A review by pageglue
Meddling Kids, by Edgar Cantero
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Uggghh so much potential! A great premise ruined by this piece of shit author.
Meddling Kids is basically an adult horror Scooby Doo novel, featuring the kinds of shenanigans that the gang got up to. The only praise I’ll give is that the plot was very gripping, enough to take me to end of this 450 page book, but even that was spoilt by its stupid ending.
While the writing was often cinematic, it also drew a lot of attention to itself, for instance ‘the wheezer (a monster) didn’t even make it until the end of this paragraph.” There were also these random switches to giving the dialogue in the form of a screenplay, including directions for the actors in parenthesis, which was just so weird.
There’s so much offensive shit in this book too. At first I thought it was emulating the vernacular of the 90s, and it felt unnecessary but not out of place. But there’s some rough intersexphobia and transphobia as well that basically casts two characters as crazy/evil freaks.
Don’t read this awful book.
INSTEAD, read The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion, and it’s sequel, The Barrow Will Send What it May by Margaret Killjoy. A gang of queer, anarchist punks solve supernatural mysteries. It’s a great time with some very cool characters. The biggest issue is that they’re both novellas, and I so wanted more!
Meddling Kids is basically an adult horror Scooby Doo novel, featuring the kinds of shenanigans that the gang got up to. The only praise I’ll give is that the plot was very gripping, enough to take me to end of this 450 page book, but even that was spoilt by its stupid ending.
While the writing was often cinematic, it also drew a lot of attention to itself, for instance ‘the wheezer (a monster) didn’t even make it until the end of this paragraph.” There were also these random switches to giving the dialogue in the form of a screenplay, including directions for the actors in parenthesis, which was just so weird.
There’s so much offensive shit in this book too. At first I thought it was emulating the vernacular of the 90s, and it felt unnecessary but not out of place. But there’s some rough intersexphobia and transphobia as well that basically casts two characters as crazy/evil freaks.
Don’t read this awful book.
INSTEAD, read The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion, and it’s sequel, The Barrow Will Send What it May by Margaret Killjoy. A gang of queer, anarchist punks solve supernatural mysteries. It’s a great time with some very cool characters. The biggest issue is that they’re both novellas, and I so wanted more!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Transphobia and Sexism