The Usurper King
The Usurper King
By Zeb Haradon
https://www.amazon.com/Usurper-King-Zeb-Haradon-ebook/dp/B078BTHNGL/
What's missing from the plot description is that this book is hilarious. The zany foundation of this world is taken seriously and stretched to absurd proportions and presented in a very matter of fact way without missing a beat, and when you finish the book you have an experience sort of like when you leave a movie theater thinking it was night time but there's still daylight out - returning to the real world from such an unusual place has now made the real world seem strange. Anyone who was paying attention to the American 2016 election will notice the wry commentary on the current political situation in having a serial killer running for president (in fact, the book goes into great detail about the primaries, and Ted Bundy's primary opponents are Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio... with only one notable omission). The book also touches on gun violence (in an odd kind of way), pop culture, sex, alcoholism, philosophy, bees (the cover seems pretty random until you see that it's not)... there's so much more here to talk about, but I'll leave it for each reader to unpeel.
Without spoiling anything, I'll say that toward the end of the book I noticed that some elements of the story are borrowed from a certain ancient piece of literature, and the final chapter, which seems to take a complete left turn, confirms it. I'll need to read this book again with this in mind to pick up the references I missed.
My rating: 5/5
By Zeb Haradon
https://www.amazon.com/Usurper-King-Zeb-Haradon-ebook/dp/B078BTHNGL/
The Usurper King takes place during the 2016 American presidential election in quite a strange world, like our own in most respects, but where Ted Bundy is running for president, where people can predict the future by inspecting the livers of dissected animals (and turned the practice into a game show!), and where people's bodies can become infected with computer viruses. Superficially, it sounds like a political thriller in bizarro world - a washed up loser and an uncouth hillbilly discover that the president elect Ted Bundy used to be a serial killer and set out to stop him, so they look for clues in animal guts on how to stop him. Somehow the author manages to stick all these crazy ideas together and make them work as a whole.
What's missing from the plot description is that this book is hilarious. The zany foundation of this world is taken seriously and stretched to absurd proportions and presented in a very matter of fact way without missing a beat, and when you finish the book you have an experience sort of like when you leave a movie theater thinking it was night time but there's still daylight out - returning to the real world from such an unusual place has now made the real world seem strange. Anyone who was paying attention to the American 2016 election will notice the wry commentary on the current political situation in having a serial killer running for president (in fact, the book goes into great detail about the primaries, and Ted Bundy's primary opponents are Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio... with only one notable omission). The book also touches on gun violence (in an odd kind of way), pop culture, sex, alcoholism, philosophy, bees (the cover seems pretty random until you see that it's not)... there's so much more here to talk about, but I'll leave it for each reader to unpeel.
Without spoiling anything, I'll say that toward the end of the book I noticed that some elements of the story are borrowed from a certain ancient piece of literature, and the final chapter, which seems to take a complete left turn, confirms it. I'll need to read this book again with this in mind to pick up the references I missed.
My rating: 5/5
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