Customer Reviews

Go, Mutants!: A Novel

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

 

 

J!m Anderson understands you cannot pick your parents, but wonders how far out can you get. His father led a failed alien invasion before allegedly being nailed on the Washington Monument. His mother was a siren cat woman, who earns a living as a sexy cocktail waitress.

Growing up as a hybrid outsider, J!m fell in love Marie Rand in high school. Her roots are not much better though she is a purebred human. Her dad is a mad scientist Dr. Howard Rand and her mother lost her head, which floats in a pan filled with fluid that EPA would condemn but her dad worships.

This is an entertaining over the top of the Empire State Building, Washington Monument and a few other stratospheric locales that presume the stars of 1950s science fiction and horror movies are real. Loaded with movie information and amusing satire, the offspring horde of monsters, aliens and evil attend high school. Although the plot is thinner than a B-movie, fans will enjoy this amusing homage to the height of the Cold War paranoia that hooked Hollywood in the Eisenhower Era.

Harriet Klausner

I loved, loved, loved and adored Larry Doyle's I Love You, Beth Cooper. It made me laugh and cringe, and it was all my favorite parts of 80's movies rolled into novel form. So I was excited to see Go, Mutants!, and was quick to download it onto my Kindle. Unlike Beth Cooper though, Go, Mutants! is not as page turn worthy at Doyle's first book.

Part of the fault lies in me, Go, Mutants! is a much better read if you read it from cover to cover and don't cheat on it with other books or put it away for several months. There's a lot of sci-fi terms made up by Doyle, which really bogged down the flow of the story for me. At the heart of Mutants is simple teenage love story we can all relate to. J!m is an awkward teen going through the grossness of puberty, in love with his friend Marie, but afraid to tell her how he feels. And just like Ron screwed things up with Hermione at the Yule Ball, J!m misses his opportunity to ask Marie to the school dance despite the fact that she gave him hints big enough to be seen from space.

Once I got into the book the writing and sci-fi-iness of it all got easier to read, and by the end I was quite invested in the characters. I loved Johnny- how cool would it be to have a blue ape boy as you best friend, capable of not only going all King Kong on your enemy's hiney, but also able to belt out great music? Like in I Love You, Beth Cooper, which paid homage to every John Hughes movie ever made, Go, Mutants! is a walk down the 1950's memory lane, although history is a bit altered by aliens influence. Instead of Elvis Presley, there's the Presley Brothers, Kennedy is still alive, and all the cool advances the Jetson's cartoon promised us as kids is realized.

I bought this book because I really loved the last book by this author, I Love You Beth Cooper. While this book is very different in setting, the part that remains the same is that Larry Doyle has a way to connect with the thoughts, fears and hopes of teenagers with subtle observations and hilarious lines. Thoughtful readers will enjoy the many layers of this book. On the surface it is a funny and fun summer read, but there are deeper themes that can make you think about and question our society and our history. I appreciated the fact that the author did not "talk down" to his readers and it was thoroughly creative. Fans of horror movies from the 50's and science fiction will especially love it.

And because I enjoyed "I Love You, Beth Cooper" so much, I pre-ordered "Go, Mutants!" I was not disappointed. This book makes me want to be more of a sci-fi, 1950s b-movie geek than I am. Like ILYBC, most of my favorite moments are the almost parenthetical, observational lines where Doyle just nails some aspect of American teendom. Great summer read. The guy crammed into the seat next to you on the plane will wonder what you are laughing about.

"Mutants, GO!" is the signature phrase of the X-men, but this novel is distinctly it's own voice. The title does serve to tap into the same niche the X-men comics appeal to. That's why I became interested enough to read it.

Doyle tells an interesting story of modernized mutants, when the world diverged in 1951 with benevolent alien contact. Stuff like hacking programmed trees to whisper cheap come-ons, a dis-integrator for a garbage disposal, and flying cars are commonplace. 'People' are characters from B-movies -- Johnny the ape-man, the blob, the mantis-lady, and J!m himself, the son of the alien who both saved and betrayed. Meanwhile in the daily news, giant monsters (kaiju) like Gojira and Godzilla both attack and protect cities.

The problem with the novel lies in the formatting. It's written like a screen play with distinct scenes and huge fonted sound effects. Sometimes it works well for conveying J!m's teenage angst, but interrupts the story flow to be overly dramatic. It also inflates the page count. I'd say 'Go, Mutants!' is around 60,000 words, which is less story than you normally get in hardcover.

The plotline is both touching in an 'awkward teenager coming to terms with himself and the world' sense and max B-movie drama (if this was the book itself, 'flash of lightning' would be written in 60 font right here, mid-paragraph) with mad science and a mutated cast. For being a super-genius! the main character J!m isn't very good socially, and has a major chip on his shoulder from his father's legacy. The story itself was decent sci-fi when it wasn't trying to be outrageous, but it is obvious this book is intended to be a movie and not a novel.

