Hello, Devilfish! by Ron Dakron

What a premise: the story of a giant stingray's attack on Tokyo, told from the perspective of the stingray!  Great props for the effort.  Ron Dakron's Hello Devilfish! stretches the boundaries of story telling, with his stream-of-consciousness sort-of narrative.  It's flat-out crazy, sometimes funny, frequently profane, and was particularly difficult to enjoy.  I know this is more of a taste issue.  Some people don't appreciate the art and craft of a good Japanese monster movie (I like them).  And some people won't appreciate what Dakron is doing in Hello Devilfish! (I didn't like it that much.)

His literate monster (who consumed shipping containers full of novels) can be amusingly descriptive: ". . . shredding car lots and freight trains into aluminum salad.  And after torching another freeway into smack-up soufflé I reached my radiant goal.  Meaning this classic snack midway riddled with disco prepubes and gawking rubes." But it became tiresome.  Over the top.  Too clever by (at least) half.

Don't take my word for it.  Read the sample pages at Amazon.com and you will see exactly what I'm talking about.  You'll love it or you'll hate it.  A plot does develop after the frenetic first pages, and the "punch line" is pretty funny (I won't give it away), but overall it was sort of like a reading equivalent of listening to music I don't like, way too loud.


Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!