Customer Reviews

Barry Trotter and the Shameless Parody (Gollancz Sf S.)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Barry Trotter and the Shameless Parody is a great book, it's filled with....general funny stuff!!

Although it is hard to follow, even though it's the 1st Barry Trotter book, it's as though there have been ones before as it refers to things that have happened in the past. Another annoying thing is that every name that was in the normal Harry Potter book has been replaced with a comical name for example:-

Ron Weasly - Lon Measly
Hermione Granger - Ermine Cringer
Snape - Snipe
Gryffindor - Grittyfloor
Lord Voldemort - (My favorite!)....Lord Valumart
etc.

And it's a little more mature than Harry Potter.. so Parents! Read before letting like 7 year olds read

Rags

Michael Gerber has officially earned a warm fuzzy spot in my heart with his Barry Trotter parody books. Even the obligatory legal text in the front pages is funny!

The Shameless Parody follows Barry in his post-Hogwash years as he tries to come to terms with being an adult with a child of his own in Hogwash -- one that's barely magical at all. Despite being a blatant poke at many facets of the Harry Potter books, it has its own unique storyline filled with challenges and surprises enough to allow it to stand on its own, story-wise. You just don't know how things will turn out for Barry and his friends. The humor in it is downright raunchy at points so I wouldn't suggest this book for anyone under the age of consent but adults who take life too seriously may find the Potty humour a bit offensive. I suppose I'd suggest this book for college students and immature adults like me.

Any Harry Potter fan knows the feeling you get when you read an HP book for the first, second, third, 20th time, etc. Though this book is a work of parody, it is extremely affectionate to the original source. The settings are rich(in their own way) and the characters lively. The theme of this book is sort of the idea that the Harry Potter series was once a pure and clean thing, loved by everyone who read the books, but now is a cash cow owned by corporations and that we should all try to look back to what the books really mean, not the standardized travesty that companies have made it into. I think that the crumbling settings and nasty characters in this book are a sort of metaphor, the idea that they were once the pure things of the HP books but are now twisted, lustful things that shouldn't really still exist. I really love this book because of the theme. It definitely touches the source of the HP books and gives you the magical feeling of reading one.