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A review by rosseroo
The War Against the Assholes by Sam Munson
1.0
The catchy title and purported premise ("Contemporary fantasy meets true crime when schools of ancient sorcery go up against the art of the long con in this stunningly entertaining debut fantasy novel.") reeled me in, but at the end of it all, I felt like the victim of a 280-page-long con.
High school junior (senior?) Mike plays football at a bland New York Catholic high school. One day, a weedy classmate introduces him to a book of magic tricks as the hook to bring him into his tiny clique of magic-using weirdos (one of whom is the requisite hot chick named Alabama -- possibly in homage to the character from the film True Romance?). Pretty much everything beyond this opening part is choppy and confusing.
It seems that Mike's group is in some long-standing "war" against the titular rivals, but the whys and wherefores never really get clear. Mike's group includes a Holocaust survivor, so presumably they're the goodies, but I could never work out what made the baddies bad. I think maybe the concept is a riff on Catcher in the Rye (which does get explicitly referred to), and the baddies are the phonies?
Oh yeah, and the writer made a distinctive choice in writing in super-short sentences, which didn't really add anything for me and just felt like an attempt at style for the sake of style. Throw in the perpetually horny and violence-prone protagonist, the fantasy sex-interest, the completely muddled stakes, and the abrupt ending, and this thing is a dud.
High school junior (senior?) Mike plays football at a bland New York Catholic high school. One day, a weedy classmate introduces him to a book of magic tricks as the hook to bring him into his tiny clique of magic-using weirdos (one of whom is the requisite hot chick named Alabama -- possibly in homage to the character from the film True Romance?). Pretty much everything beyond this opening part is choppy and confusing.
It seems that Mike's group is in some long-standing "war" against the titular rivals, but the whys and wherefores never really get clear. Mike's group includes a Holocaust survivor, so presumably they're the goodies, but I could never work out what made the baddies bad. I think maybe the concept is a riff on Catcher in the Rye (which does get explicitly referred to), and the baddies are the phonies?
Oh yeah, and the writer made a distinctive choice in writing in super-short sentences, which didn't really add anything for me and just felt like an attempt at style for the sake of style. Throw in the perpetually horny and violence-prone protagonist, the fantasy sex-interest, the completely muddled stakes, and the abrupt ending, and this thing is a dud.