Review: A rocketing good time!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 25, 2012
Space Orville is a rocketing good time, right up my space-alley. Let's agree now that my review won't be as funny as the book, so go buy Space Orville and read for yourself. Here's a sample of what you'll experience. Space Orville starts out living on his own at 16 to design games on a spacey space station but ends up on a mission to make the universe (all twelve layers) safe. Kind of a 12 layer space-cake adventure.My favorite character is Neutrofuzz who does so many things I never heard of before that it takes neologism to describe them. Yeah, made up words. I can't remember a single one, but I loved Whelan's humorongous (humongous/humorous) SF adventure.Space Orville ends up in kahoots with all sorts of strange characters. Strange inventions also end up in Kahoots, I guess with each other. I think Jeff Whelan is in kahoots with Terry Pratchett to find new ways to play with words. I'll eat my irreplaceable fog napkin if Whelan isn't paying homage to Discworld's Great Atuin on a grand and more luminous scale. Okay, I won't eat my fog napkin because it's irreplaceable. Book joke.Along the way to saving pretty much everything, Space Orville meets characters with names like Miles O'Teeth, General DeKay, and bad guys like the Candy Apple Weezlebums (you know, the gooey ones that stick in your teeth). What a mouthful. Then add Bizmo the Inconceivable and try to swallow. Face it, Bizmo sounds like that chalky pink medicine--except he causes indigestion for everyone.The bad guys make it hard for Space Orville, Neutrofuzz, the Spoonies (who are, obviously, spoon shaped), a very large banana, and other inventive characters to catch them. It takes a beautiful and smart female to calm the male beasts, and not just her Spoonies, along the way. Then there's either a descendant of Bozo the clown or some Bazooka bubblegum character involved, maybe a cross. The imagination that went into the creation of the scenery and characters is more inconceivable than Bizmo.I did find some minor errors and point of view jumps. Also, everyone except Space Orville had a first name or a single name, so reading his whole name each time felt awkward. Compared to Whelan's outstanding creativity and humor, the problems were insignificant--like gnats on Miles O'Teeth. Midpoint, the missions switched into high gear so the middle didn't sag. I had a smile on my face for most of the ride. The end included a growing up moment that made me very happy as a parent. Whelan also wrote a real resolution that reminded me why I prefer standalone books. Having said that, I hope he writes more Space Orville books because I'll be in line to read them.Never mind stars. I give five Luminous Numinas to Space Orville.