Customer Reviews

The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was not aware that Edmonton, Alberta features a vibrant black and immigrant community (my own poorly-traveled ignorance), and that's the setting for this riotous fantastical pop-cultural novel. Minster Faust gives us a fast-moving, brainmelting story populated by a wide variety of multicultural geeks and goons in E-Town. The events rotate around two excellent main characters, Hamza and Yehat, a moody writer and a brainy engineer respectively, who are down-and-out working dead-end jobs and reveling in a realm of comics, movies, sci-fi nerd TV, role-playing games, and all other forms of geekitude. The brokenhearted Hamza soon falls stoopid in love with the beautiful and mysterious Sherem, who claims to be an archeologist just returning from an expedition to Egypt where she learned about ancient languages and old African kingdoms, hence blowing poor Hamza's mind with exotic trivia. It turns out that Sherem wishes to recruit Hamza and train him, a la Obi Wan and Luke, to fight a millennia-old archeo-narcotic cannibalistic conspiracy. Faust's construction of this eviltacular nogoodnikery gets a little bit out of hand, and some dark passages in the build-up to the story's climax don't mix too well with the lovable humor of the rest of the novel. However, rest assured that Faust is a master of bodacious language, with a lot of heart and hipness and laughs, and his characters are uniformly fascinating. This especially applies to Sherem's true nature and the deep, complex friendship between Hamza and Yehat as the self-styled Coyote Kings. This has gotta be the most creative and offbeat debut novel to come along in a while. [~doomsdayer520~]

Every closet geek and every secret Trekker should read this book, but so should everyone who enjoys a stylistic tour de force. The characters are unforgettable, the slang infectious (I'll be calling chumps "jimps" for the rest of my life), and the whole thing is just incredibly charming. People say _I'm_ blatantly Canadian, but Minister Faust takes Canuck SF to a whole new level. E-town, here I come!

I love, love, love this book. Its incredibly entertaining, funny as hell (who actually lol? i did, by the time i reached the tenth page i had laughed about three times and was starting to get strange looks from my fellow commuters but i couldnt help it), and just a lot of fun to read.
I've started pacing myself now that i'm in the final few chapters of the book because I dont want it to end. What other book is gonna give you a desert princess/assasin, a slew of psycho Fan Boys part of a drug ring that induces telepathic ability, two quirky best friends with a ton of issues and a suit of R-mer (lol), vendettas, a romantic story line, murders, caniballism...this book has a little something for everyone.

I can't really do Mr. Faust justice though, because the strongest part of the book is his writing ability/style. It's obvious he is a poet because the way he strings words together on a page, and some of the actual words he comes up with...are singular. his style is great, the story is entertaining, and i guarantee that you'll be singing this book's praises too by the time you finish the second chapter.

There are so (comparatively) few science fiction books written by black authors, and the title is so good, that I really wanted to like this book. And for the first 200 pages, I did. Faust is wildly inventive, and has a real gift for creating unique characters and letting you hear their voices. But his editor did him a huge disservice by not insisting Faust trim 150 or 200 pages out of "Coyote Kings." The hook of writing at least one chapter from the POV of every major and minor character was taken much too far (some characters, like Frosty and the Mugatu and Heinz Meaney, are more interesting in the third person), trying to tie the Rachel character back into the end didn't make any sense, the mystic backstory bogged down in pretentiously arcane poetry and superfluous detail, and entire chapters written in the verbal-tic-ridden voices of two of the characters --- Alpha Cat and Digaestus Caesar --- are incredibly frustrating to read, barely comprehensible. I wanted to put it down, but I didn't. Look at the characters' names! For that alone, and for the snap-crackle-pop dialogue between roommates and brother Coyote Kings Hamza and Yehat, this book is saved from my give-away pile.

"Coyote Kings" is tremendously flawed, but also has more than a few moments of brilliance. When I finally got to the end and read the acknowledgments, where Faust mentions the "Coyote Kings" screenplay workshop and video shoot, and then read in his author's biography that he's a prolific broadcaster, the puzzle of this book started to make sense to me. The book reads like it was meant to be spoken; the pages of dialogue that are almost impossible to read would make sense to hear. The incessant shifting of POV is a real detriment in a book, but would make for very interesting video. Essentially, "Coyote Kings" would make an amazing movie or radio play. But as a book, almost all of its appeal is lost in translation.

i picked this book up for no other reason than the opening sentence starts out "first off shut up." how can you not like a book that tells you to shut up on the very first page (not to mention that first page is the epilogue).

