The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad by Minister Faust
I don't know where I heard about this book but it has been on my list for a long time. I know that I have heard Minister Faust on CBC's Definitely Not The Opera. He is a farily well known Edmonton writer and community activist. The fact that a cool Canadian speculative fiction book was getting some press drew me in.
Coyote Kings revolves around a couple of young slackers of Sudanese descent named Yehat and Hamza. They live together in an interesting sounding Edmonton (E-Town) where they run a community camp for local kids, work their mindless jobs and do lots of young male fanboy stuff. One day Hamza meets a beautiful woman named Sheremnefer; an encounter that involves a copy of Watchmen, no less.
She is a an enigma to him but his past relationship failures have made him an easy target. Secondary plotlines concern an ex-CFL player turned gangster and his wild crew of specialized lackeys, The Fan-Boys as well as a couple of shady upper class brothers with ties to the Coyote Kings. Ultimately, the novel becomes a 3 pronged search for a powerful Egyptian artifact with a lot of metaphysical jumbled in the mix.
As you can read from my synopsis, the plot of this book is not it's strong point. Believe me, I tried to write something more explanatory. The strengths of Faust's writing are in his characterizations, dialogue and the smaller details. I just found that by the end of the novel I didn't really understand what they all were searching for and why.
I still really enjoyed this book in spite of the muddled denoument. It has a ton of geek cred that is perfectly suited towards my demographic. For example, at the beginning of every chapter where a new character is introduced, he writes up a homebrew RPG character data sheet. Sweet.
1 comment:
Sounds very interesting. I like the nerd, sci-fi, CanCon thing a lot. I'm thinking, culturally speaking, as far as North America is concerned, Canada is going to be where it's at. Too bad the plot is such a jumble, but that can often be the hardest part.
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