By Gurney Poe

★★★★☆ (No wait, ★★★☆☆) (Actually, ★★★★★ but I’m annoyed about it)

Let me start by saying I don’t read. Well, I read, but I don’t read read. Fifth-dimensional beings don’t need books. We experience the entire narrative arc simultaneously. It’s very efficient. Also exhausting. Also, completely beside the point.

A tiny prism-toting someone insisted I review this alleged “literary achievement” by first-time author Angus Stump. Fine. Here we go.

PLOT: ★★★★ Stump gets the broad strokes right. Viking dice game? Check. Timeline woozled beyond recognition? Accurate. Z stumbling through centuries like a drunk toddler executing unwitting repairs on the timeline we busted? Annoyingly true.

But let’s talk about the hats. There was a sombrero. There was a fedora. There was a nightcap and my favorite Cardinals ball cap. But there was no damn newsboy cap! It was a longshoreman’s cap. Admittedly, it was indefensibly large, but let the truth be told: IT WAS NOT A NEWSBOY CAP. Sheesh. Like I’d ever.

This is crucial context that Stump completely ignores. How am I supposed to recommend this to readers who demand historical accuracy in their interdimensional time-travel heist comedies?

CHARACTERS: ★★★ (being generous) Z comes across well enough. The serial amnesia, the breakfast miracles, the inexplicable competence at things he shouldn’t know how to do are all generally accurate. Though Stump undersells his singing voice. Brother can sang.

Ruby Wallace: Perfect. A little scary in real life, a little scary in the book.

Tessie: Aw, Tessie. Chef’s kiss. Bratty sentient technology playing for all the marbles? Yes. She is precisely all that and a bag of bacon.

Goliath, Myron Faylor, Glibbit: Nailed it. I love those guys.

Me: “Condescending.” “Cryptic.” “Eyepatch-tapping.” “Weird waterfowl gait.”

I’m sorry, WHAT?

For starters, I’m not condescending. I’m educational. There’s a significant difference. If I occasionally speak to Z like he’s a golden retriever who jumped into a puddle of theoretical physics, that’s because – actually, you know what, that’s a perfect metaphor. I’ll just move on.

Second, I’m not cryptic. I’m strategically opaque about things Z doesn’t need to know yet. Also things I don’t know. Also things I’m making up as I go. Improvisation is an art form, a science and my primary business model.

Third, the eyepatch thing is a nervous habit. We all have them. You probably bite your nails or check your phone a lot. I tap my quantum eyepatch to access the Akashic records. It’s pretty much the same thing. So back off.

Fourth: Waterfowl gait? I beg your pardon. My stride is elegant. Purposeful. Economical. Just because my ankle-hip-knee-foot coordination follows a fifth-dimensional rhythm that third-dimensional observers find “peculiar” doesn’t make it … you know what? I’m moving on.

WORLD-BUILDING: ★★★★ The extradimensional stuff is surprisingly solid for a third-dimensional author. The apartment that exists everywhere? Accurate. The disapparation mechanics? Close enough. Does the Committee’s boardroom exist in a supply closet? I mean, yes. It’s more complicated than that, but yes.

I do question the decision to include all those “Dear Boo” letters. They’re sweet, sure, but they make me look like a terrible custodian. “Where’s Poe when Z needs emotional support?” Well excuuuuse meee, I’m busy preventing all realities seen and unseen from imploding. You’re welcome.

One big complaint: Stump makes it all sound so easy. “Oh, just walk through a door backward and you’re in a different timeline!” Sure, if you want to end up in the wrong century with your molecules scrambled. There’s nuance to it, a craft. It is a dance. But does the book mention that? No. It makes me look like I’m just randomly picking doors.

I am not randomly picking doors. Mostly.

WRITING STYLE: ★★★★ Passable. Sufficient. Competent. Okay, masterful.

Stump has seen a thing or two and has lived himself into a way of describing impossible things like they’re completely normal. Also, the man can write breakfast. Those waffles-and-coffee scenes made me ravenous, and I don’t technically need to eat.

WHAT WORKED:

• The Zookeepers chapters (I forgot how good that band was)
• Tessie’s evolution from basement project to cosmic switchboard
• Every single Ruby Wallace scene
• The reveal about Boo (I saw it coming, and it still got me)
• That moment where Z realizes he’s been laying cable for the switchboard all along
• Generalissimo Goliath weeping over breakfast

WHAT DIDN’T:

• Not enough credit given to my strategic brilliance
• The eyepatch gets more character development than I do
• “Condescending” appears 47 times (I counted)
• Several crucial details are wrong (miscellaneous fashion details, my understated role in the Vjargsfell civic government, what I was wearing in Chapter 7)
• Stump calls me Z’s “custodian” though clearly I’m more of a strategic partner. Executive consultant. Fifth-dimensional life coach. Idiot wrangler. You know, maybe custodian is close enough.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I already regret saying this, but it works. Dangit.

Stump made twelve centuries of cosmic catastrophe almost coherent, which is more than I’ve managed. The emotional stuff is emotional. The weird stuff is weird. Z comes across exactly right: bumbling, brilliant, completely useless and utterly essential.

1. Viking longhouse riot – Nailed it. The chaos, the mead-soaked stupidity, the beautiful pandemonium.
2. Fifth-dimensional navigation – Finally someone who understands backward doors and perspective-as-reality aren’t just parlor tricks.
3. Shuffleshouts are real – Documented proof that people actually dance at us shouting their favorite things. I’m vindicated.
4. Z’s cooking gets respect – Those beans, that breakfast. Stump captures a man who can’t remember his name but nails hollandaise from muscle memory.
5. Boss/Boo reveal – Of course she was Danny Ocean. The book doesn’t get sentimental, just lays out the obvious cosmic heist.
6. Tessie’s evolution – Cap’n Crunch whistle to cosmic switchboard. Follows the thread patiently.
7. Twelve centuries is exhausting – Accurately shows the relentless, heroic slog of my indisputably superior cosmic janitorial work.

Four stars.

Minus one for making my stride sound ridiculous.

Plus one back because the Tessie chapters made me tear up a little. Don’t tell anyone.

Plus one more because of the tale’s extraordinary deuteragonist.

So yeah. Five stars. There, I said it. Happy now?

Read it or don’t. Your call. But if you do and find yourself thinking accidents are the only thing we do right, brother, you’re starting to get the point.

You know what, I’m done. The book’s good. Stump’s a pain in my ass. Z would probably love it. 

Don’t overthink it. Buy the book.