Book Review : The Manticore's Secret

I don't know why I do this to myself. This among other things.
Fool me once and all that.

The Manticore's Secret is the sequel to Simoqin (See the post on that if you want to know how I feel about that) and is just as dissappointing. I still don't know why I did this, I can't even read it for more than a couple hours each day, took me like a few to get through the whole, damned, 500 pages of black ink, self-indulgent, somyGodssoHollow I can hear the irrelevant echoes of Yuppie Git ringing through my head even now. I would die inside if it weren't for you Mama Cass.
You should ignore that last part if you aren't Mama Cass.

The plot follows Kirin, Maya, Asvin, Spikes, Djongli, Amloki, (introducing) Red and a myriad of Exciting! characters through what I'm sure the author would like to think is an intricate plot but is really just confused (too many loose ends, too much presumption, if X always knew A about Y, as stated on pg 376, e.g, why didn't they do something about it before, like say pg 10, or even when everybody was just lying around waiting? If J is possible, why hasn't it been seen before? If everybody is not to be trusted, in this labyrinthan exploration of political intrigue, why do they, even though they know what the other is trying to do to them? Do you really expect us to believe you aren't making this up you as you go along? and so on)

New characters introduced every few pages, creatures introduced as soon as the author can finish reading his 'reference' books (nudge-nudge wink-wink), an inherently stupid (and downright offensive, to me at least) mixture of High Fantasy and Pop Culture referential humor (Scary Movie 3, Epic Movie, and the like) (My Gods the Matrix most of all. And he didn't even take the good parts, just the fight sequences. Stupid Stupid Stupid.)

And I'm really not trying to get personally here (cause then the shit would really start flying) but Godssakes Man Read A Book! A Real One! There Is A Place To Experiment and Prolesytize, But This Is Not It! Collect Your Thoughts, For One. Everything doesn't have to be all or nothing, End-of-the-World, Meaning of Life shtick. Especially not stories stapled together from bits of your favourite books from when you were fourteen (or older perhaps, I dont this guy, but seems a lot like me) held together by people you made out of cardboard.

Or maybe I'm just upset I paid 300 bucks for it, I don't know.


P.S. - If anyone (who has read the book, although I strongly suspect the only one who reads this blog ever will be V) was wondering about the Chubbies (ugh) they're TeleTubbies crossed with creatures from Galaxy Quest (Alan Rickman, Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, you remember.)