Top positive review
4.0 out of 5 starsCracking Good Read
Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2015
Mainstream fiction has not been my thing since I was probably twelve years old. I'm not saying that to be sound superior--I just don't find much of it enjoyable. At a certain point, the formulas and cliches, to say nothing of the language itself, becomes tiresome--it's safe, by-the-numbers writing that is often good but fails to excite the reader.
So what is it about Tegon Maus that I so enjoy? His novels are quite clearly mainstream works intended for a mass audience, and his storylines are frequently the kind I roll my eyes at. So why? Why did I leap at the opportunity to read more of his work? Why did I go out and purchase a copy of Bob immediately after finishing Service Before Self? Why did I invest the time to read the first book in a series when I know--more often than not--it'll be a disappointment, nothing more than a setup for the next book in the series?
And, most importantly, why the hell was I grinning like a twelve-year-old sneaking his first glimpse at a Playboy?
As always, the book jacket: "Ben Harris’s sister died of cervical cancer more than three years ago… his best friend and her husband, Roger Keswick, disappeared the day before the funeral. For the next six months everyone from the local police to the Department of Defense searched for him but to no avail… it was as if he had simply fallen off the face of the planet only to reappear at work as if nothing were out of the ordinary. Then by the purest of coincidences Ben finds himself pulled back into Roger’s life only to discover he has remarried… to Jessica… a woman the looks, sounds and acts just like his dead sister. To complicate things Roger is insistent his home, his car, his life is infested with tiny elf like creatures he calls the Katoy. He claims they run massive machines under his house and watch his every move… every move that is until Jessica is found bludgeoned to death in his living room and Roger is nowhere to found . . . again."
Riiight. Tiny, elf-like creatures. A murdered replacement wife. And not one but two mysterious disappearances. There's no way this is going to work. No way.
And admittedly, the plot is problematic because it does get a bit too convoluted. At least, that was my first impression. But when I stopped to think about it, though this book's description makes it sound like it's going to be some weird fantasy/sci-fi hybrid, the book really has more in common with LA noir. We have a convoluted plot, frequent bursts of violence, and hard characters. In fact, the sci-fi elements are really kept to a minimum, which I appreciated, since sci-fi is a genre I generally loathe.
But the real joy of this book is not the plot itself. The real joy is the way in which Maus keeps his readers constantly off guard, stringing them along for pages before flipping the situation on its head and forcing readers to reevaluate whatever they thought they knew. Normally, that just pisses me off, but the way Maus manipulates his readers makes us squeal with delight at every turn. There is an energy to his novels, a sense of urgency tinged with wonder. We trust that wherever he takes us--and it won't be somewhere we expect--it will be an adventure in the truest sense of the word.
And then we have the characters. At the end of the day, it's the characters that make a Maus book what it is. You've got Roger, the brilliant--and probably a little mad--inventor. You've got Audrey, sexy and feisty with a tiny secret. And c'mon, when else will you ever read a book in which the protagonist suffers from bio-chemical electrical discharge? What the hell is that, you ask? A throwaway detail at the beginning of the novel that becomes a major detail by the end.
And that's what kept me reading: that sense that something surprising was right around the corner, that someone was going to say something absurd and profound, that the rules were going to change at any moment.
There are a few issues I had with the novel, none of them significant, and almost all of them repeats from my review of Service Before Self.
This novel is very dialogue-heavy, and that can cause some details to get lost. It didn't happen often, but it did happen once or twice to me and I imagine other readers might find it irksome.
Also, there is a bit of clunky writing here and there, which any writer can be guilty of. It didn't really bother me, but it is there.
My final issue with the novel is an issue of expectation. Given my experience with Service Before Self and Bob, I was expecting a much funnier novel. That is not to say that Machines of the Little People is unfunny, but the humor is much sparser and when it was there at the forefront, it felt forced. For example, Roger's obsession with tuna. Unlike Bob's delightfully fractured English, which never got old, by the end of this book, I wanted to choke Roger with a can of tuna. Part of this issue is that I was expecting a certain kind of novel and got something else. Noir fiction is not known for ball-bouncingly funny moments. But Tegon Maus novels are, so Machines was a bit of a letdown in that department.
Overall, I really enjoyed Machines of the Little People and give it four out of five stars. Definitely recommended for anyone who just wants a cracking good story.
