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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An absolutely amazing book!, September 16, 2008
There are some books that are so great that you want to become an apostle for them, running around shoving copies into everyone's hands and forcing them to read it right then and there just so they can experience its pure awesomeness. The last book that made me feel like that was Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and I made quite a few converts with my enthusiasm. "The Order of Odd Fish" is one of those books. It has exactly what I need, the right balance of the bizarre and the horrible, of kitsch and cool, of fantasy and the fantastic. It is James and the Giant Peach as directed by Terry Gilliam, with hints of H.P. Lovecraft lurking around its darker corners. The story begins with Jo Larouche, a "dangerous baby" who has been left in the care of her Aunt Lily, an 82-year old former actress who has retired with less-than-dignity in her Ruby Palace, a place of extravagant and wild costume parties and excess of every kind. Because this is a young fiction fantasy novel, we know that her world will soon be blown wide open, that the veil will be parted between the world Jo knows and the secret wonderland that she is inheritor to. The adventure begins with the arrival of Colonel Korsakov, a giant Russian who speaks to his own digestion, Sefino, a three-foot tall cockroach of flamboyant style with an impeccable ascot, and a mysterious black box with a silver handle that should never be turned. Don't be fooled into thinking you know what happens next. While many books in this genre, such as Harry Potter and His Dark Materials, follow roughly the same opening scene with an orphan and a magical object, "The Order of Odd Fish" goes straight for the surreal, and nothing turns out as expected. I could tell you about the characters, like the Belgian Prankster, a supernatural creature of nightmare dressed in green goggles and a rawhide diaper, or Ken Kiang, the Chinese millionaire who has dedicated his life to being the most evil man alive, or the dreaded Ichthala, the All-Devouring Mother who lurks and the threshold of a dark prophesy and is tended only by the Silent Sisters, a cult of veiled women bound in sadness, but it would be a shame to give away too much of the story. Much of the fun of "The Order of Odd Fish" comes from the excitement of being disorientated. It is like riding on one of those spinning rides at an amusement park where just when you think you are about to be smashed into a wall the track sends you careening in a random direction leaving you unbalanced and fully entertained. One note: While this is classified as a children's book, and is perfectly age appropriate so no parents have to worry, like the best of that classification it is a good time for anyone who enjoys a great fantasy. Highly recommended.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Definitely Odd, Definitely Funny, August 20, 2008
Jo was discovered as a baby by the flamboyant actress, Lily LaRouche, inside a washing machine, accompanied by a note that read: "This is Jo. Please take care of her. But beware. This is a DANGEROUS baby." When our story opens, Jo is thirteen years old, living with Aunt Lily in the extravagantly moldering ruby palace in the middle of the California desert. The night of Lily's annual costume Christmas party, a Russian colonel whose actions are directed by his intestinal rumblings shows up, as does a narcissistic giant cockroach butler, not to mention a package for Jo that falls out of the sky. Chapter One ends, "After that, everyone had the leisure to start screaming." Soon Jo and company are being chased by a billionaire with evil aspirations. They end up in Eldritch City, where Jo finds out just why she is considered dangerous and must continue to hide her identity from her newfound friends, fellow squires to the Knights of the Order of Odd-fish. The order is working on making, not an encyclopedia of all knowledge, but an appendix "of dubious facts, rumors, and myths.... A repository of questionable knowledge, and an opportunity to dither about." As this task implies, author James Kennedy prefers to range along the road from the absurd to the ridiculous, stopping along the way in the outrageous. He also makes arguably masculine side trips into the realms of bodily functions and violence. The plot is a little uneven in spots, perhaps because Kennedy combines one of those dark end-of-the-world story lines with the aforementioned nuttiness--and sometimes these two efforts seem to pull each other sideways. A few bits and pieces work better than others: I didn't quite buy the parts involving a pie-loving character called Hoagland Shanks, for example. However, many OTHER bits are simply hilarious--and refreshingly creative. The rituals related to dueling, particularly the exchange of insults, are among Kennedy's bizarre gems. Think of Eldritch City as the love child of Lewis Carroll and Neil Gaiman. It is well worth the trip. I will caution you that Kennedy does not shy away from big words, nor from an irony worthy of a satirist writing for adults. I suspect a lot of the humor will sail right over young readers' heads, although Lemony Snickett has already established a precedent for using irony and obscure vocabulary in children's books. Watch in particular for the subplot involving the vain cockroach butler, Sefino, and his archenemy, a centipede newswriter. I can't resist closing this review with the most astonishing sentence in The Order of Odd-Fish, a lovingly concocted work of art that will give you some idea what you're in for: "But soon Ken Kiang found he was both cat and mouse in a bewildering showdown with the Belgian Prankster, in which strategies of ever greater sophistication were deployed, canceled, reversed, appropriated, adapted, and foiled; pawns sacrificed, attacks repulsed, fortresses stormed and captured, treaties signed and betrayed, retreats faked and traps sprung, territory gained, lost, besieged, divided, despoiled, and exchanged--it was a shadow world, of infinite levels of deceit and disguise, of decoys that were Trojan horses full of more decoys that were red herrings in non-mysteries that had neither a solution nor a problem, concerning people that didn't exist in a place that was nowhere in a situation that was impossible!" (275) Frankly, I can't wait to see what Kennedy writes next.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Courtesy of Teens Read Too, August 23, 2008
Jo Larouche has always been ordinary - or as ordinary as you can be when you live in a ruby palace with a highly eccentric retired movie star for an aunt. Though she was found in her aunt Lily's laundry room with a note detailing her as a dangerous baby, Jo has been for all of her thirteen years just about as dangerous as a glass of milk. Things begin to change when strange events at Lily's Christmas party contrive to send Jo and Lily out of California and into a fantastical land called Eldritch City, where they are taken in by the Order of Odd-Fish, an eclectic collection of knights devoted entirely to the research of useless information. But that's just the beginning, for as Jo finds a new place for herself in Eldritch City, she also becomes entangled in a dangerous game with the Belgian Prankster, a villain who appears to be seeking the downfall of the city Jo has begun to call home. A rollicking adventure for all ages, THE ORDER OF ODD-FISH has something for every lover of all things ridiculous. From obtuse and elaborate dueling rituals to cockroach butlers obsessed with seeking fame to a villain so sinister he can even make balloon animals terrifying, James Kennedy piles on oddities so fast that you can't help but dive in, and enjoy the stay. Reviewed by: Rebecca Wells
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