Abdicating...

Evil Monkey:What up dawg?Jeff:What up...mawn-key?Evil Monkey:Been takin' it easy in prep for the run at the presidency.Jeff:Haven't seen you for ages.Evil Monkey:Been workin' on my make-up and my recursive Moebius-strip campaign slogans. Like, "A vote for Evil Monkey is a vote for Monkeys of Evil." Or, "Monkey Do, Monkey Doo Doo."Jeff:What does that even mean?Evil Monkey:I dunno. Thought I'd just throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks.Jeff:NiceEvil Monkey:By the way, you were awfully harsh on Electric Church at SF Weekly last week.Jeff:Is that what it was? I thought it was just honest, forthright reviewing. Nothing personal.Evil Monkey:Yeah, maybe. But you made it sound like people shouldn't read the book.Jeff:I just presented the evidence. Look at the evidence.Evil Monkey:I saw a lot more reasonable reviews online, like this one at the SF Diplomat. It was very diplomatic.Jeff:That one was all over the place. I couldn't figure it out.Evil Monkey:What's to figure out? He wanted to throw his feces and eat them too.Jeff:How do explain this part:So why did I keep reading this book if it's so terrible? Well, the truth is that this book really does have its moments...Somers spends as little time world-building as the plot demands. The descriptions of Manhattan as this blasted wasteland full of criminals who appear, commit crimes, and then disappear when the cops turn up is actually only strengthened by Somers' refusal to spend any time and effort on describing the place. The effect is that the place is empty... not because Somers doesn't give us enough information about the place but because there's nothing there. The same is true of the society that fills Somers' world.Evil Monkey:The reviewer likes being blind. Nothing wrong with that. If you're blind, you can actually see more.Jeff:Or this:Despite having serious flaws, The Electric Church is far from being a bad book. Yes it is a piece of fun and escapist reading but it also has a number of quite interesting ideas that it brings to the party and which make it difficult to tar the book with the "populist thriller" brush. Somers also does well with what plot he has; there's never a dull moment in The Electric Church and Somers never puts a foot wrong when it comes to pacing. It is also genuinely difficult to not warm to the book's gleefully cynical and vulgar tone which, combined with the well executed and paced plot, make The Electric Church a swift and surprisingly rewarding read. Evil Monkey:You have to understand. The plot is bad but the plot is good. The pacing is good, except when it's not. The vulgar tone has a warming effect. The book rewards reading with some kind of prize at the end. Fun is not fun. Escapist means you're like that Chabon superhero.Jeff:What about this reviewEvil Monkey:What about it? Seemed perfectly obvious to me.Jeff:Did you read this part?If I wanted to I could nitpick about "The Electric Church's" less than original backdrop, the lack of worldbuilding & other info-dumping (not counting the excellent Appendix included at the end of the book or the awesome Electric Church website found HERE), the somewhat weak characterization of anyone not named Avery Cates, or how the prose doesn't have that panache common in a Quentin Tarantino or Charlie Huston tale, but that would just be mean of me ;) The fact is, Jeff Somers' "The Electric Church" is not the best cyberpunk/futuristic noir novel I've ever read, but it's still a lot of damn fun and highly recommended to anyone who's a fan of the genre…Evil Monkey:Look, dude, you have to understand. If something is fun, if it has high entertainment value, it's just gotta be flawed in some other way. If you want to be entertaining, you have to be lacking in sound fundamentals.Jeff:I'm not following you.Evil Monkey:Entertainment isn't good writing. Got it? Good writing gets in the way of entertainment value.Jeff:Is this part of your campaign sloganeering?Evil Monkey:No, it's me trying to school your sorry ass in the way of the world.Jeff:I've got the street sense of a lemur.Evil Monkey:Worse. You've got the street sense of a penguin in the desert. You don't even carry a shiv, do you?Jeff:No, do you?Evil Monkey:I'll bet Somers does.Jeff:Hey, after those reviews, I wanna shout out, "Go buy Somers' novel" rather than relying on the opinions of a bunch of miscreants, ne'er-do-wells, and apparent brain tumor victims. Seriously. Buy the damn novel and ignore the reviewers, one way or the other. Break free from received ideas! Go strike a blow for suffering novelists everywhere!Evil Monkey:No revolutionaries on the ticket, man. They've got no money.