A review by thelauramay
Alien Space Tentacle Porn by Peter Cawdron
4.0
So it turns out that I work with a guy who wrote a book called 'Alien Space Tentacle Porn'. I learned this while standing in a bowling alley--site of all great discoveries, obviously--and so bought the book on the spot. Because he wrote it, that is; not because of the possibility of tentacle porn.
Overall, I don't know whether I'm more impressed by Cawdron's writing, or by how prolific he is (who writes that many books?!). Generally, this was a well put-together book in that sort of 'seat-of-your-pants' style, wherein a clueless and somewhat hapless protagonist (think Arthur Dent) gets dragged out of their depth by a group of people who know what's going on and don't bother to stop and fill him in. It was quirky, enjoyable, and an easy read. I also particularly enjoyed the odd Vonnegut reference sprinkled in the text.
Of course, one risk of the seat-of-your-pants style is that sometimes, the structure of the text can get a bit out of hand (and don't I know it). It opens up gaps where the storyline can get bogged down, or rail-roaded by some particular sentiment or intrusion. In Alien Space Tentacle Porn, there was a long interlude in Chapter 3 wherein our protag asked questions and our friendly alien answered them, with little variation. This was bothersome insofar as the repetitive style of that section of the text, and because it felt like we were leaking from the protagonist's inner monologue, to that of the author: the character started to get a bit out-of-character. When later reading the book's epilogue, it becomes apparent that the themes raised in that chapter are key to the author's message in the book--and a little more structure to the novel would have allowed these themes to be smoothed out in a way that allows them to be conveyed in more than one bite. And I say 'bite', because key themes can be a like icing a cake--the icing (or frosting) needs to be spread out over the whole thing, or some areas will have too much, and some areas will have none. And we WANT icing, but we also want cake with it. (It may or may not be lunchtime, and I may or may not have a pretty extreme fever.)
Overall, some solid work from a very solid mostly-indie author. I've recommended his work to a slew of friends, and hope they each enjoy it at least as much as I did.
Overall, I don't know whether I'm more impressed by Cawdron's writing, or by how prolific he is (who writes that many books?!). Generally, this was a well put-together book in that sort of 'seat-of-your-pants' style, wherein a clueless and somewhat hapless protagonist (think Arthur Dent) gets dragged out of their depth by a group of people who know what's going on and don't bother to stop and fill him in. It was quirky, enjoyable, and an easy read. I also particularly enjoyed the odd Vonnegut reference sprinkled in the text.
Of course, one risk of the seat-of-your-pants style is that sometimes, the structure of the text can get a bit out of hand (and don't I know it). It opens up gaps where the storyline can get bogged down, or rail-roaded by some particular sentiment or intrusion. In Alien Space Tentacle Porn, there was a long interlude in Chapter 3 wherein our protag asked questions and our friendly alien answered them, with little variation. This was bothersome insofar as the repetitive style of that section of the text, and because it felt like we were leaking from the protagonist's inner monologue, to that of the author: the character started to get a bit out-of-character. When later reading the book's epilogue, it becomes apparent that the themes raised in that chapter are key to the author's message in the book--and a little more structure to the novel would have allowed these themes to be smoothed out in a way that allows them to be conveyed in more than one bite. And I say 'bite', because key themes can be a like icing a cake--the icing (or frosting) needs to be spread out over the whole thing, or some areas will have too much, and some areas will have none. And we WANT icing, but we also want cake with it. (It may or may not be lunchtime, and I may or may not have a pretty extreme fever.)
Overall, some solid work from a very solid mostly-indie author. I've recommended his work to a slew of friends, and hope they each enjoy it at least as much as I did.