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Muscle Memory 2: More Muscle, More Memory! by Steve Lowe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

WARNING: The following review contains spoilers from the first Muscle Memory. My review for that book can be read here.

Do I take the blue pill and forget any of this ever happened, or do I take the red pill and see how far down the rabbit hole goes?

There’s been something of an epidemic in films lately, although some could argue that it’s a problem that’s always been there. I refer to it as the Matrix Syndrome. Filmmakers create a great standalone film, one that is fantastic and could even be argued as a classic. That is, if they left it alone. These filmmakers decide that, rather than having the one great film, they want to turn it into a franchise, and they produce sequels that are not only terrible films, but are so bad that they tarnish would have otherwise been the sterling legacy of the first film.

When Steve Lowe announced that he was working on a sequel to Muscle Memory, I was understandably worried. Had the Matrix Syndrome infected the literary world as well? The first Muscle Memory was a very good book, with an unusual take on the body-swap meme. At the same time, it was also story of Billy’s self-discovery, and of his own obliviousness of his wife’s condition (postpartum depression) which he didn’t realize until it was too late. It was an excellent standalone book that couched a certain appropriate emotion impact within a bunch of craziness and general silliness.

So, having read the sequel, has the Matrix Syndrome affected Muscle Memory? Yes and no.

In the first Muscle Memory, Billy swapped bodies with his wife, who had poisoned him the night before, so he was trapped in his wife’s body, and his wife was now presumable in his dead body, or had been. Nearly everyone in their town had switched bodies with someone, usually whoever they were closest too at the time, while their neighbor Edgar swapped bodies with one of his sheep. You can interpret that how you want to. It ended with a machine that had supposedly cause the whole thing (at least, according to Terry Bradshaw) being switched back on, which would theoretically switch people back. Billy expects that he’ll be put back in his now dead body and therefore be dead. It ended with him seeing a blue flash of light.

Muscle Memory 2 picks up right where the first one ended. Since both books are told from Billy’s perspective, he obviously didn’t die. Instead it appears that rather than putting everyone back where they were supposed to be, it just swapped everyone again. This meant that while several people were supposedly put back as they remained close to the one who they switched with, other swaps wound up occurring instead. We have the return of several characters and references, particularly Terry Bradshaw, Kirk Cameron, and Agents Tim and Joey from the now kinder, gentler FBI,and we even get an appearance of a very gangsta Matt Lauer (portrayed in such a way that I’m now wondering if Steve Lowe had some kind of personal run-in with Lauer that left him with a bad taste in his mouth). I can’t go into much without spoiling this book given its short length, but suffice to say craziness and silliness ensue, and with more intensity than the first book.

The problem is that Muscle Memory 2 doesn’t have the emotional impact that the first book had, and a lot of the silliness seems to be there for the sake of being silly and nothing else. I’ll admit that I did chuckle out loud at Matt Lauer’s portrayal. The author raises more questions than were answered. While not everything was answered in the first book, it still felt like we knew what we needed to know and it remained satisfying. Muscle Memory 2 raises questions that feel like they need answers that we’re not given, and it left me feeling a little empty. Things also get more serious and intense that it felt like it actually dampened part of the fun that could have been had.

Don’t get me wrong. Muscle Memory 2 is not a bad book by any means. It’s still a fun read. But I could take a page from the movie “The Weather Man” and describe it as fast food. It may taste good, but at the end it’s not really nourishing. Overall, it’s not bad and doesn’t tarnish the first book’s legacy, so it doesn’t suffer from the Matrix Syndrome, but it is disappointing when inevitably compared to the first book. I’m not sure if Steve Lowe is planning on writing a third book. As many questions and situations that came up during this book, this feels like it needs to be a trilogy, even at the risk of full-blown Matrixitis. If he does, I hope he takes a little more time to write it, as this book felt a little rushed and that some of these problem could have been dealt with with a little more time and editing.

Muscle Memory 2 earns three out of five stars.

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The Morbidly Obese Ninja by Carlton Mellick III
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I try to describe The Morbidly Obese Ninja by Carlton Mellick III, there is only word that accurately describes it: FUN! I had great fun reading it. You can tell that Mellick had fun writing it. It is simply pure fun!

The story is pretty straightforward. Basu is a seven hundred pound ninja in a world where corporate espionage is a matter of daily life and hostile takeovers are literally hostile and involve the assassination of company board members. He follows a strict code of ninja ethics and obedience to his masters, the executives of the company he works for. While pulling a job to steal a “piggy bank” containing corporate secrets of a rival firm, he discovers that he is not the only one after them, including a group led by an old ninja rival. Thus begins a game of cat-and-mouse (or ninja-and-ninja) to obtain the piggy bank and return it to their executives.

