PaperbackI like the Discworld series (Pratchett) and loved American Gods (Gaiman). This? This was OK.
It took me forever to read it -- more than a MONTH when I'm trying to knock out one a week. I was pretty glad I'd built up a bit of a buffer because this single-handedly blew it. Sure, it was a busy month which included a family vacation, a houseguest, a son going away to college, a new Wii in the house, and some heavy-duty deadlines at work, but this lightweight book should never have taken more than a week to get through.
It was just so silly. Now I like me some silly -- but I stopped giggling after page 30 and the chuckles dried up by about page 100. Thereafter I smiled appreciatively maybe every 20 pages or so...and that's a shame since there were at least three jokes per page. I can just imagine the collaboration scene: beer or bongs (probably both), a lot of "how about blahblah?" followed by hysterical laughter that ends in breathlessness, and quite a bit of "dude. Totally write that down, it's sooooo funny!"
It's close to 400 pages when the story is probably told in about 150...the rest is jokes jokes and more jokes. When there's more padding than story, it's time to take some scissors to the manuscript. I probably would up this about 1.5 letter grades if it'd topped out at 250 pages or so.
C+
