I feel obligated to review Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League. Generally, when I do not like a book, movie, tv-show, podcast, or something that someone else invested a lot of time or effort into I skip reviewing it. Other people might really like it and its not fair to shit all over someone's baby.
I was very eagerly awaiting this book, but I could not finish it no matter how I tried.
I am very disappointed in Earl Mac Rauch's long awaited sequel in novel form to The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eigth Dimension. The OG Buckaroo Banzai movie is one of the best science fiction movies of all time, has a devoted fan base and has been begging for a second film since the first one was released. I sadly think that this novel by Earl Mac Rauch goes a long way in explaining why studios haven't touched the property and this was a terrible decision by Darkhorse to publish what amounts to low quality fanfic full of rape and abuse, there is better fanfic.
There is a Buckroo Banzai story in this book, but it is buried under a mountain of fantasies about forcefully sodomizing everything the author can imagine. Shockingly the editors allowed this book to go to print packed with descriptions of jamming things up people's asses, but silly replacement words for actual profanity. The story is so buried under that garbage that I had to stop trying to dig it out.
The fake profanity is only slightly more annoying than the terrible dialogue that appears written with a search window open to a thesaurus, looking for the longest most faux-academic speech possible when it includes your favorite characters.
Oh, the beloved characters from the film are turned into clowns. Buckaroo's team are more like worshippers than members of the Banzai Institute, The Hong Kong Cavaliers, or Blue Blaze Irregulars. The discussions of technology are occasionally interesting but frequently jog off into sexualized worship of Buckaroo and or stick-a-fork-in-an-electrical-socket style hijinks. None of it takes the story forward.
Perfect Tommy is reduced to a tinfoil hat wearing dude who belongs in a Jackass movie.
I made it about 50% of the way through the book. After the first 10% I wanted to stop but I felt obligated, as I had written about how I anticipated this books release. I tried. I have a book by one of my favorite authors waiting on standby and I'd rather move on.
This book feels unedited, and unworthy of the prior work. While I recommended it in pre-release, having read some of it, I no longer can.
