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Marla_singer Newbie Poster Username: Marla_singer
Post Number: 2 Registered: 10-2004
Rating: N/A Votes: 0 (Vote!) | Posted on Friday, October 22, 2004 - 04:30 pm: |
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I found this title on the "New & Interesting" shelf at my library. Has anyone here read it? Is it worth checking out? Description from Publisher's Weekly: From Publishers Weekly Black Canadian media personality Faust blends pop culture, Egyptology, SF and gaming in his clever and often amusing gonzo debut. Hamza and Yehat, slackers, roommates and soul brothers (aka the Coyote Kings), work respectively as a dishwasher and a video-store clerk, but Hamza also writes poetry and Ye invents things. When Hamza meets the beautiful, mysterious Sherem, even love can't blind him to her oddness. She, along with Hamza and Ye's old pals Kev and Heinz, is searching for a jar with inexplicable properties. The Coyote Kings find themselves on the side of the ancient House of the Jackal, charged with keeping the artifact safe, or at least out of the hands of Kev and Heinz. Hamza has a skill the bad guys want to literally eat his brain to get, and only he may have what it takes to find the artifact. The dense writing, the ponderings on the nature of reality and a complex plot that all comes together at the end (if thanks to long inserts that finally provide background and context) will remind some readers of Neal Stephenson. If Faust isn't yet Stephenson's equal as a stylist, he nonetheless represents a sharp-edged new voice in the genre.
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Chrishayden "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 739 Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A Votes: 0 (Vote!) | Posted on Saturday, October 23, 2004 - 10:24 am: |
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We had an earlier thread with it. I tried to read it--was absolutely in love with it for the first 30 or so pages--got to about page 180-200 which is where I think it should have probably stopped and could go no further Switching the POVs so much, which many objected to, was not so bad as the fact that he could not work with some of the voices--the Reggae wigga was downright obnoxious. He was great when he spoke in the voices of the protagonists--but the story was going on and on with nothing seeming to happen, which I suppose was the point. I would like to see more from him--he reminds me of Paul Beatty and this new guy Toure. |
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