Sharyn McCrumb

Bimbos of the Death Sun

Sarah Sammis

Parody is hard to write and yet lots of people try their hands at it. Bimbos of the Death Sun purports to be a murder-mystery parody of a sci-fi/fantasy convention. All the stereotypes are there: the obese and desperate women, the pimply geeky fan-boys who forget to eat, the gamers who can't face reality and of course the obnoxious author who is appalling and yet loved by all. In a word: boring!

At the heart of the story is the newly published engineering professor who is too embarrassed by his success to admit it. He's so unlike any science professor I've ever met to be a complete distraction and detraction from the book. He's supposed to be the likeable character in the book but he's so two-dimensional and so far removed from reality that I didn't care what he did, said, thought or felt.

Finally at just past the halfway point of this train wreck of a book there is a murder. It comes so late in the book that there isn't any time to give it a good investigation or to even make it a coherent piece of the plot. There is more time spent on the description of the role playing game at the end of the book than to the resolution of the mystery. If I want to read transcribed games, I'll suffer through Weis and Hickman!

Bimbos of the Death Sun

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