The Coyote Kings
of the Space Age Bachelor Pad

A video-store clerk and a dishwasher team up with a mysterious beauty to save the world from an ancient evil

	The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad
	By Minister Faust
	Del Rey
	Trade Paperback, August 2004
	544 pages
	ISBN 0-345-46635-7
	MSRP: $14.95

Review by John Joseph Adams

amza Achmed Qebhsennuf Senesert, an underachieving Sudanese uber-geek, is in the midst of a years-long funk brought on by a sourly ended relationship. Once upon a time, he was destined for great things—he was all set to get his B.A. in english literature (with honors), and he had dreams of becoming a writer. But when he lost his girl, everything went south, and he ended up expelled from college and "washing dishes for scumbags" in a restaurant called ShabbadabbaDoo's.

Hamza's bosom buddy—the Q to his James Bond, the Scotty to his Capt. Kirk—is Yehat Bartholomew Gerbles, a cape-wearing engineering supragenius ("Technological Intelligence: +99 A-Team/MacGyver") whose defiance of authority has left him unable to work as anything other than a smart-aleck clerk in a video store.

These two are the titular Coyote Kings. They share an apartment (the Space Age Bachelor Pad) in the multicultural "E-Town Supreme," otherwise known as Edmonton, in Alberta, Canada. They spend their downtime debating the merits of various genre enterprises, educating neighborhood kids in a sort of informal summer camp and dreaming of more important lives. "[D]idn't you think by the time we were twenty-five we'd've done something important, be having adventures or something ..." opines Hamza.

Hamza's wish for adventure is shortly granted, when a mysterious, exotic woman named Sheremnefer comes into his life. She's everything Hamza could ask for—she's beautiful, intelligent ... and as much of a SF and comic-book geek as he is.

Sounds great, right? Well, there's much more to Sherem than meets the eye, and her relationship with Hamza drags the Coyote Kings into the middle of a search for a mystical Egyptian artifact that has spanned thousands of years. But Sherem's motives are not entirely clear, and there are several other parties also in pursuit: Heinz and Kevlar Meaney (the former friends/current archnemeses of the Coyote Kings), a band of hooligans known as the FanBoys and their boss, the evil, vocabulary-impaired drug dealer Dulles Allen.

But this is no mere archaeological expedition, and the artifact is no simple trinket—it has the power to save or doom humanity.

A Pad not worth visiting

All first novels have warts, and this one has more than its share. Indeed, there is precious little to praise in The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad, a rambling, overlong save-the-world-from-ancient-evil tale peopled with a large cast of underdeveloped, comic-bookish characters.

Over the course of the novel, Faust employs 11 different narrators, each introduced by a "character data" sheet, similar to those used in the playing of role-playing games. These are presented as tongue-in-cheek rundowns of the character's statistics, such as what his or her strengths and/or weaknesses might be. Here readers are treated to such sterling wit as "Eyes: Two," "Smirk: Pronounced" and "Bladder/Colon Carrying Capacity: Ultraminimal/Average."

Of this varied cast, Hamza and Yehat are the only somewhat likable characters, the others being mostly foul-mouthed villains maniacally intent on accomplishing their goals, such as the aforementioned Dulles Allen, who has his own "lexicon" of insults, whereby he pairs the word "ass" with another word to form a hyphenated insult (such as "ass-freaks").

This quickly grows tiresome, as do most of Faust's stylistic quirks, such as his overuse of swear words and slang, along with his liberal uses of CAPITAL LETTERS and ... ellipses. Also annoying are the phonetically spelled dialects, specifically that of Alpha Cat, which turns a faux-Jamaican accent into something even more complicated than the post-apocalyptic pidgin English of Riddley Walker. For example:

Mi wok around di dess. An liyk evra time befoh, im ava feeyce fulla teeyz. An it a CROCK mi 'eart riyt downa di SENTA fi see he liyk dis, a giant uva maan redoos ta cryin liyka beeyby.

Blissfully, passages such as these are brief, but they recur several times during the course of the novel. Perplexing as the above excerpt is, perhaps most perplexing is Hamza's narrative voice. It's not difficult to understand, as Alpha Cat's is, but Hamza, the English lit major and would-be writer, comes off sounding as if he learned nothing during his three-plus years in college, as if he were just as uneducated as any of the FanBoy goons.

Where Faust succeeds is in transforming the city of Edmonton from a just another spot on a map into a living, breathing metropolis, depicting it as a cultural melting pot with a rich multiethnic history. Another bright spot is the relationship between Hamza and Yehat—these two friends have a genuine bond that resonates beyond the novel; though their apparent love for one another can be overbearing at times (especially in one weepy scene toward the end of the novel), overall it's their superhero and sidekick camaraderie that will keep readers reading.

Perhaps if only the style were oppressive, or the prose long-winded—perhaps if only the characters were caricatured, or the plot were nonsensical, Faust could be forgiven. But since he commits all of these sins and more, he leaves readers with nothing more than a convoluted mess that fails to deliver on its fun mythological premise.

In a blurb, Nalo Hopkinson says this novel is "[o]ff the freakin' hook." If you ask me, reading Coyote Kings is like listening to the sound the phone makes when you leave it off the freakin' hook. Do yourself a favor—hang up on Faust and pick up one of Nalo's books instead. — John Joseph Adams

Back to the top.

Also in this issue: Sunrise Alley, by Catherine Asaro

Home