Can it possibly live up to that cover? If it lives up that cover is that a good thing? No i's not. A book with a cover like this needs to exceed the promises the cover makes by a huge huge distance.
This sadly, doesn't even live up to that godawful picture.
This should be filed under "when will I ever learn".
It doesn't know what it's meant to be. Is it a comedy? A couple of wry smiles here and there doth not a comedy make. Is it a horror novel? It's never scary. it's never shocking. It tries too hard to go OTT in a couple of places that it fails entirely to shock. Is it science fiction? It has some sci-fi elements, but badly written, ill-explained and tedious. And mostly nonsensical.
It starts in an ok fashion and deteriorates. I struggled to get to the end of this. When you have 10 pages to go and you're wondering if you should bother, that's not a good sign.
Basic story - a huge amusement park (supposedly a satirical take on Disneyland) - our hero works as a giant bunny, his girlfriend plays a gnu. He's been hallucinating recently and seeing flying saucers. The boss of the camp is a snuff pornographer with a private army who decides to lock the park up tight and start playing his games with the guests, as you do. Of course, no outside agency intervenes at any point, except for a news helicopter which gets shot down. At the time of the park's takeover, Parry, the guy in the bunny suit, has fallen down a shaft of some sort after passing out through an illness which is never mentioned again, and his girlfriend is locked in a tower somewhere after being sexually assaulted by her boss. There's also a "mystery guest" who comes in as a recurring character but who adds zero to the narrative. Lots of people are killed, no one from outside comes to help, it's up to Parry and Priscilla (the Gnu) with the help of the aliens to save the day. Or should I say it's up to the omniscient aliens who can raise characters from the dead to save the day.
This should have been just my kind of thing. It strives to be quirky, it tries to be shocking, it aims at some metafictional sci fi plot twists. But the execution is bloody awful. The writing style varies from bland to what-the-hell-am-I-reading-and-is-there-any-point-in-me-carrying-on. The characters are not even complex enough to warrant saying they're one dimensional.
The good guys do nothing of note for themselves. Only the metaphysical creatures from the flying saucers allow them to actually participate in the story in an active way. The bad guy is just that. He does bad things because he wants to because he's bad. A good villain is still the hero of his own story. Charles Bigger, the villain, is just evil and knows it. He knows he's the bad guy and doesn't care. In the hands of a skilful writer, that can just about work...
In this guy's hands... nope
Remember I read this so you don't have to.
It's on amazon if you really want to. But don't. This is the literary equivalent of unblocking drains.
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