Hey all! Here's a book I came across by an author I was unfamiliar with. His name is Jeff Bond and I'm shouting it from the rooftops and urging you to give him a try. I know I want to read more of his work after getting to know him through the pages of BLACKQUEST 40. Laughed out loud from the opening until the end and loved every bit of what went on. Hope you do, too.
Holy Robot Wars! Five Stars for Geeks Everywhere!
Who the heck knew that one day my obsession with ROBOT WARS and my love of DIE HARD would collide in a magical mystical kumbayah woke feed-the-homeless kind of way? And it took a book written by Jeff Bond to cause the collision and knock me unconscious and wondering if I really read what I think I read or whether I need to stop living in my parent’s basement. But enough about me ….
Well, actually it is still about me because, luckily, I’m one of the devoted geeks who sat there watching ROBOT WARS while making side bets with my little brother and cat, Mixer, over which radio-controlled terminator would demolish the competition and win. (P.S. Mixer always won.) It was this insight that gave me the Rosetta stone to deciphering what the heck BLACKQUEST 40’s central character “Deb” was thinking … and “thinking” might be overstating what that chick was doing most of the time. While I’m not absolutely sure of everything else going on between these pages, I am sure of that. But Deb’s mental aberrations that I’ve lovingly dubbed “hiccups” are part of the charm of this imaginative farce … and part of understanding that this here thriller is splendid cutting-edge satire written with acid on the tips of author Jeff Bond’s tapping fingers. What other than perfect mockery would have produced this anti-DIE HARD page-turner? It’s the flipside of everything that went down one night in December. I mean, in the original, you have John McClane, the cop who only wanted to reunite with his wife on Christmas and instead got caught up in a terrorist takeover of Nakatomi Plaza. John had no choice but to go it alone and be a hero in order to figure out a way to outsmart the bad guys. But in BLACKQUEST 40, we have the polar opposite. Instead of the shoeless cop (and why do terrorists have such small feet?), we have an anti-prettymuchanythingthatisntsoyandthatincludesbeingahero kind of gal who had a choice to end the “training session” within the first hour of the tribulation. Oh, but she’s a special kind of crazy, and ending the takeover would have entailed her calling the SFPD and she doesn’t trust the SFPD, but evidently she trusts herself to handle a situation involving guns? Yeah, “hiccup.” Of course, her decision-making abilities are further warped by the absolute faith she’s put in her “cult leader”, SUSAN, the corporate goddess she believes the personification of goodness and invincibility. But when has anyone in God’s Green Earth ever met a corporate leader that fits that description of being an avenging angel? Case dismissed and like I said, it’s the mental aberrations *hiccups* again hitting hard against the cranium that’s supposed to be working but never is. Yeah, that strange idolization is very creepy. Sure, Deb, SUSAN will fix everything so there’s no need to alert authorities TRAINED to handle volatile situations because, of course, the woman who hired you will know the intricacies of heading off a different kind of hostile takeover. Not!
While I loved everything about the book, for me, the real moments of magic in this novel are the “coding” moments. Lord love a duck, Jeff Bond knocked it out of the park when writing those passages! They are so EXACTLY SUPERBLY and EXPERTLY written that primordial binary ooze squeezed out of my pituitary glands in triumph and marinated the anterior and posterior lobes triggering hormones to barrage my hypothalamus in a “Go big or go home” kind of attitudinal way before the leakage trickled down to my fallopian tubes where the ice floe of creativity hopped a sled on which sat a bearded man whistling before shouting “Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! on Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!” simultaneously as the idea of the coding miracle performed came to life by Iditaroding out my birth canal. And if you don’t understand what I just said then you REALLY need to read this book and get onboard with the epiphany fostered in with the new norm. But speaking of attitude (which I wasn’t) and reiterating the fact Deb could have ended the drama before it began, let me just state here that The Coder’s fellow employees (some of which Deb manages) were about as passive as you can find without them being a half-eaten discarded Gummy bear. They seem to have forgotten that “no” is such a lovely underused word, and that when asked to perform functions you don’t want to do while being held hostage, it’s entirely appropriate to make your feelings known by uttering firmly and distinctly blasting, “NO!” But perhaps the reluctance was due to something the author took aim at with tongue firmly prodding into his cheek. It’s that in today’s climate, it’s the words you choose to name a function or action that are more important than the actual function. Therefore, what we used to call “stealing” has now been replaced with using the term “borrowing” … or “moving.” So the “borrowing” or “moving” money from someone’s pocket without permission into your pocket is no longer a crime even though it fits the description of theft which used to be a felony. So applying the new rules in the case of this hostage situation, it wasn’t a “hostage situation” where all employees were deprived of freedom and their constitutional rights, it was “an approved training session” because the naming convention made it all right. Correction: the naming convention plus the free all-you-can-eat food. Sweet!
This book is absolutely hilarious. I couldn’t stop laughing and I enjoyed every minute of it. Brilliantly written, Bond has his finger on the pulse of hypocrites everywhere. Most especially on Deb the do-gooder who does no good. She’s the one who lashes at everyone who doesn’t put to use their “wasted” square footage which begs the question of how much is allotted for humans to own or rent before it’s considered “wasted”? Deb alone decides. And she has that army of robots to enforce her rules. But the army is also her saving grace for it’s her crafting robotics that fly, rescue, spy, and escape from boxes to do her bidding that encapsulate the true genius Deb has residing somewhere inside her because I guarantee genius is not evident in establishing winning business ideas.
I highly recommend BLACKQUEST 40 to anyone and everyone with a sense of humor that wants to read something unique, well-written, and fiendishly clever. The story also says a heck of a lot about society and the direction that we’re heading … as well as how we’ve changed … but forget all that. Just read it for FUN! Yeah, remember that concept? As for me … yes, back to me … I am waiting for someone just like Deb to show up at my doorstep with tape in hand, wanting to measure my existing rental space and inform me that I could fit another person near the flat-screen if I only got rid of my couch. I know that day is coming and when it does, I’ll swallow and gulp while using that glorious word, “NO!” while I still can and hope Deb scurries away into some venting system where she’ll stay forever. It’s five stars from me.
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