Customer Reviews

No Small Bills

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This book is really fun and funny! I recommend it. Love the narrative voice and the flow of the story.

If you're looking for some wacky light reading, this book is for you. Duck Bob has a series of misadventures across the universe -- whisked along in events beyond his understanding, much like Arthur Dent in Hitchhiker's Guide. But unlike Arthur, Bob faces all the weirdness with good ol' American spunk. Bob's narration is the best part of this book -- half Mickey Spillane and half Woody Allen. Definitely great reading for a rainy Sunday afternoon.

DuckBob Spinowitz is your average Joe--er, Bob, and compliments of the Gray aliens he had been modified with the head and plumage of--you guessed it--a duck.

As it turns out, his physical modification was no mere experiment of curiosity as DuckBob learns when he is pressed into service by the Gray aliens and the NSA on a matter of galactic security. For only DuckBob can realign the quantum fluctuation matrix to prevent an alien incursion from an alternate reality!

Say what?

Aaron Rosenberg channels Douglas Adams, Monthy Python, and Henson's Creature Shop (and silly string) in a hilarious, ludicrous escapade through outer space, intraspace, and ultraspace. Teamed with an irritable NSA agent, a squat broccoli-headed alien repairman, and a gorgeous human female mission leader (who was also modified by the Grays but only intellectually, to DuckBob's delight), our feathered and billed hero sets off across the galaxy and manages to enrage flower loving dinosaurs, cause an interstellar bus accident (punishable by losing his ability to see the color mauve), and confront a six-inch tall shrimp with a death ray gun on a protected ocean planet after falling off a speeding bridge.

You had to be there.

As a result, DuckBob and his team wind up in prison and sentenced to two hundred years of hard labor including telemarketing, stuffing envelopes, and filling bags of marshmallows. But they manage a daring escape, picking up two more characters along the way and it isn't long before they're back on course to the Galactic Core where the quantum fluctuation matrix awaits realignment. Of course, the preposterous challenges don't end there!

I read No Small Bills over two evenings and two lunch hours at work. There are few slow moments, mostly limited to DuckBob's occassional comedic introspection, yet the pacing is consistent and the dialogue witty. Rosenberg demonstrates a wild imagination and clever storytelling in a book suitable for YA and adults alike.

Remember, every duck has his day.

DuckBob Spinowicz's life has been difficult since being abducted by aliens and given a new body with feathers and a human-sized duck head. But he's been coping. Now those aliens are back, with news of extradimensional beings trying to break through into our universe and destroy our existence as we know it. DuckBob holds the key to defeating them, but it's not going to be an easy journey. Along the way, he learns that while the universe is a much larger place than he ever knew, that doesn't mean it makes any kind of sense.

Aaron Rosenberg's novel, his first as part of the Crazy 8 writing/publishing collective, is a lot of fun. It's a fast-paced, antic romp through the weirder reaches of time and space. While I found it a bit episodic, enough of those episodes ended up being important to the overall story that I was able to forgive them. More importantly for a humor novel, it kept me laughing as I went along.

Rosenberg's comic voice is relaxed and easy-going. The jokes flow naturally, as if the reader is listening to a genuinely funny storyteller, not someone deliberately trying to cram in jokes. Rosenberg cites Douglas Adams as an influence, and a lot of reviews seem to be picking up on that. I'm not entirely sure that's the best comparison, although Adams is pretty much the easiest example to come up with as far as humorous science fiction. The tone of Rosenberg's book reminded me more of movies like Men in Black or shows like Warehouse 13; funny, but not quite the playfulness of language that Adams uses. This isn't meant as a criticism; Rosenberg has a hilarious voice of his own, and shouldn't be stuck just being compared to Adams (because, really, who can compare to Douglas Adams and come out looking favorably?).

If I have one criticism, it's that we don't learn very much about the characters in this book. However, since the story is told by DuckBob, and he's presented as a fairly shallow guy who grows over the course of the story, that only makes sense. And it's the kind of story where the plot and humor are more important than the characters, so it's still very enjoyable.

As I said, this was a lot of fun, and highly entertaining. Aaron Rosenberg is quickly becoming one of my new favorite authors, and I look forward to seeing what he comes up with next. Hopefully, we'll be seeing more of DuckBob and his friends in the future.

I had the opportunity to read an early copy of NO SMALL BILLS, and I loved it. Fans of surrealist humor, Monty Python, Science Fiction, and Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide" series will enjoy the adventures of DuckBob Spinowitz, a classic wise-acre everyman (who happens to have the head of a duck, as a result of a previous mishap involving alien abduction). Here's hoping for more adventures to come!