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31 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
More fun than juggling armed monkeys, September 9, 2008
This review is from: Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse: A Novel (Paperback)
Where to begin on a novel whose title is the barest hint of the wonderful weirdness packed inside? Gischler, best known for his excellent crime capers, here breaks new ground. And I do mean new.
Mortimer Tate has spent the end of the world hiding in a mountain cabin. He hasn't seen anyone for nine years. The first three people he does see, he kills. But really, it wasn't his fault.
Thus begins an adrenaline-soaked, wryly satiric journey through the ashes of America, a world peopled by savages and cannibals and struggling barmen, by rebel armies and mad transvestites, and by the enigmatic Joey Armageddon, whose Sassy A-Go-Go Clubs are the beacon of something a little like civilization. The prose is lean and compelling, and behind all the violence and jokes there's a Vonnegut-esque blend of both love-for and desperation-at all the madness of the world -- Mortimer's and ours.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Farfetched, yet weirdly plausible, October 15, 2008
I bought this book (the Kindle e-book edition) because I'm a lemming, sort of.
Amazon strongly recommended it, so it caught my attention. I wasn't familiar with Victor Gischler, but Amazon has recommended some fine books to me in the past. So what the heck!
Just like I don't like to start a book in the middle, I don't like reading a new (to me) author's work without starting at the beginning. So I mentally dog-eared this recommendation and started with Gischler's first book, Gun Monkeys. I could tell before I was even half way through Gun Monkeys that I was an instant Gischler fan. So I quickly bought the Kindle versions of the rest of his books ( The Pistol Poets, Suicide Squeeze, Shotgun Opera, and of course Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse: A Novel) so I could read them one after another, just like the chain smoking characters in his other books.
It took me about a month to get through his first four books. They were all good reads, so I didn't want to rush too quickly.
My favorite thing about Go-Go girls was how different it was from the rest of his stories: the settings, the characters, the situation, and the conflicts were all unique to this book. I wouldn't say these aspects were "better" or "worse" than his other books, but they were dissimilar enough that I didn't feel like this was just a retread version of his previous novels.
The set up for the apocalypse was eerily believable. The west coast "big one" was a little bit farfetched to me, but that's only because I live in So Cal and am in total denial of the next big quake (the big quakes in '71 and '94 didn't kill me, so why should the next one?). The chain of events that the big quake set off were totally believable. One thing led to another, and then the world was kaput.
I could totally relate to the protagonist's predicament too. Without going into any details, he missed the nitty-gritty experience of the first years of the post-apocalypse. He seemed to be playing catch up through the rest of the story. He only survived due to his good luck and resolve.
I can only hope that if I live long enough to see the world that he describes, that the JD distillery survives intact and is available as cheaply as it is in Gischler's world. I suppose a regular supply of Diet Coke would be too much to ask for, but I'd find a way to adapt.
So out of a possible five stars I'm definitely giving it a five. If the scale were 1-10, I'd probably give it a nine. Then again, if it were 1-100, I'd give it a 93. So it's no stretch to round up to five.
Now my only disappointment is that I've consumed all of Gischler's books and will have to wait a while for the next one.
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10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Much less satisfying than I would have liked., March 31, 2010
CAUTION - THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
Let me start by saying that I am a fan of apocalyptic fiction. I love a good tale of the end of the world, whether by disease (The Stand), nuclear war (One Second After), zombies (World War Z), alien invasion (Footfall), cosmic disaster (Lucifer's Hammer), or anything else suitably dire. "Go Go Girls of the Apocalypse" is not exactly one of those tales.
In a nutshell, the story is as follows: after nines years of living alone in the mountains, our hero Mortimer Tate finally ventures out and see what is going on in what's left of the world. He discovers that society is being held loosely together (at least in his neck of the woods) by a string of strip clubs - Joey Armageddon's Sassy-a-Go-Go. Armageddon dollars are the coin of the realm, and by trading a few stockpiled supplies, Mortimer quickly finds himself to be a wealthy man. After acquiring a few traveling companions, he sets out on a quest to locate his ex-wife, who is rumored to be working at another Joey Armageddon's location. What then ensues is a string of close calls, narrow escapes, unlikely reunions, and general mayhem.
I wanted to like this book more than I did. Don't get me wrong, I found the book to be an entertaining, if not fulfilling, read with a new spin on the post-apocalyptic genre. It's not too far fetched to think that man might revert back to his baser nature in an attempt to bring order to an essential lawless and chaotic society. Why not have a Go-Go bar form the basis for a new world order? What I struggled with was the overall direction of the story. Much of the action is driven by Mortimer's desire to locate his ex-wife. Fine - but halfway through the book he has an epiphany and realizes that he has constructed a vision of reuniting with her as a means to add direction and purpose to his foray back in to society. He realizes that his new friends are purpose enough for him - and then still rushes headlong in to certain death to try and find her (and hopefully collect payment of 20,000 Armageddon dollars for his trouble). What the author wants to be seen as an grand final battle ensues, and Mortimer eventually ends up on the beach in Key West with his new friends. I didn't really get a good sense of closure from the story, or feel like the author paid off the premise in the end.
The blurb on the books calls it "part Christopher Moore, part Quentin Tarantino". Unfortunately, the book had neither the same wry wit of Moore, nor the engaging dialogue and rich characters of Tarantino. It would have been a far better read if it had.
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