A review by thekarpuk
Rico Slade Will Fucking Kill You by Bradley Sands
3.0
"Wait, what the hell just happened?" was my initial response when I completed this. It was a blur of high-stakes wackiness, and by the time I might have grown tired of the broad humor which occasionally strayed into lazy Hollywood stereotypes, it was already over.
But oddly I have fond feelings about it despite the dialogue that sometimes felt clunky, and not always in an ironically bad sort of way.
The title and the summary promised me hilarious, high-stakes cheesiness, and I was a trifle disappointed that it only really exists inside Chip's head. A villain whose bomb destroys people but leaves their money intact was funny enough to justify my purchase, I just wanted more of that.
Several things inform me that this may be considered Bizarro. My actual reading only leaned towards that in one regard. There's no real straight man in bizarro writing it seems, and to me that runs counter to a lot of effective comedy. When there's no element of normality to bounce all the madness off of, it loses a lot of its weight, and it just becomes a series of wacky, at times nonsensical things.
Absurdity is far more clever played against the mundane.
But I still smile when I think about the book, so that has to count for something, right?
But oddly I have fond feelings about it despite the dialogue that sometimes felt clunky, and not always in an ironically bad sort of way.
The title and the summary promised me hilarious, high-stakes cheesiness, and I was a trifle disappointed that it only really exists inside Chip's head. A villain whose bomb destroys people but leaves their money intact was funny enough to justify my purchase, I just wanted more of that.
Several things inform me that this may be considered Bizarro. My actual reading only leaned towards that in one regard. There's no real straight man in bizarro writing it seems, and to me that runs counter to a lot of effective comedy. When there's no element of normality to bounce all the madness off of, it loses a lot of its weight, and it just becomes a series of wacky, at times nonsensical things.
Absurdity is far more clever played against the mundane.
But I still smile when I think about the book, so that has to count for something, right?