James Steele (4)

Meet Felix, America's newest folk hero!

This one will be difficult to review. Not because of my opinion of the book, or doubts about anything contained therein. No, the difficulty is going to be in reviewing “Felix and the Sacred Thor” in an Amazon-friendly manner.

Felix is an Equine Stress Management Specialist. If you read the book's description, you can probably guess how he manages these stress levels. After proving himself worthy, the Sacred Horse grants him the Sacred Thor, an unimaginably powerful weapon that is in the form of a large amount of plastic molded into the shape of a particular part of a horse's anatomy. Plus, it's magical as it upgrades by increasing in size, changing color, and gaining new abilities as he gains experience (or XP, literally) fighting against a malevolent force that threatens to disrupt the American way of life and eventually destroy humanity.

If only Felix could get the catchphrases right...

If you've gone this far in the review, then you've probably read the book's description, so you should already know what you're getting into. Still, be warned, it gets a little...rough, not to mention a little...blue? Well, maybe not blue, although that's probably one of the colors that the Sacred Thor gains. Maybe a little more purple, and black, and brown, and pink. Well, you get the idea.

James Steele really doesn't hold anything back. And I mean “anything.” If you're looking for sharp and sarcastic social commentary drenched in strange sexual innuendo, then...actually, come to think of it, I don't think this would even qualify as innuendo, as there's nothing subtle about it. In other words, be warned that you might feel the need for a boiling hot shower after reading this, depending on how prudish you might be. However, if you can easily imagine Felix using the Sacred Thor like a super pogo stick to fly through the city streets, then you'll be just fine.

It's a grand and hilarious adventure that, despite the strangeness of the whole thing, actually makes a certain kind of sense. Or I'm just crazy enough to believe that it makes sense, and whether this insanity set in before or after reading “Felix and the Sacred Thor” is probably up for debate. In any case, it will be a far cry from wasting your time, and being insane is not without its perks.

Recommended for those who would fight for truth, justice, and the American way, and especially for those who would fight for it by slapping the villains around with a giant plastic animal part. You can guess which one.

4 out of 5 stars… (más)

If Salvador Dali were to comment on the meaningless of a college degree he might be inspired to paint a flying toaster getting whacked by a horse dildo. Steele makes excellent use of the literary device, non sequitur, in his comedic quest to save humanity in Felix and the Sacred Thor. This is not just a story about sex toys, but a commentary on modernism, social culture, education and the pursuit of greater things. And yes, the dirty underbelly of the retail world where receipts are optional and no customer should be allowed to borrow scissors. In between laughs, I was thinking about what humanity is really doing. Are they going through the motions of the mundane, or is anyone really using their strengths for a greater good. Deep, I know. Another aspect that I enjoyed was the use of objects and twisting the meaning that has already been assigned to said object. A dildo is a sex toy until you make (use) it for something else. In this case, a weapon to save the world. It's amazing how quickly when new meaning is applied, the taboo of the object dissolves. In the end, words are just letters put together in a certain order. The power comes from what we impose on it, the meaning we give it, and realizing each person possesses the power to change it can be mind blowing.… (más)

This book is a must-read for the following people:

- dildo enthusiasts
- horse dildo enthusiasts
- animal dildo enthusiasts in general
- the unemployed
- unemployed dildo enthusiasts
- lovers of mystical quests and recipients of occasional forced sodomy (not mutually exclusive)
- retail employees who hate their jobs (possibly redundant with the previous entry)
- retail managers who love their jobs
- toaster enthusiasts
- RPG enthusiasts
- enthusiasm enthusiasts (just kidding)

This book is definitely NOT for the following people:

- children
- nuns
- this guy
- these guys

I think that about covers it.… (más)

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

This is the latest in Eraserhead Press' "New Bizarro Author Series," in which the publisher will put out an inexpensive novella by a beginning writer as a way for them to prove that they should get a full book contract; and admittedly, this one is even sillier than most of the titles from this series I receive, an out-and-out fairytale for grown-ups that completely breaks with reality quite early in the story. See, in the future, it comes to pass that 94 percent of all college students end up training to become "Equine Stress Management Specialists," in charge of sexually satisfying nervy racehorses, with the resulting national economic collapse and subsequent rebuild into a permanent welfare state making it now most people's "jobs" to stand in mile-long unemployment lines all day, every day; it's within such an environment that we watch our hero get one of the astronomically rare horse-massage jobs actually out there, at which point he realizes that the junk of the horse in question is in reality actually a giant green sex toy and sacred weapon bestowed by a long-forgotten god, which our protagonist is charged with using in order to bring about world peace. And that gets us to…oh, page ten or so, which is where things start getting really weird; so instead of further plot recapping, I'll just encourage you at this point to pick up a copy of the book if you're the type of person who likes these kinds of stories, and run like hell if you're not.

Out of 10: 8.0… (más)