Review: Whom God Would Destroy by Commander Pants

5. Whom God Would Destroy by Commander Pants
Publication: Pantsateria (May 15, 2009), Paperback, 288pp / ISBN 0578018896
Genre: Fiction, Satire/Humor
Rating:
Read: January 1-10, 2010
Source: Author
Summary from Amazon:

A novel to incite a Judeo-Christian Fatwa: When “God” decides to mess with humanity once more, he runs into some kinks he didn’t foresee… WHOM GOD WOULD DESTROY, it’s about God, insanity and the search for the Ultimate Orgasm.

Review

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this book. This indecision is making me anxious and a little confused, so I apologize now if this review isn’t as awesome as my others are normally. I want to like Whom God Would Destroy a lot, and indeed there are a lot of things to like about it. The whole thing is like a Shakespearean play with all the actors on LSD, and while that’s fun in short bursts it does tend to fall apart in the long run and leave you with a feeling of “wtf just happened?”

What I liked best about Whom God Would Destroy was the weird characters, the weird storyline, and the underlying ideas about humanity, religion, insanity, happiness, and so on. The characters were all kooky, of course, but often it was the sane people that were kookier than the “insane” people and that made an interesting dynamic. I didn’t particularly like any of the characters, but I could respect them for their weirdness. Of course, because it turns out that the “insane” people aren’t insane, I’m not entirely sure what that dynamic ends up being. Just more…insanity?

There’s a large bit near the end that is obviously the author’s views on religion and humanity, but it’s not a bad view and it’s one that seems to be pretty typical in modern humor-books-with-religion-stuck-in (see here or here or here). Basically it boils down to “stop taking the Bible so literally and everyone will be happier including you.” Except that God is an alien, and so I’m not sure now how valid and alien’s viewpoint on humanity is. Can an alien tell us how to live our lives when he’s not human and doesn’t understand us beyond sarcastic condemnations of our basic beings? (But then– God isn’t human, either. Uh. Okay, moving on.)

Somewhere around page 90 I thought “this is a strange book” and that’s true, too. It’s also fun and has some extremely humorous bits. If you enjoy books that jumble together a whole lot of stuff– stuff that doesn’t seem to go together– and makes it all work somehow, you’ll probably enjoy Whom God Would Destroy. I really liked it when Commander Pants connected a seemingly singular character or event to another one, then took up the whole thing and ran away with it. It was madcap fun, basically. Except when it got to the end and the plot ran off a cliff.

The reason I’m not raving about Whom God Would Destroy is that I think, while there was a lot of connections made inside the story, the whole framework seems like it could fall apart with a small tap. Not that there were plotholes– just, okay. In the book there were aliens, God coming back to Earth, insanity and the psychology profession (including topics like medication and therapy), sex, religion, the fallacies of mankind, why humans ultimately suck but are still somehow awesome. It’s a lot to have in one book, and I wasn’t entirely convinced that they all went together and made a cohesive whole. Commander Pants made a valiant effort to tie them all together in small ways, but I needed them tied together in a bigger way.

I said before that Commander Pants managed to connect things within the story, and he did. One character’s storyline would run into another character’s, and then that would tie into the overall story. I liked it when that happened. But I never got the feeling that everything was connected, like something was left out and kept the book from being as cohesive as it could be. I hope that makes sense– I can’t help but feel that maybe I’m picking at something that doesn’t exist, but it’s the only way I can explain why I felt sort of…underwhelmed when I finished it. I liked individual parts. But the aliens, God, insane-people-who-aren’t, etc, didn’t work together as smoothly for me as they probably needed to. Like they needed so WD40 in their cogs, or something. (Or maybe better-fitting cogs altogether? I’m getting off topic.)

Also, I was really grossed out when the Big Mac-addicted aliens (not the same ones that God came from) started farming humans by forcing them all to have sex together. Then when the women got pregnant and had kids, they’d surgically alter them back to the way they looked before they were pregnant and start the cycle over again. I just really find it disgusting that women were basically baby farms and, just. Ugh. Plus the aliens never got punished for that whole thing, or for their plan to take over Earth in a few hundred years. Moral retribution! C’mon, I need it.

Anyway, it’s a self-published book but it’s only got a few typos and punctuation errors in it (less than 10, I’d say). At the beginning I was frustrated by all the surplus dialogue tags, and sometimes the writing felt more like stuff you see in college creative writing classes instead of a professionally edited story (fyi, I have no idea if it was edited by a professional editor or not). But it got better by page 20, or else I just ignored the dialogue tags after that, and by the end I was only noticing the typos, not the writing. It does all move very quickly once you get past that small three-chapter bump.

So, in conclusion: this one isn’t entirely for me, but I’m sure it’s got an audience among those who like a stranger sort of tale. I’m not religious or suffering from a mental malady, so I can’t say if it’s insulting to anyone who is, but I’d say probably not. (Or, okay. Maybe a little to the more religious of us.) If you like to take chances, you might want to take a chance on Whom God Would Destroy. But if you’re not sure– don’t.

And

Find your own copy @ Amazon or IndieBound

Other reviews (all of which are better than my feeble attempt): Reading for Sanity | Eclectic/Eccentric | Illiterarty | Bookfetish | Ooh…Books!

You can read one of Commander Pants’ short stories on his blog if you’d like to get an idea of his writing.