the characters are extremely refreshing for a science fiction novel, and knowing the target audience all the in-jokes and tip of the hat references to geekdom will leave you laughing out loud, while your uninitiated friends will just shake their heads silently at your new found depths of nerdiness. i was also pleasantly surprised by the characters unabashed affection for each other, it came over as very genuine and a trait severely lacking in science fiction.

the author employs a first person narrative that switches from character to character. in an interesting change of pace he doesn't hold your hand through this change and make it immediately obvious who's speaking, as you begin to get comfortable with characters you start to recognize the "voice". though at times you have to go back and re-read the first couple of pages of each chapter as it can take a while to cotton on to which character is talking. it isn't always successful, but the only time this character switch fails totally is when alpha-cat takes over and the author chooses to write phonetically the character's jamaican accent. it is frustrating to read and knocks you completely out of the narrative as you focus on comprehending the words and not the story. fortunately other than a couple of small chapters, alpha cat's dialog is limited to a few sprinkled throughout the book.

my only other complaint is the last act which had two major problems. there is essentially a rehash of the fight between the two main protagonists (yehat and hamza), with the same conclusion. it was redundant and out of character considering how the initial fight concluded. i also found the ambiguous ending, was too ambiguous without enough information to really come to a conclusion. there were also some pretty loose ends that were never tied up. i suppose that those could be set-ups for a sequel, which the author does hint at, but doesn't seem to have enough set-up to really make me desperate to read the further adventures of hamza and yehat.

still the characters, the very easy to read, cheeky prose, the interesting little details on african culture more than make up for the few small complaints.

This irrepressible sci-fi debut from Canadian hipster and multi-media personality Faust is awash in enthusiasm and style, but suffers from narrative excess typical of the genre. The first hundred pages are dedicated to establishing the book's hero Hamza, and his best-friend and roommate Yehat. They are a pair of twentysomething slackers living in Edmonton, where they are drifting in limbo between their brilliant intellects and lack of prospects. A dishwasher at a yuppie restaurant, Hamza had been a brilliant writer whose downfall commenced with an academic scandal and unspecified romantic shipwreck that has left him emotionally crippled and unable to write. Yehat is a typical snooty video-store clerk who is unable to work as an engineer because he can't abide working with people who aren't as smart as him, which is basically everyone. But lest anyone get the wrong idea, they are a positive, up-tempo, creative duo who run a sort of ad-hoc pay-what-you-can summer camp for neighborhood kids. They are the "Coyote Kings."

The plot more or less starts rolling when Hamza meets, and is smitten by Sherem, a mysterious woman who has apparently been studying archeology for the last ten years and has just returned to Edmonton. It just so happens she likes all the right comic books, can quote Star Wars, is a pop culture twin of Hamza's, and just happens to be stunningly beautiful. Meanwhile, we are also shown how Hamza and Yehat's former childhood friends (and D&D gaming buddies) now operate an upscale imported furnishings boutique (Modeous Zokolo, ha ha ha), and are both chic and wealthy. Behind the scenes, it seems the Meaneys are somehow involved with an exceedingly potent drug called "Creme". The third group to enter the story is the gang that controls the creme trade in "E-Town", a comic-bookish set of flunkies called "The Fanboys" whose boss is Dulles Allen (ha ha again) a brutal and shrewd ex-CFL player turned club owner.

Once all the players are in place, it is revealed that the Meaneys and Allen are in a race to acquire an ancient artifact called a zodiascope, which, when used in conjunction with creme, will somehow enable the owner/user to control the world. At this point, the book starts descending into a disappointing mess of hocus-pocus involving ancient Egyptian mythology, and save-the-world tropes lifted from the most banal fantasy/sci-fi. Here, the D&D influence is regrettably in evidence, as some Norse stuff is mixed in, and Hamza and Yehat even end up in a tomb crawl. Faust spends so much time busting inside jokes for geeks and gamers, that when he tries to turn the plot in a serious direction, it doesn't work. The book unfolds in brief chapters written from the first-person perspective of various characters, many of whom have distinctive voices (Hamza's rat-a-tat freeflowing thoughts, Yehat's orderly lists and tangential asides, one of the Meaneys' superciliousness, Alpha-Cat's Caribbean patois, and so forth).

