Lovely ugliness

Robert Brockway is another Cracked author who I've grown to adore over years of time-wasting at work. I think his piece on the hell you go through while moving is probably my favorite example of his bodacious, personal writing style on Cracked.Com but RX: A Tale of Electronegativity is all the fun rambunctiousness that can be seen in his articles blown up to the length of a novel and exploded in a fury of pantslessness an hilarity. It's kind of rad.

The story is told from the perspectives of three fascinating characters, all of whom are given wonderful, alien motivations and who occupy a world that is distinct from ours and tremendously confusing, but still recognizable and uncomfortably familiar in a lot of ways. It's a terrible place that has been made awful by flawed people. The novel is made compelling and creepy by its through-a-glass-darkly setting, and makes you want to be a better person while never moralizing at you.

There were some flaws with the story - some interesting concepts seem undeveloped and fascinating characters go unexplored - but overall this was a delightful read that I couldn't put down. I'm pretty sure I set it aside just a few pages away from the end because I started reading it at 1 am and just couldn't stay awake until 5 am to finish it, but I was pissed at myself for not saving the book to start when I was fresh enough to read it all in one go. It was fun and frightening and very, very funny in places. It's not a comedy, it's not a horror story, it's a sci-fi thriller with a smirk and I was largely delighted by it.

Cheers,

Brockway, Robert. RX: A Tale of Electronegativity. Self-Published. 2012.