rmthunter's Full Review: James Kennedy - The Order of Odd-Fish
Disclosure note: I am acquainted with James Kennedy, but didn't know he was a writer until I heard from a mutual friend that his novel had been published. I mentioned it the next time I saw him and he kindly provided me with a review copy.
Now -- on to the good stuff.
The Order of Odd-Fish is one of the more singular young adult fantasies -- or fantasies, period -- I've run across. It is, in many ways, unique. It's also extraordinarily difficult to describe.
Jo Larouche is thirteen years old and lives in the "ruby palace" with her Aunt Lily -- at least, Lily claims to be her aunt, and Jo doesn't know anything different. The ruby palace is a great ramshackle house in the California desert near the town of Dust Creek, where the median age of the inhabitants seems to be around 80. Jo's origins were unusual -- she was found in Aunt Lily's laundry room with a note that said "This is Jo. Please take care of her. But beware. This is a DANGEROUS baby." -- and shrouded in mystery. Now, as Lily puts it, Jo is "as dangerous as a glass of milk," and as far as Jo herself is concerned, that's absolutely true: she is certainly not the type to wish harm to anyone. There is, however, the matter of the mystery around her birth.
Life is very quiet in Dust Creek, as one might imagine, even given Lily's periodic costume parties. This year, Lily, a retired star of the silver screen, is throwing her annual Christmas party, and things get pretty thoroughly out of hand. Utimately, Jo, Aunt Lily, Colonel Korsakov (who takes the advice of his digestive tract in all matters) and a three-foot cockroach named Sefino find themselves under attack by a wannabe villain named Ken Kiang. They wind up in Eldritch City, in the house of the Order of Odd-Fish, and then the adventures really begin.
I mentioned that The Order of Odd-Fish is hard to describe. Yes and no. The story itself is at its core a coming-of-age story, focused on the basic themes of learning who you are and becoming who you are: Jo is basically a fairly sensible girl, although as subject as anyone else at her age to the twin influences of peer pressure and adult approval, so her behavior is not always as sensible as we might hope. On the other hand, by contrast to her fellows -- she becomes a squire of the Order -- she's pretty much got it together, give or take her worries about her real parents and their history.
The real fun is the sheer explosive inventiveness of Kennedy's universe-building. Eldritch City itself is like a hallucination of every fantasy city you've ever read about, and the chapter house of the Order is like Gormenghast run amok. The other denizens of the city are, at the minimum, flamboyant, and most are larger than life. Despite the prevalence of what I've dubbed "small boy imagery" (talking cockroaches? centipede newspaper columnists? all elegantly and sometimes flamboyantly dressed?), the book is unexpected enough to make it thoroughly enjoyable.
There are, however, times when the sheer pyrotechnics of the opening chapters work against what comes after: by the time the story settles down, we've become accustomed to something new and weird being introduced, seemingly, on every page. I realize I'm a beast about pacing, and to be honest, that suffers here probably only by contrast -- my advice is to give yourself periodic breathers until you calm down.
It is, however, a wonderful book -- funny, bizarre, action-packed, even thoughtful, and stocked with a gallery of larger-than-life characters, and at its core is a charming story with somewhat understated elements of romance. And you don't have to be a teenager to enjoy it. Believe it.
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