ordinary dumpster, but rather a doorway to the magical land of Narn…oh, wait, not quite.

Instead, Coco wakes up in Trashland, a land made entirely of rubbish. She is joined by a talking fly, Rudy, on her journey to find a way home. She meets the Oracle, who reads her fortune using a bag of discarded body parts, and then travels to the palace to meet the Queen, who seems to be a walking mold who gives off spores to dominate her subjects. Confused yet? Don’t be. Believe it or not, this is surprisingly normal compared to some of the bizarro fiction out there.

Trashland A Go-Go is part of the 2011 line of the New Bizarro Authors Series, meaning that this is Constance Ann Fitzgerald’s first published novel. And it’s a very respectable effort for a first time genre novelist. In fact, it’s quite good. There are just a couple of things that need to be nitpicked.

First, I felt like I was missing a large chunk of the story. Literally, it felt like this started out as a larger story and got cut down, but that some of the sections cut may have been significant to the story. In fact, this makes it feel skeletal with chunks of meat hanging from the bones, rather than a complete, fully-formed story.

This ties into the second problem, which is that some of the secondary characters seem superfluous. They really don’t serve much of a purpose. The case that stood out to me was how the club’s DJ also ends up in Trashland. But this doesn’t seem to serve a purpose other than to show that Trashland is real and not some kind of weird afterlife for Coco. But then the DJ serves no other purpose other than as cannon fodder later on. A common complaint I tend to have with bizarro books is that they feel like there should be more, but in the case of “Trashland A Go-Go,” this is a glaring problem and I wish the book were longer and more fleshed out.

However, the prose is very smooth, and the editing is actually quite sublime. This book does not suffer from another common complaint, which is that it needs more editing or careful prose. Fitzgerald is quite good and clearly practiced at writing, and this book definitely peaked my curiosity. I hope she continues to write and publish, because I am genuinely curious about what she will be capable of, especially if she gets the chance and chooses to write a longer story. I really want to give this novella a higher score because, don’t get me wrong, the writing is very, very good (and I don’t give that kind of praise lightly), but the chopped up story and superfluous characters were just too big of a problem for me and left too many questions.

Trashland A Go-Go by Constance Ann Fitzgerald earns 3.5 mold spores out of 5.

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Book Review: Gigantic Death Worm

Posted on October 5, 2012 | Leave a comment

Gigantic Death Worm
Gigantic Death Worm by Vince Kramer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Okay, since this book read like a short stream of consciousness, I should probably meet it directly and write a short stream-of-consciousness review.

Gigantic Death Worm by Vince Kramer is part of the New Bizarro Author Series, which means it is his first published book. This book is amateurish, juvenile, racially insensitive, and just downright stupid.

At least, that’s the first impression one gets. The thing is, as you read it, you become aware that it’s written this way on purpose. This is not an amateur author. It’s a talented writer pretending to be an amateur.

And now my stream of consciousness just gave me A.D.D. and made me go look at Facebook. Okay, that’s not working. Slow down a little. What’s the book about?

Dave is on a ski trip in Arizona with his friend Mike and Mike’s girlfriend, Suzanne. Dave has brain parasites, or so he thinks. Turns out these little buggers are more than just parasites. Where did he get them? I’ll leave that for you to find out. Trapped on a ski lift, they are attack by bears. Bears that spit wolves. Yes, bears that spit wolves. Some worms grow from the carcass of one these wolves and become the gigantic death worms of the title. This all ties into the Mayan calendar and the end of the world somehow. And then Mexican ninjas appear to help stop the worms. Mexican ninjas led by Ponce de Leon II: The Revenge.

I am so not kidding.

As I said, this story is written like it was done by an amateur, but Kramer is really a talented writer pretending to write like an amateur. He simply throws everything that he finds awesome, throws it in a blender, hits the puree switch, and actually manages to produce a taste little story shake. It’s one of those stories that’s just fun to read. There’s no high-minded social commentary or metaphor here. It was the author sitting down and saying “Let me write something totally cool and awesome!”

While short (a common thing with a lot of Bizarro books), the length feels right. Any longer and it probably would have felt like too much or could have dragged. My main complaint with the book is that it feels a little too diversionary at times. I really wonder what Vince Kramer could write in a longer format and if he toned down a little. But at the same time and at this length, diversionary isn’t bad.

