I gotta say: this is the least favorite book of his I have ever read. Man, did it ever fall flat for me.
Through a series of unfortunate events involving drunkenness and a pink plane, pilot Tucker Case ends up with the only job he can get: living on a random island, flying back and forth to Japan, and he doesn't know what's going on. Eventually he figures out that his employers, Dr. Sebastian Curtis and his hot slutty nurse/wife Beth are using the entire island population (the Shark People) as living organ donors. The Curtises are doing this by having Beth dress up as the "Sky Princess" and tell them what their personal god, Vincent, wants them to do. See, Vincent was this pilot during WWII who landed on the island in his plane, the Sky Princess, and planned on coming back before he got killed. But now he's a god to these people, and he's got some godly powers to use to manipulate Tucker into saving his people...
Frankly, I nearly put the book down through all of section one. Then came section 2, in which we had some flashbacks (and flash-aboves) and got to meet Vincent. This is what he's like:
"I'm higher than chief," Vincent said. "I'm Captain Vincent Fuckin' Bennidetti, Bad-ass of Brooklyn, High Emperor of the Allied Forces, Pilot of the Magic Sky Princess, Swinging Dick of the Free Fuckin' World, and Protector of the Innocent."
I loved him immediately. Too bad he's not in the book much (for well, obvious reasons). That's the kind of character I expect out of Christopher Moore: ones with personality and fun. Unfortunately, the dead guy was the most fun character in the book. The various Shark People and Kimi the navigator are somewhat kooky, but none of them stood out to me massively in the way that Vincent did. It's supposed to be funny (oh look, Kimi is a transvestite! Isn't that wacky!?!), but mostly it was all falling flat to me. Most of the action centers on Tucker and the evil hoor Beth (ugh) and the "good" doctor. Tucker, alas, doesn't have much in the way of personality besides mostly thinking about his dick a lot. Even if his backstory is THE ENTIRE PLOT OF HAMLET (seriously, and this is dealt with in two pages and mostly forgotten afterwards, just for kicks). Late in the novel he starts to get a clue and grow up, which is nice, but that can only make up for me being bored-ish (and pondering putting the book down a whole lot) so much. It's not a very fun book to read, and the plot itself is kind of weird, and while it ends nice, mostly I just dragged through reading it and wished I was reading Coyote Blue instead. It's clearly Trying To Be Wacky, but somehow didn't manage to work for me into actually being wacky.
A couple of linguistic quirks I wonder about:
(a) why, on their own time, are the doctor and Beth calling themselves/being referred to as "the Sorcerer" and "the Sky Princess?"
(b) I'd like to know WHO THE HELL IS THE SEQUINED LOVE NUN. There are no sequins on this island. I assume "love nun" is some kind of code for "hoor" and it's probably supposed to be referring to Beth (there are only three females in this book, most of them of the slutty variety), but this never comes up in the book. I don't know why they didn't just call this one "Island of the Sky Princess" already.
Anyway... I'm giving it two and a half stars. The half being for Vincent.
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