Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

Buddy read with Cam.  

This book just wasn’t... enough.   It was parody that bordered on political satire, but never really went there.   It wanted to break the fourth wall, but it kinda wanted to stay in straight parody, too.   

Positives first.   This was well written.   This was funny.   I mean, come on, Sparkle von Fancypants?   There is a vagina-door that Enid loves running through, and screeching, “There’s no place like womb!” There was a mention of a gangbang by plastic dinosaurs, and I have Dinobot toys.   Made of plastic!   (So sexy, mmmm!   But then they wouldn’t be mint, which is my issue, I know.  Maybe I need to buy some plastic dinosaur toys, but I’d rather sleep with my squishy, stuffed Grimlock, Snarl and Sludge.)  Look, I’m just saying that line/storyline was a big, big plus for me.      This novel also doesn’t rely solely on poking at other novels; while there are some pretty funny references - Rabies Maddox, anyone? - it also mocks general tropes and cliches.   I wasn’t sure how I felt about this until the end, but decided I liked the two methods working together.  You don’t need to know about the specific titles while it’s a nice bonus for those who do.   

However, there was enough fail for me to wonder if it’ll be worth continuing with this series.   Enid was slut shamed by the narrator, in a mockery of the usual slut shaming, but at times it seemed a little more serious.   You seem to reward her only when she stops ‘whoring‘, and she continues to get hit hard when she does stay promiscuous.    And yes, you comment that men can get away with it, and that there’s a double standard, but when you gleefully skewer Enid for being a whore and fall into the same traps... It didn’t feel really all that convincing.   Much like when the Feminist Society has a slave auction, and you have one line that asks what that has to do with feminism, then ignore that question.   Really?   Because that made the slut shaming Enid endures by nearly everyone in the book, even if it’s second hand slut shaming with comments like the fratbros say that she’s a whore, seem even less of a parody and more like what you might be trying to say.   

But this ties into so many of my problems.   If you’re going to commit to social commentary, which you skirt on doing, just commit and go all the way.  Wavering like this made me twitch a little.   Then again, the author did this time and time again.   She broke the fourth wall, went straight, broke the fourth wall again, went straight... well, rinse and repeat a whole bunch of times.   So, so uneven.   If you’re going to break that wall, my experience has shown that you either throw in a clever, witty reference - Giles telling Buffy the subtext was quickly becoming text - and then drop it, or go all the way via Supernatural’s The French Mistake.   The constant tightrope walk this novel played was not only not convincing, but it made me tense.   I did not like.  I did not want.  

And let’s not even go how you throw it all at us at the end, making me grit my teeth so hard I was afraid they’d break.   Why even pretend this is going to be a straight novel  if you’re going to throw that at us in the end?   All I could think was that the author was really wishy-washy about it from the beginning, or she decided to go that way in the end, and couldn’t be bothered to edit the novel to make it seamless.   

I had high expectations from the descriptions and the name Sparkles von Fancypants - which I’d seen before I started reading - but unfortunately, it wasn’t as good as I’d hoped.