Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Hungrily Haunted

Haunted by Kaleidoscope-chan

* Received from the author for review


3 gnomes and a gnome hat out of 5 gnomes

This story is supremely weird but also supremely fun.  It has a little bit of everything including a ninja, a giant rat, and a cowboy-wannabe health inspector.

I like how the sentences at the end of each part tend to segway into a new situation or be the setup to learn about another character.  

Ein the main character is pretty much stressed all the time and supremely good at embarrassing himself.  He has the crazy problem of his face puffing up whenever he's stressed or nervous.  Even though Ein is probably one of the weirdest and unluckiest guys around, all he dreams of is being normal.

His dreams look like they might not be meant to be when he inadvertently encourages his friend Princess to follow her dream.  She was going to be a doctor but her true dream is to be a professional eater. Needless to say this is a surprise to her mother.

Sunflower, Vincent, Princess, and even Hobo Joe are all really funny characters who all have unique plans for themselves.  Slowly but surely they all come into Ein's life and the group has quite the project planned. There are plenty of coincidences and happenstances that bring this ragtag group together.  They all have extremely different personalities and something to prove.  

It's interesting to see the situation of opening up a restaurant through the lives of these very different characters.  Not to mention that their restaurant is inside a haunted house that still seems to have a lot of the scary elements in working order.  

My favorite character is Vincent.  When the reader meets him he's pretty much filthy rich and has everything he could ever want.  He is delightfully deluded when things don't go his way.  His plan to take back what he thinks is his right from his father is what fuels him at first.  His castle in the alley and Hobo Jo show Vincent's delusions of grandeur.  He is probably the character the changes the most besides Ein.  He makes a great foil for Ein and Vincent's way of looking at the world is just a lot of fun.

Absurd humor and surreal events abound but if you're like me you'll find yourself laughing out loud more than once.  Lessons are learned but not always the lessons that you would think. You'll definitely see some of the jokes before they happen but that doesn't make them any less funny. This is definitely a book worth checking out if you like absurd characters and have a love of all things weird.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Hi, let me know what you think. Hope you enjoy the blog, I love reading each and every comment. :)