Roger Zelazny

Fred Cassidy, thirteen years an undergraduate and an acrophiliac, joins Professor Paul Byler in a search for their laboratory replica of an alien artifact of interest to more than one interstellar community

Doorways in the Sand

Sarah Escorsa

Actual rating: 18 stars. More or less. 

This book is impossible to review. Okay, so my buddy reading colleagues seem to have managed it, but that's only because they sold their soul to the devil in exchange for inspiration are superiorly intelligent, while I am naught but a lowly, somewhat fishbrained crustacean. So if you want to read an actual review for this book, take a trip to Our Lord and Master's Canadian Sugar Shack, My Super Hot Dearest of Wives' Most Titillating Abode or The Obscure Bird of Gloom's Occult Aerie (more links to come so stay tuned and stuff). Now if you want to read a fascinating—if a tiny little bit disjointed—list of some of the fairly wacky stuff that makes this book one of the best I've ever read in the entirety of my entire life, then by all means, stick with me and my solitary grey cell, Little Gertrude. Which reminds me, I need to warm things up a little up there before we start. Please give me a minute, I'll be right back. 



Just the workout Little Gertrude needed! She's all fired up and ready to go! Let's do this!

Soooooo, this book is: exceptionally absurd. Hilarious. Eccentric. Slightly insane. Witty. Weird. And a teensy little bit nonsensical. There are hypochondriac kangaroos, undercover wombat impersonators and peanut butter sandwiches. And eternal undergraduates, too. The cynicism index is high. Raisinhood is introduced as a gloriously creative way to torture puny humans. The narrative does little frog shrimp jumps backward and forward in time to keep the reader on his/her/its/whatever toes pincers. There are interesting hallucinations. And acrophiliacs (who have nothing to do with necrophiliacs, you dirty minded barnacles). Things never fail to make surrealistic sense. And "where does that leave us," you ask? "Drunk," obviously. Because if there is one thing that this book demonstrates over and over again, it is that alcohol is the solution. Always.



Especially not this one.

And if there is one thing that this book taught me is that being half stoned leaves one half sober. Amazing, but true. One should be extremely cautious, however, as sometimes being half stoned sober makes one's higher cerebral centers move off center. Which can be somewhat excruciating and should be avoided whenever possible. But sometimes a shrimp's gotta do what a shrimp's gotta do, and if one's mission requires one getting thoroughly intoxicated, well, what can one do? Drink 
  antitelepath medicine
 (aka beer, in layman's terms), that's what.

Anyway, time to get back to our most fascinating—if a tiny little bit disjointed—list. This book is: full of scrumptiously scrummy and cleverly ingenious literary references. There are frozen altruistic uncles. And telepathic donkeys who specialize in budget analysis and accounting. And galactic cops, too. And stones. There is an inversion machine that reverses molecules and makes everything better (even bad bourbon, amazingly enough), thus promising to be The Cure to all DNFs of Doom of Oblivion (TCtaDNFoDaO™). There are hoodlums and doodlehums and Boojums (that are Snarks, obviously. Because Snarks are always Boojums and stuff). Spinal nerves are proven to be cunning little suckers who will almost always screw you over. There are delightfully insidious orchids that are so nefariously Machiavellian they could be my offspring. Oh, and by the way, 
  pseudocopulation
 rocks. Sometimes PhDs are forced on moderately unwilling candidates, which is quite outrageous, if you ask me. And now poor Little Gertrude is getting tired so let's take a break.



Little Gertrude feels much refreshed, thank thee kindly.

Okay, we're almost there, my Inebriated Arthropods, so let's get this most fascinating—if a tiny little bit disjointed—list over with! This book is: a great reminder that thinking about gangrene never hurts. It also shows that not all adventuresome primates are distastefully venal. There are cymbal-playing grinning dwarves and lousy guide dogs. And bay leaves are considered an appropriate form of attire. Also, one is sometimes "hampered by the lack of an algebraic solution to a general equation of the fifth degree." Just so you know. Some Pips have surprisingly "simple expectations". And the contents of one's circulatory and digestive systems are sometimes delivered to the floor. The narrator has a special fondness for both his metabolism and GNIMMIWS ON signs. And last, but certainly not least, there are consonant-named physicians with fun appendages and creative methods. Assault therapy for the win!! 



» And the moral of this I'm Such a Hopelessly Desperate Case that the Devil Wouldn't Even Have My Soul Ergo I Couldn't Exchange it for a Crappy Non Review Like Some People I Know Ergo All You Got is this Crappily Disjointed List Poor You and Stuff Crappily Disjointed List (ISaHDCttDWEHMSEICEifaCNRLSPIKEAYGitCDLPYaSCDL™) is: you don't have to drink alcohol in order to understand what the bloody fish is going on in this book. But it might help.

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[Pre-review nonsense]

"Neither a fool nor a raisin be." 

And that, my Little Barnacles, shall be my life moto from now on.



I know right? Be there or be square tubular, that's my other life motto and stuff.

➽ Full Where the Bloody Fish has this Shrimping Book Been all my Life Crappy Non Review (WtBFhtSBBamLCNR™) to come.

Doorways in the Sand

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