Gypsies Stole My Tequila, by Adrienne Jones
Book Review by Mark Deniz
Have you read this book?
Having read Adrienne Jones' debut, "Temple of Cod," I was very much looking forward to the newly packaged Gypsies Stole My Tequila, easily one of the coolest novella titles around.
I enjoyed "Temple of Cod," although in truth I felt something was missing and that it needed a bit of polishing to make it the cult classic it could easily become. Not so Gypsies, as this grabbed me by the short and curlies within the first few pages and, had it not been for picking the book up when I should have been in the land of nod, I would have easily finished it in one sitting!
Two things sprang to mind when reading this and the first was just how funny it actually is. It takes a lot to make me laugh in literature and yet Jones had me doing just that several times throughout the tale - I mean you've got ageing punks dressing up in cow suits getting into fights with crab-suited colleagues, what more do you want?
But that's not all, for with the humour comes timing and pacing and this is where Jones has also got it all spot-on. She is a real voice in speculative fiction and I feel that this (and "The Hoax" and "Temple of Cod") is just a taste of what is to come in the future.
This novella though, what's so great about the novella? Well for one we have an extremely engaging protagonist in Joe Blood, the aforementioned ageing punk, convinced a demon is helping him mark off the days in his calendar so he can fulfil a promise made; that he would commit suicide on his 40th birthday along with friends and former band members Vincent and Deke.
His friends have very different ideas about his plans and this leads to the bulk of the novella's plot, the transformation of teenage layabout wannabe band members into something else.
There is a lot of story packed into the 130 pages and the quality is indicative of a comment I once read about good novellas in that they read like short novels, rather than long short stories. For the long short story is one where the author has an idea and it works within the short story environment but to make it longer there needs to be some additions that often were not needed in the first place and make the piece drag out. The short novel on the other hand is a case of a novel's worth of material jam-packed into a smaller format, giving it a sharper edge and allowing the author to be more brutal in editing the work.
This is not suggesting a novella author is writing anything other than a novella straight off, just another way of looking at the medium.
If you've read Jones before then you're going to get all you expect and more when you pick up this book. If you haven't then you need to slap yourself hard with a wet fish before running to your nearest computer and placing an order for the book.
I enjoyed "Temple of Cod," although in truth I felt something was missing and that it needed a bit of polishing to make it the cult classic it could easily become. Not so Gypsies, as this grabbed me by the short and curlies within the first few pages and, had it not been for picking the book up when I should have been in the land of nod, I would have easily finished it in one sitting!
Two things sprang to mind when reading this and the first was just how funny it actually is. It takes a lot to make me laugh in literature and yet Jones had me doing just that several times throughout the tale - I mean you've got ageing punks dressing up in cow suits getting into fights with crab-suited colleagues, what more do you want?
But that's not all, for with the humour comes timing and pacing and this is where Jones has also got it all spot-on. She is a real voice in speculative fiction and I feel that this (and "The Hoax" and "Temple of Cod") is just a taste of what is to come in the future.
This novella though, what's so great about the novella? Well for one we have an extremely engaging protagonist in Joe Blood, the aforementioned ageing punk, convinced a demon is helping him mark off the days in his calendar so he can fulfil a promise made; that he would commit suicide on his 40th birthday along with friends and former band members Vincent and Deke.
His friends have very different ideas about his plans and this leads to the bulk of the novella's plot, the transformation of teenage layabout wannabe band members into something else.
There is a lot of story packed into the 130 pages and the quality is indicative of a comment I once read about good novellas in that they read like short novels, rather than long short stories. For the long short story is one where the author has an idea and it works within the short story environment but to make it longer there needs to be some additions that often were not needed in the first place and make the piece drag out. The short novel on the other hand is a case of a novel's worth of material jam-packed into a smaller format, giving it a sharper edge and allowing the author to be more brutal in editing the work.
This is not suggesting a novella author is writing anything other than a novella straight off, just another way of looking at the medium.
If you've read Jones before then you're going to get all you expect and more when you pick up this book. If you haven't then you need to slap yourself hard with a wet fish before running to your nearest computer and placing an order for the book.
|
Click here to buy Gypsies Stole My Tequila, by Adrienne Jones on Amazon
|
Gypsies Stole My Tequila, by Adrienne Jones on Amazon
| More Books You Might Like |
Comment on Gypsies Stole My Tequila, by Adrienne Jones
