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erin_oriordan_is_reading_again's review against another edition
4.0
Larry Doyle is a former writer for The Simpsons, by far my favorite TV series ever. Ask anyone who knows me in real life - I have a Simpsons quote for everything. Perhaps that's why I enjoyed the quirky sense of humor Doyle displays in this tongue-in-cheek homage to the B-movie flicks of the '60s. As on The Simpsons, the allusions come a mile a minute.
sarcasmsign's review against another edition
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
futurememory's review against another edition
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.
ericgaryanderson's review against another edition
2.0
I was expecting wit of the caliber of Lost Skeleton of Cadavra and did not get it. Underwhelming. And kind of sophomoric.
bethnellvaccaro's review against another edition
1.0
I just couldn't get into this book. I do think some people would absolutely love it, I just wasn't in the mood for it rightnow.
dsloboda's review against another edition
4.0
Really fun read. Not that I'm surprised, considering I loved 'I Love You, Beth Cooper' as well. I'm very much looking forward to more books from Larry Doyle!
msoblong's review against another edition
2.0
I received an ARC of Go, Mutants! through Goodreads First Reads. I think this is the first ARC Ive gotten that I really didnt enjoy.
It felt like I was dropped into the middle of the book, with no introduction to the main characters or knowledge of their history. It made the beginning rather confusing and left me not wanting to continue reading.
Throughout the book I could hear my 8th grade English teacher's voice in my head. "Too many big words makes the writer come off as a child trying to impress" We were discouraged from picking up the thesaurus to find adjectives because frequent use odd words you dont hear in everyday conversation will take away from the story. There were various points in the book that left me wondering if Doyle had in fact flipped through a thesaurus and picked out some random adjectives to stick in. His choice of words often distracted me and made it difficult for me to keep my concentration.
Overall the book wasnt horrible but definitely not one I will be recommending to my friends.
It felt like I was dropped into the middle of the book, with no introduction to the main characters or knowledge of their history. It made the beginning rather confusing and left me not wanting to continue reading.
Throughout the book I could hear my 8th grade English teacher's voice in my head. "Too many big words makes the writer come off as a child trying to impress" We were discouraged from picking up the thesaurus to find adjectives because frequent use odd words you dont hear in everyday conversation will take away from the story. There were various points in the book that left me wondering if Doyle had in fact flipped through a thesaurus and picked out some random adjectives to stick in. His choice of words often distracted me and made it difficult for me to keep my concentration.
Overall the book wasnt horrible but definitely not one I will be recommending to my friends.
aprilbooksandwine's review against another edition
4.0
I feel like I need to watch more B movies, beyond the realm of those featured on MST3K. (FYI if you have never seen MST3K fix your life and go see this wicked awesome show now — I recommend Hobgoblins). Go, Mutants! by Larry Doyle takes on the creatures from these science fiction films and puts them in high school, I think during the 1950s.
Read the rest of my review here
Read the rest of my review here
adelaidemetzger_robotprophet's review
4.0
Larry Doyle, seems to have a good reputation as an author. Let’s just say my first experience with his style in Go, Mutants! was an…interesting one.
Doyle’s characters are absolutely flawless. This is the closest I’ve ever felt an author to his characters and that would make sense because an author would have to be that close to these personalities to be able to manipulate them freely. Each character, big in role or small, was so sharp and intelligently crafted with personalities so pleasantly stimulating I could taste them. I didn’t see them as characters in a book, I saw them as real people.
The nostalgic parody was amusing to a point of distraction since I hadn’t read anything like it, but it didn’t take long to adjust and start reading at my own leisure. With the setting being a mock/alternate universe of the mid 1960’s we, as the reader, are exposed to reincarnated icons of the time. J!m’s mom is a hotter than ever Marylin Monroe anthro-cat woman and a character resembling The Fonz is a human/mutant ape hybrid.
However, there was a setback that made have a huge internal war on what rating I should give this book.
From the twist, the last few chapters really changed my mind about my attitude toward the book. I’m not used to satire or dark comedy so I found it hard to enjoy even though I found myself chuckling here and there--but the more I think about it the more I realize that this couldn’t be written any other way and would ultimately fail as a plain drama. What really bother me was the author’s demeaning take on what emotion was there. The first couple times I was inclined to feel sad, I was quickly turned down by a jab of humor that played off what was supposed to be a connective moment between reader and character. When the real emotion seriously presented itself, I was unsure if I should absorb the moment or brace myself for another jab. This lessened the authenticity of what the author wanted me to feel. In short, the author lost my trust to relate to his characters emotionally.
The last four chapters blew my mind (especially Chapter 31--finding out the whole third-person POV book was actually a first-person POV of his Dad threw my brains to the wall and made me fall in love with the character ), so much so that it was the turning point in my rating choice. The introduction to a certain character and events that immediately followed really changed the view of the whole book, so I was able to partially forgive Larry Doyle for his camera-ready irony. Will I read his next hit? …Not so much.
Doyle’s characters are absolutely flawless. This is the closest I’ve ever felt an author to his characters and that would make sense because an author would have to be that close to these personalities to be able to manipulate them freely. Each character, big in role or small, was so sharp and intelligently crafted with personalities so pleasantly stimulating I could taste them. I didn’t see them as characters in a book, I saw them as real people.
The nostalgic parody was amusing to a point of distraction since I hadn’t read anything like it, but it didn’t take long to adjust and start reading at my own leisure. With the setting being a mock/alternate universe of the mid 1960’s we, as the reader, are exposed to reincarnated icons of the time. J!m’s mom is a hotter than ever Marylin Monroe anthro-cat woman and a character resembling The Fonz is a human/mutant ape hybrid.
However, there was a setback that made have a huge internal war on what rating I should give this book.
From the twist, the last few chapters really changed my mind about my attitude toward the book. I’m not used to satire or dark comedy so I found it hard to enjoy even though I found myself chuckling here and there--but the more I think about it the more I realize that this couldn’t be written any other way and would ultimately fail as a plain drama. What really bother me was the author’s demeaning take on what emotion was there. The first couple times I was inclined to feel sad, I was quickly turned down by a jab of humor that played off what was supposed to be a connective moment between reader and character. When the real emotion seriously presented itself, I was unsure if I should absorb the moment or brace myself for another jab. This lessened the authenticity of what the author wanted me to feel. In short, the author lost my trust to relate to his characters emotionally.
The last four chapters blew my mind (especially Chapter 31