4 Goofy Fantasy Romps, As a Treat

For when the urge to romp becomes an unbearable weight

Hi!

Whomst among does not feel the occasional urge to romp, to caper, to FROLIC, if you will.

And you will!

If you too occasionally suffer from the unbearable urge to exit life, enter DELIGHT, may I suggest some of these books?

Coming up we’ve got reviews for:

• Queer gender flipped Sherlock Holmes in SPACE

• Alien invasion, but make it weird

• An intergalactic army that only recruits geriatrics

• Clueless nephew inherits an evil empire ft. spy cats and dolphins

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Affair of the Mysterious Letter

Quick Plot Summary:
Sherlock Holmes, but make it queer sci fi

My Review:
Ah! A delight! Injecting tired stories and characters with Gay® and putting them in a sci fi setting?? Um, YES, please, can we do this to everything written before 2005?!

Imagine that Holmes is a haughty pansexual gender flipped wizard and Watson is a delightfully stuffy trans man solving a mystery for “Eirene” aka Irene Adler who is…basically exactly the same in every telling. Was the twist a little obvious? Yes, but I still had fun!

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On Earth as it is On Television

Quick Plot Summary:
Aliens come to earth, but mostly to produce TV shows and hang with cats

My Review:
I thought this was a cute lil alien invasion romp. Kinda like Invasion but approximately 97% less serious. Landscape with Invisible Hand but the aliens are hidden among us a TV game show producers. It stars a little slow but once you start seeing the connections between the characters, it gets pretty good. The best part by far is the cat content. Of COURSE cats would be more susceptible to alien influence. Have you MET a cat.

“Somehow, on some unconscious level, they knew that cats existed on a different frequency from the rest of Earth life.”

Old Mans War

Quick Plot Summary:
Cranky 75 year olds enlist in a space army, have adventures

My Review:
I enjoyed this. Scalzi is always rock solid for a good time. Here’s the concept: after you turn 75, you have the option to enlist in an intergalactic army that will put you into a new, stronger body and give you a second chance at life. The only caveat is that you have to shoot different aliens for the next 10 years and you have about a 10% chance of surviving. The cranky old man dialogue gets a liiittle tiresome at points but it’s still a zippy little escape and an interesting thought experiment.

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Starter Villain

Quick Plot Summary:
Succession with less betrayal, more volcano lair and lasers

My Review:
Listen. Is it the best thing ever written? No, but I liked it! I felt very similarly about The Kaiju Preservation Society and this was better than that, imo. The basic premise is that a basic guy inherits what he thinks is his billionaire uncle’s parking garage empire, which turns out to be an evil villain empire. Said empire is complete with volcano lair, genetically modified spy cats and dolphins, evil league of other villains, etc. Both John Scalzi and Andy Weir excel at the quippy, vaguely depressed guy in over his head but somehow bumbling through. Honestly, it’s worth it just to read the parts with the foul-mouthed unionizing dolphins. 

“But we also offer a subscription for full access to all of our services.”

“So we’re like Spotify, but for evil.”

“We’re much less evil than Spotify. We actually pay a living wage to the people whose work we’re selling.”