Geek Fantasy Novel - E. Archer
Forgive me if I skip some of the early events in Beatrice's wish. Trust me, I'm not going to tell you what happened in the first months for the same reason I haven't informed you of every snack and every poo. It's simply not crucial.
I got an advance copy of Geek Fantasy Novel in the mail, unsolicited, but since another GeekDad had already spoken for it, I just read it on my own. The hero of the story, so to speak, is Ralph Stevens, a mild-mannered geek from New Jersey who wants nothing more than to get a job working at the software company MonoMyth. But when his job application was rejected (they recommended he finish high school first), he ends up taking up his British Aunt Gert's offer to stay at their castle over the summer to work on getting their Internet connection wired up.
Ok, so that's the "geek" part of the title. The fantasy part comes in when his other aunt shows up, the one who's a famous duchess selling exercise equipment on late night TV. It seems she wants to grant some wishes to Ralph, but first (according to the rules) she has to grant three wishes to his cousins. It'll take some convincing, though, because the three kids have been forbidden to have any interactions with Aunt Chessie (and in fact some magical provisions have been made to prevent said interactions).
Eventually, though, the wishes happen, but not exactly as planned, and Ralph is there throughout it all.
Here's a minor spoiler, so if you haven't read the book you can just skip down to the end. One of the fun things about Geek Fantasy Novel is the intrusive narrator. At first he just steps in occasionally to make some small comments, but as the story progresses he becomes a more and more significant character. It really reminds me of some of the stuff I used to try to write in high school, playing with meta-narratives and inserting the author into the story. Archer does this quite well, and it's pretty funny. Suffice it to say that this is not your typical young adult novel. It's more like Computer Geek in Monty Python-land.
All in all, I had a lot of fun reading the book. It's cute and funny and I really didn't know what to expect as I read. That's a good thing, by the way.
Fed to jonathan's brain | April 09, 2011
| Comments (0)
