Crap Kingdom by D.C. Pierson

Crap Kingdom by D.C. Pierson

Crap Kingdom

By: D.C. Pierson

Release Date: March 7, 2013

Rating: 3 Stars

Summary: THE CHOSEN ONE MUST BE RETRIEVED FROM EARTH HE WILL BRING DOWN THE WALL AND RESTORE THE KINGDOM TO GLORY HIS NAME IS TOM PARKING With this mysterious yet oddly ordinary-looking prophecy, Tom’s fate is sealed: he’s been plucked from his life and whisked away to a magical kingdom to be its Chosen One. There’s just one problem: The kingdom is mostly made of garbage from Earth. Okay, well, two problems: the king hates Tom. Also, the princess likes to wear fake mustaches. And being Chosen One seems to consist mainly of cleaning out rats’ noses at the Royal Rat-Snottery. So, basically, the kingdom sucks. When Tom turns down the job of Chosen One, he thinks he’s making a smart decision. But when Tom discovers he’s been replaced by his best friend Kyle, who’s always been cooler, more athletic, and better with girls, Tom wants Crap Kingdom back—at any cost. And the hilarity that ensues will determine the fate of the universe.

Review:

I had an idea in my head of the kind of book Crap Kingdom would be. It was going to be irreverent, crass, and hilariously inappropriate, the kind of memorable send-up to traditional fantasy that would completely skewer everything commonly associated with the genre, magic lands and Chosen Ones and princesses in distress and every single other staid overdone cliche. But in this case, I think I got my hopes up for nothing, because turns out Crap Kingdom is not nearly as funny as it sounded in my head.

Humor is of course one of those ‘your mileage will vary’ deals, so take of this what you will, but for me at least the first warning sign of my disappointment comes in the first few sentences of the book. I’m more of a physical comedy kind of guy, I like action more than the idea of something being funny, so seeing DC Pierson starting the book by basically telling me how Crap Kingdom is going to be different from every single other fantasy, how Tom’s impending adventure is going to be different from every single other Chosen One’s, well, it didn’t really work for me. Cute but not laugh out loud. More of an eh than a lol. And as I read on, it just seemed like the writing never manages to be more than mildly amusing and the laughs just weren’t coming. Were there moments? Sure, parts I liked, such as a discussion of the mechanics of barfing in cars with and without windshields, but they were mostly few and far between other stuff that was just strange for the sake of being strange like how the princess likes to wear mustaches or a cheesy variant on a traditional fantasy trope like the whole treatment of magic, nothing that really made fun of the things the book promised to make fun of, you know?

And then turns out, Crap Kingdom actually has a plot (but not a very good one). I know I usually insist on books having plots, in fact I probably harp on it more than I should when I review paranormals because it seems half the time there isn’t one, but in the case of satire, eh I think the plot harmed more than it helped because, well, it’s more full of holes than actually funny. I’m not opposed to nonsensical hilarity, in humor sometimes it actually works just hitting readers with random funny shit and not caring in the least whether it’s all logical or not, but still the plot has to be sufficiently funny that I don’t care about the fallacies, and it wasn’t here. So I’m thinking why the hell Kyle gets magical powers right off the bat when Tom doesn’t, why it seems all the denizens of Crap Kingdom but the King in particular are so darn capricious, and what’s with all the weirdness going on, and while it’s all required for the story to work, I guess, it also makes the story seem silly rather than funny.

And ultimately, that’s my problem with Crap Kingdom, it’s more silly than funny. I get the feeling Pierson wanted Tom to learn a lesson from his experiences, like don’t prejudge a place to be crap because if you do you’ll have second thoughts and might miss out on your big chance to make a difference, which is not a bad idea in theory, but in practice the story seemed to fall apart by the time that message really mattered. I only kept reading after Tom rejects Crap Kingdom the first time because I expected a train wreck from the whole not-Tom in Tom’s body doing all sorts of suave but outlandish things while Tom’s physically in Crap Kingdom (don’t ask), and all I got out of it was one apparently really dirty letter than I didn’t even get to read – after that, the whole conflict with Crap Kingdom’s militant neighbor turned out to be rather generic and absolutely not satirical in the slightest, well maybe a bit more weird than your typical fantasy but nothing entirely way out there.

So. Crap Kingdom – funny? Not really, at least for me. Hence my disappointment.

Go to Mitch’s review on Goodreads.