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effexI just sped through the end of Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad and find myself 1) giddy, the wierd giddy that comes at the end of an intense read, and 2) frustrated.
On one hand, it's a hugely geeky (everyone's a nerd and the references fly fast and thick) book with interesting protagonists (both young black guys, one atheist, one lapsed Muslim. One's a genius engineer! One's a writer with a supernatural ability to find things! Together they run a summer camp!), great voices, and engaging writing. On the other, it's a thematically incoherent, gory mess with lots of dead women, lots of geek!misogyny, and lots of no-homo. Plus a throwaway paragraph packed with transphobia, just for fun.
Mostly I want to punch the book until a better story falls out. Sherem deserves one. Yehat deserves one. Hamza doesn't deserve one, but Ye and Sherem would be sad if he didn't come along.
...no, really, I want the story where Ye and Hamza are genius detectives/crime fighters who run summer camps and Sherem is the mysterious lady with who studies archeology and fixes cars. The seeds for it were all there, why couldn't I have had it instead. You could even keep the mystic, cannibalistic drug dealers.
On one hand, it's a hugely geeky (everyone's a nerd and the references fly fast and thick) book with interesting protagonists (both young black guys, one atheist, one lapsed Muslim. One's a genius engineer! One's a writer with a supernatural ability to find things! Together they run a summer camp!), great voices, and engaging writing. On the other, it's a thematically incoherent, gory mess with lots of dead women, lots of geek!misogyny, and lots of no-homo. Plus a throwaway paragraph packed with transphobia, just for fun.
Mostly I want to punch the book until a better story falls out. Sherem deserves one. Yehat deserves one. Hamza doesn't deserve one, but Ye and Sherem would be sad if he didn't come along.
...no, really, I want the story where Ye and Hamza are genius detectives/crime fighters who run summer camps and Sherem is the mysterious lady with who studies archeology and fixes cars. The seeds for it were all there, why couldn't I have had it instead. You could even keep the mystic, cannibalistic drug dealers.
