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sparks_fitz's review against another edition
5.0
Loved this even more than Zod Wallop!!! So good, it's funny but never loses it's sense of horror, has great imagery and characters, and just great prose that really kept me glued. I read it in only two days. One of my favorite depictions of the Lovecraft mythos. Highly recommended!!!
rpcroke's review against another edition
5.0
In the tradition of other "weird" fiction this is quite the trip. Not as unnerving as I thought it would be but it was engaging. A quick and entertaining read. I will be reading more novels by this author.
tac107's review against another edition
5.0
I really enjoyed this book! I was told it was a horror novel but it was really more unsettling than anything. It was so funny and works as a satire of office culture. I couldn't believe it was so hard for me to find a copy but it was fast moving and enjoyable.
wordboydave's review against another edition
3.0
I love Charles Stross's humorous spy-meets-Cthulhu-meets-bureaucracy novels, and this is like that, only with no espionage and a lot less focus. It's brilliantly written, with a good line on every page and not a single bad sentence I could find. But it does take a while to find its footing, and on my White Wolf Press Edition (486 huge-type pages), it didn't really kick into high gear until 200 pages in. But I can't dismiss it outright, because there's frankly nothing else like it (except Charles Stross and maybe Move Under Ground by Nick Mamatas. If this is the kind of work being done in Austin, Texas, I'd love to see more. But this feels like a very personal obsessive novel, one where you have to sort of convert to the author's point of view, rather than a novel designed to be consistently riveting. In summary: smart, funny, and I love the concept, but the execution was a little too navel-gazing and scattered to get my highest marks.
martingehrke's review
4.0
So different and refreshing. A lot like PKD in it's protrayal of fracturing reality.
gengelcox's review
3.0
Darrell Schweitzer's blurb for this book reads, "If Woody Allen had ever written a Cthulhu Mythos novel, it might have come out like this." Pithy, short, moderately funny, interesting, and entirely wrong. Yes, there are Cthulhu references here, and yes, Spencer can write with humor, but this is not "Everything You Always Wanted to Know about the Necrinomicon (But Were Afraid to Ask)." If we must resort to comparing Spencer to other writers, Resume with Monsters owes the most to Philip K. Dick rather than H.P. Lovecraft.
The main character is Philip (what a giveaway, eh?) who works at Ralph's One-Day Resumes in Austin, Texas. He moved there to find his girlfriend Amelia, who ran away from the high-tech company Micromeg that they had both worked at previously because of an accident which Philip crazily attributes to the workings of the Great Old Ones. Amelia attributes insanity to Philip, likely brought on by his obsession with the characters of H.P. Lovecraft, and manifested in the magnum opus of a novel that Philip is constantly revising entitled The Despicable Quest. Philip claims that the novel is the only thing keeping Yog-Sothoth at bay.
Is Resume with Monsters funny? Yes, but it is in its incongruities, the warped reality of what Philip sees and how others react. The strength of the novel is wrapped up in the ambiguity of Philip--we recognize him as an unreliable narrator, but, as in Philip K. Dick's novels, the question is not whether to trust the narrator, but how much one can trust the world. Spencer handles this well, and there are quite a few plot twists to make things interesting, including having Philip's consciousness flung back in time to relive the Micromeg incident, the zombie co-workers, and a management recruitment program straight out of Dilbert (well, if Scott Adams worked for Nyarlathotep, Inc.). Resume with Monsters is not as well done as Spencer's latest, Zod Wallop, but is well worth checking out, especially for fans of both Dick and Lovecraft.
The main character is Philip (what a giveaway, eh?) who works at Ralph's One-Day Resumes in Austin, Texas. He moved there to find his girlfriend Amelia, who ran away from the high-tech company Micromeg that they had both worked at previously because of an accident which Philip crazily attributes to the workings of the Great Old Ones. Amelia attributes insanity to Philip, likely brought on by his obsession with the characters of H.P. Lovecraft, and manifested in the magnum opus of a novel that Philip is constantly revising entitled The Despicable Quest. Philip claims that the novel is the only thing keeping Yog-Sothoth at bay.
Is Resume with Monsters funny? Yes, but it is in its incongruities, the warped reality of what Philip sees and how others react. The strength of the novel is wrapped up in the ambiguity of Philip--we recognize him as an unreliable narrator, but, as in Philip K. Dick's novels, the question is not whether to trust the narrator, but how much one can trust the world. Spencer handles this well, and there are quite a few plot twists to make things interesting, including having Philip's consciousness flung back in time to relive the Micromeg incident, the zombie co-workers, and a management recruitment program straight out of Dilbert (well, if Scott Adams worked for Nyarlathotep, Inc.). Resume with Monsters is not as well done as Spencer's latest, Zod Wallop, but is well worth checking out, especially for fans of both Dick and Lovecraft.
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