There are elements to like, such as the constant riffing on geek pop culture, or Faust's truly remarkable wordplay. In terms of style, the inventive prose has a lot to offer, and it comes as no surprise that he's a champion slam poet. The relationship between Hamza and Yehat is very nicely handled, as Faust captures all the ups and downs of a close friendship with precision, and isn't afraid to show the love between the two young men. The constant namechecking of Afropop legends is pretty cool, and it's does give a neat portrait of multicultural Edmonton. However, the overall sloppiness of the story and shaggy-dog plot makes it less than essential reading. It's also disappointing that for all the book's posturing about treating "sisters" with respect and all, love-interest Sherem is such a geek's fantasy (Star Wars quoter plus hot bod!). It kind of comes across a a dis -- if you're a girl with geek interests you have to be hot too, otherwise there's no room for you in our story! Anyway, if you've got the time and patience to wade through 500+ pages, you'll probably find something to like amidst all the chaos.

Hamza Senesert has a BA in English lit, but uses it to wash dishes alongside of peers who cannot speak English. He does write poetry when the muse hits him so one can claim perhaps he is just a part-time slacker.

His roommate Ulysses "Yehat" Gerbles shares much in common with Hamza as he too is a part-time loafer. Ye lazy bones earns bread clerking at a video store where he has developed a 5-L life taxonomy system based on his patrons as he enjoys inventing things.

Hamza falls in love with Sherem, who he admits must have come out of one of those Mummy videos as she is an odd duck. She persuades her Coyote Kings (aside to those as lazy as our heroes - the royals are Hamza and Ye) to help her find and safeguard an ancient Egyptian relic with special properties. Their pals Kev and Heinz are also searching with the Kings, but they work for Sherem's enemy, who want to dine on Hamza's brain that possesses special prowess.

THE COYOTE KINGS OF THE SPACE AGE BACHELOR PAD is a wild satirical tale that needs some time to understand what is going on even with the epilogue at the beginning at least until readers realize that they have no idea. The plot spins out of control yet with all that gyration, fans who appreciate a way out wacky tale will stay the course. Nothing is sacred as Minister Faust skews anything and everything through the antics of his likable idlers and the immediate support cast who usually bring out the worst in the royal slackers.

Harriet Klausner

This is one of the sweetest scifi novels I've read in a long time. Why aren't there more books by this author? A number of things do "remind [me] of Neal Stephenson" -- it has a similar strong flavour of geek-boy fantasy created by gadgetry, role-playing games, and the mysterious beautiful chick who somehow has a thing for one of the going-nowhere male protagonists. The big difference is, there's a lot more heart in this than in Cryptonomicon. It leaves you with poignant images of beauty, echoing aeons of history, pain, and wonder that the headlong movie-like rush of the other book doesn't have.

As a foreign student in the US and lifetime scifi fan, I really appreciate that the characters don't feel like they have to fit into the traditional WASP-y SF character mould, and that the North African immigrant culture and Egyptian mythos is truly integrated into -- and indeed a critical part of -- the story and not just there gratutiously or to be 'exotic'. Pretty words tend to stick in my head, and the phrase "sekht-en-cha, desert hunter" is still singing.

Even though the ending seems pretty conclusive, there's a strong sense that the story isn't over yet. Sequel please.

When's the last time you read a book that shouted, "Hey, whassup! Come chill with me, let me talk to you, whatchu think about dis here thing?" If you're looking for a writer with fun in his style, depth in his arrangement, mastery of his tone and a jillion other artiste kudos that most of the books you spent your wage-slave money for (and you know you did) that don't offer two seconds worth of originality--LOOK OVER HERE. "The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad" will NOT be found in the African American section of your neighborhood Barnes & Noble (that table with all the ghetto-fab books dumped on it). If you're lucky enough to see it in the Science Fiction section, buy it. Just buy it. Read the first sentence and you'll know why. This book has excellent characterizations, is funny as hell, will scare a few beejeezuses out of you, will make you cheer for young smart black brothers everywhere and make you think about a few things on the way out the door. This is one of the most intelligent adventures to come down the way in a long time. Not many books are worth gushing like a school girl. This one is. It respects you as a reader enough to invite you along rather than say sit back and read a book that might as well be a crappy TV show. Long review short: change your mind about what you wanted to read and choose this one instead.

Finished 'Coyote Kings a few weeks ago and starting it again - FUN book. The initial attraction for me was that it was set in a city where I used to live coupled with a good review from Analog Magazine.

Once I started reading and got into the book (and it was only a couple of pages to get hooked - it grabs you from the very beginning) I was bowled over by how appealing the characters were and what a fun read it was. It's a book with an extremely interesting narrative and the writer has strong descriptive ability-you really KNOW the characters and like them alot. After I finished reading it, I found that it was also named one of Sfsite.com's Best Reads of 2004, and deservedly so. Very pleasant read.