A review by futurememory
Go, Mutants! by Larry Doyle
4.0
Yay for book giveaways on Good Reads!
I was anticipating reading this novel when I read a joint review for it over at The Book Smugglers. Hilariously enough, the very next day after I read that review, I was notified by GR that I had won this book in a giveaway!
Go, Mutants! is a hilarious send-up to the 1950s B-horror movie obsession. Imagine that the aliens really did land in Red Scare 1950s America. Now imagine it's twenty years later, and the aliens are living comfortably in suburbia, their kids attending high school along with the rest of the human populace.
J!m is one of those alien kids, suffering through high school like any other loner kid. Except he's got blue, oily skin, his brains are on display for the world to see, and he's a budding empath. J!m's an outcast. His status as an outsider is further defined by humanity's collective memory of his father as the alien that nearly caused the apocalypse. Yeah, it's a lot to live up to.
The premise of aliens injected into angsty high school is a perfect metaphor for those awkward teenage years. When you feel different than anyone else, when you feel like you'll never fit it, when you think you'll never find who you really are. J!m is experiencing all of that and more. And he's got a few friends to help him out: Larry, aka Jelly, an anthropomorphous blob of goo, Johnny, a radioactive half-man-half-ape-beast, Rusty, the guy's gal, and Marie. Marie, the source of his heartbreak, his best friend, his biggest crush... Marie, who's pseudo-dating the resident jackass and king jock, Russ.
Go, Mutants! is a really fun send-up to the cult classics of yesteryear. It's got satire, wit, and smarts. The vocabulary in this book is twisty, and the sentences at points seem to be bleeding violet. While I love a little word play, Go, Mutant!'s complicated language and syntax can sometimes be a deterrent. The overstylization at points ends up mucking up the meaning of some of the sentences. There's actually a narrative explanation for the verbal gymnastics (and I won't spoil it), but it doesn't make the book any less complicated to read. I kept wavering between loving all the little intricacies and being mildly disgruntled when obtuse descriptions were weighed down by the heavy prose.
The entire cast is lovable, the structure of the story is intriguing (gotta love the random screenplay elements) and the design is fan-freaking-tastic (complete with classic B-movie fonts and structuring at points). There's a lot to really sink your teeth into a love about this novel.
Besides some clumsy wordplay, Go, Mutants! is a fun and filling piece of genre fiction. It's smarter than it looks.
I was anticipating reading this novel when I read a joint review for it over at The Book Smugglers. Hilariously enough, the very next day after I read that review, I was notified by GR that I had won this book in a giveaway!
Go, Mutants! is a hilarious send-up to the 1950s B-horror movie obsession. Imagine that the aliens really did land in Red Scare 1950s America. Now imagine it's twenty years later, and the aliens are living comfortably in suburbia, their kids attending high school along with the rest of the human populace.
J!m is one of those alien kids, suffering through high school like any other loner kid. Except he's got blue, oily skin, his brains are on display for the world to see, and he's a budding empath. J!m's an outcast. His status as an outsider is further defined by humanity's collective memory of his father as the alien that nearly caused the apocalypse. Yeah, it's a lot to live up to.
The premise of aliens injected into angsty high school is a perfect metaphor for those awkward teenage years. When you feel different than anyone else, when you feel like you'll never fit it, when you think you'll never find who you really are. J!m is experiencing all of that and more. And he's got a few friends to help him out: Larry, aka Jelly, an anthropomorphous blob of goo, Johnny, a radioactive half-man-half-ape-beast, Rusty, the guy's gal, and Marie. Marie, the source of his heartbreak, his best friend, his biggest crush... Marie, who's pseudo-dating the resident jackass and king jock, Russ.
Go, Mutants! is a really fun send-up to the cult classics of yesteryear. It's got satire, wit, and smarts. The vocabulary in this book is twisty, and the sentences at points seem to be bleeding violet. While I love a little word play, Go, Mutant!'s complicated language and syntax can sometimes be a deterrent. The overstylization at points ends up mucking up the meaning of some of the sentences. There's actually a narrative explanation for the verbal gymnastics (and I won't spoil it), but it doesn't make the book any less complicated to read. I kept wavering between loving all the little intricacies and being mildly disgruntled when obtuse descriptions were weighed down by the heavy prose.
The entire cast is lovable, the structure of the story is intriguing (gotta love the random screenplay elements) and the design is fan-freaking-tastic (complete with classic B-movie fonts and structuring at points). There's a lot to really sink your teeth into a love about this novel.
Besides some clumsy wordplay, Go, Mutants! is a fun and filling piece of genre fiction. It's smarter than it looks.