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A review by mirificmoxie
Clownfish Blues by Tim Dorsey
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.5
I received a copy of Clownfish Blues from a Goodreads giveaway. I had no idea that this was book number twenty of a series though. I’d never even heard of this series. If I had known this was a late in the series book, I would never have requested it. There was no way I was going to read the first nineteen books, but I felt bad not reading a book that I got from a giveaway. So I went ahead and read Clownfish Blues. Since I have no idea what happened in the first nineteen books, but I have to say that Clownfish Blues on its own was tedious and unsatisfactory. Take all of this with a grain of salt. Maybe if you’ve read all of the previous installments then there is some amount of nostalgia or something? I have to hope that a series this long started off stronger than this… But having finished this book, I have zero interest in reading any other Serge Storm stories – past or present.
Obviously I lacked the knowledge of all previous events. I don’t know how much that would have helped this story though. I can guess the formula though: Serge A. Storm shows up with his sidekick, causes a bunch of chaos, then a bunch of serendipitous deus ex machina happens that ties everything together. That’s exactly what happened in Clownfish Blues. (By the way, the title has nothing to do with the story; it seems to just be a continuation of the theme from the rest of the series titles.)
The main character is Serge, a psychopath so lame and nonsensical that he makes Saturday morning cartoon villains look competent. He is accompanied by Coleman, a guy who has fried so many brain cells with drugs and alcohol that he doesn’t care what Serge does. The rest of the characters in the book were flat and boring and I’ve already forgotten their names.
Serge and Coleman are taking a road trip through Florida. Serge likes to pretend they are on a TV show that requires them to move to a new town every week, so the story is split into “episodes” that loosely tie together. It was like [b:Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency|365|Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (Dirk Gently, #1)|Douglas Adams|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1404697381s/365.jpg|1042123] meets [b:Practical Demonkeeping|33457|Practical Demonkeeping (Pine Cove, #1)|Christopher Moore|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1429229158s/33457.jpg|2915038] but without any real humor. Serge was the world’s most boring psycho who was really just an annoying, delusional man pretending to be in a tv show accompanied by his druggie sidekick. It was cheesy, ridiculous, and boring. It was not funny or entertaining. There was too much synchronicity used as a lazy plot device.
It jumped around too much, and I didn’t care about the characters or the plot. Also, there was yiffing. If I never read about yiffing again, I’ll be ecstatic beyond words.
RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 3 Stars
Writing Style: 2 Stars
Characters and Character Development: 1 Star
Plot Structure and Development: 1 Star
Level of Captivation: 1 Star
Originality: 2 Stars
Obviously I lacked the knowledge of all previous events. I don’t know how much that would have helped this story though. I can guess the formula though: Serge A. Storm shows up with his sidekick, causes a bunch of chaos, then a bunch of serendipitous deus ex machina happens that ties everything together. That’s exactly what happened in Clownfish Blues. (By the way, the title has nothing to do with the story; it seems to just be a continuation of the theme from the rest of the series titles.)
The main character is Serge, a psychopath so lame and nonsensical that he makes Saturday morning cartoon villains look competent. He is accompanied by Coleman, a guy who has fried so many brain cells with drugs and alcohol that he doesn’t care what Serge does. The rest of the characters in the book were flat and boring and I’ve already forgotten their names.
Serge and Coleman are taking a road trip through Florida. Serge likes to pretend they are on a TV show that requires them to move to a new town every week, so the story is split into “episodes” that loosely tie together. It was like [b:Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency|365|Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (Dirk Gently, #1)|Douglas Adams|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1404697381s/365.jpg|1042123] meets [b:Practical Demonkeeping|33457|Practical Demonkeeping (Pine Cove, #1)|Christopher Moore|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1429229158s/33457.jpg|2915038] but without any real humor. Serge was the world’s most boring psycho who was really just an annoying, delusional man pretending to be in a tv show accompanied by his druggie sidekick. It was cheesy, ridiculous, and boring. It was not funny or entertaining. There was too much synchronicity used as a lazy plot device.
It jumped around too much, and I didn’t care about the characters or the plot. Also, there was yiffing. If I never read about yiffing again, I’ll be ecstatic beyond words.
RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 3 Stars
Writing Style: 2 Stars
Characters and Character Development: 1 Star
Plot Structure and Development: 1 Star
Level of Captivation: 1 Star
Originality: 2 Stars