Earth has survived numerous invasions by aliens and attacks by ancient monsters brought back to life. Some of these aliens are in high school.

J!m Anderson is your typical sullen, brooding teenager at Manhattan High School. Well, maybe he's not so typical, because he has a large, megacephalic head, and oily, blue skin which he occasionally sheds like a snake. Along with Johnny, a motorcycle-riding radioactive ape, and Larry, a gelatinous mass playing the role of the "fat kid" (Son of the Blob), J!m really does have a hard time making his way through the world of high school. Maybe people really are out to get him; after all, his father is the one who led the alien invasion of Earth.

The Harvest Dance is coming, and J!m is supposed to ask Marie Rand if she would like to go with him. Her father is the school's biology teacher, and one of those people who likes to tinker in his garage. Mrs. Rand is a disembodied head who is constantly nagging Mr. Rand to find a body to which to attach her head. The body she was using is no longer viable, but it's kept in a freezer for posterity. Despite numerous opportunities, J!m never gets around to asking Marie to the dance, so she goes with Russ, J!m's bitter enemy.

J!m has a permanent exemption from showering after gym class, for anatomical reasons that are forcefully revealed by the local bullies, led by Russ, at the local drive-in. Later, during another Russ-led attempt to get rid of J!m, once and for all, J!m catches on fire, is severely burned, and dies. But not really, because he recovers in a couple of days, and is now a solar-powered being with skin as hard as diamonds (puberty rears its ugly head).

Larry is thrown into an animal cage during a field trip. Approximately a cupful of his mass is retrieved. Mr. Rand is able to do something about that, with help from some jumper cables and a car battery. Later comes the climactic scene, where Russ forces Marie into his atomic-powered car, with J!m in hot pursuit. Just before the car goes over a cliff, Marie is thrown from the car, and severely injured. Does Marie survive? Does J!m learn the truth about his father? Can Larry be resurrected?

This is an absolute gem of a book. As a former writer for "The Simpsons," Doyle certainly knows how to do satire. It's got everything a 1950s teen story needs: a sullen, rebellious main character, bullies, a chase scene and a drive-in. This is very highly recommended.

You will love these alien characters--they'll remind you of everyone you knew in high school! And although the story is about high school and aliens and a future where Howard Hughes is president, the story is actually moving and sweet. Fans of Larry Doyle's work will surely love this book.

I really enjoyed "I Love You Beth Cooper" but this second book seems like a less entertaining alternative universe version of the same story. I love stories that bring a little magic or sci fi to the table but this just seemed tawdry. Sorry LD I really wanted to love it:(

This has got to be one of the most intelligently written funny books I've read since Lamb by Christopher Moore. I started this book before I went to bed one night and the first chapter made my head spin; it wasn't the vapid, sarcastic story I was expecting. It's intelligent and even I pulled up [...] a few times - not going to lie!

The Setting -- is Manhattan. But not the Manhattan you or I know! Oh no. In this world, aliens really did invade, quite a few times. There really are mutants, some created from bio-hazard ooze, others science experiments gone wrong, and some we just don't know where the hell they came from! This is a technologically advanced world, but still very retro, in that Cry Baby, sarcastic kind of way. Much of the story takes place in the normal sort of haunts teens frequent; home, school, and work, each uniquely flavored with the new, modern conveniences and other-worldly needs of the inhabitants of earth.

The Characters -- are racially diverse. Humans, humans who think they're human - but secretly aren't, aliens, half-ape-men, gelatinous goo creatures, and gigantic insects. The main character, J!m, is an adolescent alien, the product of two different aliens to be exact. And he's going through high school! Only, think of the anti-mutant form of the KKK type hazing. J!m experiences many normal teen problems; awkwardness, trying to ask out a girl, bullies, failing classes - oh, and his dad is possibly the one universally acknowledged super villain!

The Plot -- starts off with lots of hints. I think that this book really should have been shelved in YA because so much of the material resonated with that type of audience. Granted some references to the Presley Brothers, Jesse and Elvis singing together, probably will not hit the desired target with YA. Somewhere in the middle I lost sight of the overall plot and became very engrossed with the person, J!m. I knew from the foreboding hints where the book was going but in favor of what happened then I didn't much care about that. I thought that the end of the book played out fairly quickly in comparison to everything else, but I found it highly enjoyable nonetheless.

It's an intelligent, funny read - and if you know you're history well enough you'll enjoy it all the more.

Well, maybe it's more like a 4 than a 5 but I laughed myself silly and it satisfied my sci-fi leanings. Great imagination.