{"id":3075,"date":"2005-08-25T10:41:39","date_gmt":"2005-08-25T14:41:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2005\/08\/25\/3075.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:53:03","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:53:03","slug":"book-report-gils-all-fright-di","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2005\/08\/25\/book-report-gils-all-fright-di\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: Gil\u2019s All Fright Diner"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The thing about Gil’s All Fright Diner<\/a> is pretty evident from the title. It’s a joke, see. It’s just not a terribly funny one.\n

Actually, the bits that aren’t jokes in Gil’s<\/I> work better than the bits that are. I mean, the bits that are obviously jokes are things like intoning secret incantations in pig latin and a sheriff named Kopp. I’m not saying those jokes couldn’t work in other contexts. I’m just saying that in this book, they scream “It’s a joke, see!” and they aren’t terribly funny.\n

On the other hand, the situation itself (a werewolf and vampire join forces with a local ghost and a mortal to combat ultimate evil) has room for lots of incidental humor, and besides the plot actually works pretty well. The characters are caricatures, sure, but they are swiftly drawn and reasonably sympathetic. And some of the sexy bits are sufficiently sexy that I found myself thinking that A. Lee Martinez might write pretty good porn. Not that the book has explicit scenes, just that he handles the attraction of one character to another both lightly and evocatively.\n

It’s a bad sign, really, when a book that is so clearly intended to be all about the yuks gets so few yuks. On the other hand, if I happened to notice that the fellow wrote another book that wasn’t such a yuk-fest, I would be inclined to read it.\n

On an unrelated note, YHB is all happy and stuff that Tom Doherty and Tor publish all kinds of good specfic, but their web site is unbelievably worthless and crappy, and their copy editing is no better than, say, S&S or Penguin any other megapublisher whose contempt for readers (er, consumers) shows in chintziness and sloppiness. Gr.\n

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The thing about Gil\u2019s All Fright Diner is pretty evident from the title. It\u2019s a joke, see. It\u2019s just not a terribly funny one. Actually, the bits that aren\u2019t jokes in Gil\u2019s work better than the bits that are. I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3075"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17498,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3075\/revisions\/17498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}