Gigantic Death Worm by Vince Kramer earns 4 tequila shots out of 5.

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Book Review: Fantastic Orgy

Posted on July 6, 2012 | Leave a comment

Fantastic Orgy Fantastic Orgy by Carlton Mellick III
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

What if sexually transmitted diseases suddenly mutated to give people extreme body modifications that are essentially super powers? This is the premise of Fantastic Orgy, the titular story (huh huh, I said “titular”) in this short short story collection by Carlton Mellick III.

Among these stories are a buff guy with a lollipop for a head trying to pick up women, a bunch of weird looking cats in a world plagued by agoraphobia, punk band roommates in a city overrun with hobgoblins (more on this later), and a group of porn actors who are lost at sea and have no memory of how they got there or how long they’ve actually been there. Each one of these stories brings something interesting to the table, and each one is immensely enjoyable.

If I had to fault one of these stories, it would have to be “City Hobgoblins,” mostly because it just didn’t click for me, although there is probably a good explanation for this. At the end of the book, Mellick has been kind enough to provide an author’s note for each story, explaining the origin and other background information for each one. These are actually really interesting to read, and a good look inside the author’s head. Apparently, “City Hobgoblins” is actually a prequel/origin story to another one of his books, Punk Land, which I haven’t read yet, and didn’t know this while reading it. A failure of the author to disclose this beforehand, or a failure of the reader to know this, I’m not sure. It probably could have been easily fixed by having the author’s note for each story in front of the story, which I’ve seen done in other collections.

Aside from this frustration born of my own ignorance, most of these stories will make you laugh and make you cringe, sometimes at the same time. Keep in mind that these stories are not for the faint of heart, though. There is explicit sex and violence throughout a few of these stories. Well, if the name and cover of the book isn’t a dead giveaway about that one, then you’re probably not much of a reader anyway. Although, admittedly it’s not as over the top as some other Bizarro books I’ve read.

Fantastic Orgy by Carlton Mellick III earns 4.5 bench-pressing muscle cats out of 5.

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Book Review: Jimmy Plush, Teddy Bear Detective

Posted on June 29, 2012 | Leave a comment

Jimmy Plush, Teddy Bear Detective Jimmy Plush, Teddy Bear Detective by Garrett Cook
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Garrett Cook takes on the hard-boiled detective noir serial genre, but with teddy bears, in Jimmy Plush: Teddy Bear Detective. It’s told as a series of stories which tie together as Charles Hatbox, whose mind has been placed in the body of Jimmy Plush to pay off his gambling debts, tries to solve a series of loosely related cases in a city rife with prostitute furries and stereotypical crime bosses. But what happened to the real Jimmy Plush?

This one is genuinely hard to review, mostly because I’m not sure how I really feel about it. It’s got some good elements and an authentic feel to it. Cook captures the feel and writing style of the old noir serials, racism and all. At the same time, he breaks from this in ways that feel…I don’t know. Inappropriate isn’t the right word. I’m probably looking for a word that’s a little closer to predictable, in that he resorts to memes that seem to show up in a lot of bizarro novels, and a lot of those seem like they’re tacked on just to make it a little more bizarro. At the same time, it’s kind of hard to see where else Cook could have actually gone with it.

If I wanted to get philosophical, at its heart, Jimmy Plush comes down to being a novel of identity. You see, Jimmy Plush existed before Hatbox swapped bodies. And the original Jimmy Plush had a bad reputation. At first, Hatbox tries to be Jimmy Plush and act in the way people expect him to. But later, as Hatbox begins to realize who Jimmy Plush is/was, he begins to assert his own identity. It becomes a story of doing what’s expected of you and who people want you to be versus being your own person. Or maybe I’m reading too much in this. It is supposed be a pulp tribute, afterall.

It’s a solid novel, but it trips over itself a few times. The quality of the prose generally good and for the most part flows very easily. At the same time, the author occasionally trips a little on the flow. Hatbox is not a very likeable character, but at the same time does generate sympathy. He’s kind of weird that way. The other villains, however, are generally stereotypical. Admittedly, that might be part of the point, but then again, there was a lot of unrealized potential for more interesting villains or secondary characters, which was disappointing. Ultimately, Jimmy Plush is okay, but it just didn’t do much for this reviewer.

Jimmy Plush: Teddy Bear Detective by Garrett Cook earns 3 giant beef jerky sticks out of 5.

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