Review: Funny imaginative fiction
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 29, 2013
When I began reading I was confused as to where the plot was going. The story starts with a homemade go-cart race between the kids, which introduces us to some of the characters, and then begins to give us little tidbits about the school itself (which was formerly an asylum). It isn't until a few chapters in that I started to see the big picture, when a new (and quite suspicious) vice principle is introduced. I would have liked the writing to be tighter rather than all over the place trying to get us introduced to as many characters as possible, but once the setup is out of the way the story gains focus. A good amount of suspense and mystery is achieved throughout the story.The characters are just as weird as the winding story, from caricatures of grade school kids, to an eccentric older woman with a glass eye that uses her uncanny knowledge to assist our young hero. I thought many of the characters were charming and they felt like they could have been based on people I knew in school. I wanted to learn just as much about the characters as I did the mysteries of the school.The writing was very humorous, and I liked how things were described or how certain scenes played out with whimsy and a touch of the surreal. It's definitely a book that'll make you smile at least. Crypto-Punk is a strange story that has a lot of heart and, despite some shortfalls with focus, managed to keep me flipping the pages.