Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong

Maybe that’s the point, but there’s nuance missing there that existed in his earlier work. It’s nice that he tried to deliver a female protagonist in Zoey Ashe, but she ends up essentially being the equivalent of a bro with boobs and nothing like any woman I’ve ever come across. Whereas his John and Dave characters in his first two novels feel like he knows them inside and out, these characters (who are more like caricatures) feel flat and forced at times.

Like he’s working to establish these characters on the fly. He tries zingers, but they often come across as crude or obviously not worked over and thought through the way his older writing was. He tries to create dialogue and situations that he thinks will be funny and/or entertaining, but often times, like a comedian trying out his act in a smaller club in order to hone his delivery, the stuff falls flat. While I was originally impressed with his first book, this one, in way too many situations, is too cute by half. Write about tech that’s supposed to be “futuristic,” and even a year after its publishing, when some of the tech becomes reality, things kind of feel dusty. This is always the issue with books set in the future, I suppose. The thing is, despite this being set in the future, the book somehow feels dated. This, unlike his past books, pushes out into the larger sphere of the world and the pretty cynical and bleak outlook of what that world will become based on our current habits. So now, with his third novel, he’s left the “John” universe of modern-day suburbia and moved into a future society that he uses to purportedly make hay of what he feels is our headlong spiral into uncontrolled narcissism and consumerism. It wasn’t bad per se, but quite a comedown from his debut. Then came the sequel, This Book is Full of Spiders. That novel was fun and funny and mixed and matched post-modern and horror and comedic genres in a really great way that felt fresh and new to me. Granted, including Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits, his canon numbers three. I may have gone one too deep in the David Wong (aka Jason Pargin) canon.

Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong