Scan barcode
A review by adelaidemetzger_robotprophet
Go, Mutants! by Larry Doyle
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