Heavily inspired by anime, in case you can’t tell by the cover, the novel takes place in a future version of California which has been transformed into a psuedo-Japanese type of world. Cosmetic surgery to look like animals or anime characters is common place. In fact, cosmetic surgery to look like anime characters is so popular that they are considered a new race, called animese. Rather than basic weapons, the ninjas wield iKatanas, swords with vast electronic abilities in them that make them more like electronic Swiss army knives than simple swords. These are details scattered throughout the book, but they tend to be done in passing and do not become overbearing. Mellick focuses on the story and the character, and describes the people and places as necessary to paint a picture of the world in which the story takes place, but that is all. It’s like some well-prepared food, where the spices are added to enhance the flavor but not overpower the food itself.

Why is Basu so morbidly obese and still a ninja? This is an integral part of the plot, so I won’t spoil it. Suffice to say that there is a very good reason for it, and it doesn’t glorify obesity at all, as some who don’t read the book could possibly be concerned and complain about. In fact, while Basu has learned to use his obesity to his advantage in many ways, he also suffers from a number of physical problems as a direct result of his condition, which is not one that he chose.

If I have one complaint about The Morbidly Obese Njnja, it’s that it’s too short. The book felt like it could have been so much longer, with so much more to tell. The story could have been drawn out more, which is a rare complaint to make. It happens so fast, and I wanted to know more, have more action sequences, and I wanted a slightly more developed relationship between Basu and Chiya, the animese technician who works on his iKatana. I would have liked more history on Basu, and more history on the piggy bank itself. In short, I just wanted more. As a side note, I do like that Mellick does not go into how the world became the way it is, as usually things like that tend to detract from a story if it is too unbelievable, which it usually is. Mellick suspends disbelief by completely ignoring it, and in this case that method works wonderfully.

In the end, you wind up with a book that’s got really great action sequences, interesting characters that could use a little more development than is given to them, and a straightforward and easy-to-follow plot that I would have liked to see stretched out a little more. But this book’s strengths are so good that they overshadow its weaknesses very well. The Morbidly Obese Ninja is apparently the author’s 31st publication, but it is only the first book of his this reviewer has read. It will not be the last one I read. If his other work is as fun as this book, there will good times ahead.

A very solid 4 out of 5 stars.

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The Egg Said Nothing by Caris O’Malley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Caris O’Malley must be clairvoyant, because in writing The Egg Said Nothing, he has clearly been channeling the ghost of Kurt Vonnegut. This is not a bad thing, however, as Vonnegut is one of this reviewer’s favorite writers of all time.

Manny is a shut-in and a loner. He sits in his dark apartment, up all night watching late night television. He pays his bills by stealing change from local fountains (he justifies this by saying that they are no longer people’s wishes once they hit corporate waters and become extra income for those who don’t need it). He has a somewhat sketchy relationship with his senile mother. Until he wakes up one morning to find that he has laid an egg. Or he thinks he’s laid an egg. All he knows is that he woke up with an egg sitting between his legs. Where else could it have come from? So you start to wonder if this is going to be more Kafkaesque and if Manny is going to turn into a chicken.

Thus begins Manny breaking from his routine has he tries to nurture the egg like any loving parent would do. Well, a loving parent from another species, maybe, but a loving parent nonetheless. He meets and starts a relationship with Ashley, a waitress at a local diner. And then thing really take off and his life takes a turn for the weird as he discovers the true contents of the egg an begins receiving messages and visitations from himself in the future.

“Listen: Manny has come unstuck in time.” Or that’s what I expected to read at some point. The second half of the novel is heavily steeped in time travel and determinism. Like I said, O’Malley would probably make Vonnegut proud. As he starts to play with time very heavily, it can get a bit confusing, especially in keeping track of Manny’s different selves as they appear and disappear, not to mention the true nature of the egg. Early on, you start to wonder why this title would be part of the Bizarro fiction line of books as it seems unusually normal during the first half or so (aside from the protagonist laying an egg), but about halfway through the weirdness is ramped up big time.

This becomes a problem. The heavy weirdness starts so fast after a somewhat leisurely pace that the reader could feel like they’re getting literary whiplash. As such, uneven pacing contributes to some of the confusion I felt during the second half of the book. The reader might actually feel the need to start keeping a flowchart just to keep things straight in their head. I’ll admit that I was trying to mentally do so. Then again, with novels that play with time, this isn’t always unusual. On the other hand, the author kicks it up a few notches, making it feel like you need to be a Timelord to figure out who, what, and when people are from.

Despite this gripe, The Egg Said Nothing is still an excellent story that deserves your attention. At its heart, when you strip away the science fiction elements and the weirdness, it becomes a novel about the ultimate loser trying to break out of his own shell and not be such a loser anymore, to be someone and do something that matters, and how the most insignificant person could change the world simply by existing.

The Egg Said Nothing gets a solid 4 out of 5 stars. I hope this is not the last we’ll see of Caris O’Malley, as I would really like to read more from him. My only suggestion is that he works on his pacing a little bit.

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