Some co-workers of mine purchased this book for me to add to my Horrible Reading List. (Either as a kindness or in effort to incite pain, most likely the latter). At first glance, I wasn't to horrified, really the art is reasonable - but perhaps a bit... ludicrous. Let's see. The Last Stand of The DNA Cowboys by Mick Farren
Expectations:
Space cowboys, and some kind of bard...and a lady. They ride lizards on faraway planets, and are visiting a lovely futuristic city. Probably to cause a ruckus. That's what cowboys do. In ... space.
What I Got:
Exactly what I was expecting, and SO MUCH MORE. The plot feels like the author NEEDED, with a sense of desperate abandon, to cram as much "cool shit" into this book as possible. There's the space mercenary cowboy with blasters...SEX.. the space minstrel cowboy with a space guitar...SEX... the space "religious" type cowboy...SEX ... and a loose woman who proceeds to sleep with all of them THREESOMES. The space mercenary army of men and mutants. RAPE The religious group. TANTRIC SEX ... The space scientists. TIGHT SPANDEX The crystal city. HOOKERS. Cloning people TO BE SEX SLAVES. Luckily most of the capslock topics happen in an offscreen or non-descriptive manner. It just felt like it was written by a guy doing drugs and writing for an audience of pubescent males. Oh, also there's some kind of great psychic void eating the world and at the end, everyone dies. Sorry, spoilers.
Cover Execution:
9.5/10
Seriously, this is pretty much a scene from the book rendered exactly. The only thing that keeps it from being a 10/10 is there's no way to imply SEX is happening offscreen somehow. Could have also used some lasers.
PS: Also-
Butterfly women.
Orgies.
Cyborgs having some kind of plug-in sex.
Space truckers.
Ninjas.
Midget assassins.
Drugs.
DNA Mutants.
Dimensional travel.
Tanks.
Getting drunk all the time.
Complete lack of plot direction or character arc resolution.
oh and,
Apocalypse of the Universe.
