Ninja Versus Pirate Featuring Zombies / How to End Human Suffering, Vol 1 [Paperback]

Book Info: Genre: YA Fantasy/Horror Satire Reading Level: YA (probably 16 on up due to language and sexual content)

Disclosure: I received a free eGalley from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis: In a world where Zombies control banks and governments, only one young man sees the way things are and emerges from the Chaos and destruction: Guy Boy Man. While he tries to end human suffering worldwide and in his high school, Guy Boy Man meets a cute Pink-Haired girl named Baby Doll15 who has a Unicorn that follows her everywhere. An Epic Romance begins, but forces Beyond Their Control are intent on keeping the young couple apart. One of those Forces may - or may not be! - Guy Boy Man's closest friend, a handsome African-American Ninja named Sweetie Honey; another could be four Exotically Beautiful, genetically engineered and behaviorally modified Eastern European Girls; yet another, the principal of their High School ...not to mention an impending standardized test known as the Zombie Acceptance Test! Will Guy Boy Man find a way to be with Baby Doll15 in a World Where Everyone Is Doomed to become either zombies or zombie food?

My Thoughts: I just love a silly book, and the description of this one led me to believe this would be high up there on the silliness scale. Oana's explanation as to why there were no hs or js in their names cracked me up. Actually, quite a lot of it cracked me up. James Marshall manages to provide a book that is wonderfully grammatic yet full of extra-long, run-on sentences. One of my favorite aspects of it was Guy Boy Man's constant explanation as to what he really means whenever a sentence could be taken more than one way. The descriptions are hilarious. Guy Boy Man is one of the very few people who see that there are so many zombies - apparently most people don't even notice that the people surrounding them are undead.

A sequel is in the works: Zombies versus Fairy featuring Albinos, which is scheduled for release later this year. You know I'll be watching and waiting for it. I definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants a good laugh.

With a title like that it was either going to be a great parody or incomprehensibly awful.

It was the later, and the fact that it was intentionally bad does nothing to retrieve the last couple of hours of my life.

Briefly, while the zombies are real the pirate is not really a pirate, and the ninja is not exactly a ninja. They are high-schoolers in a world where you have to take a ZAT--Zombie Achievement Test--to decide if you are going to become zombie or prey: self-absorbed, amoral high-schoolers who are able to act out their fantasies of wealth, power and sexuality. And they are convinced they look cool doing it.

Add a star if you liked the movie "Dogma," and another half-star if your idea of fun is to read something that will get you either suspended from your local école (it starts with guns brought to school, and ends with blowing up the school and killing the principal) or a nice long bout of psychological counseling. Or both.

To say I was not their target audience is the understatement of the century.

Review:

I went into this book with such high hopes. It looked quirky and had Zombies in it. Boy was I way off. I don't even feel I can really thoroughly express my confusion for this book. So your just going to have to bear with me as I ramble about it.

The Main character is called Guy Boy Man. He is in Highschool and supposedly the savior of mankind. I honestly could not tell if the Author was writing this character as serious or if he was a complete schizophrenic and quite possibly a mass murderer locked in his own mind.

I really felt that Guy Boy Man thought that he really was this Prophet and Savior, he was utterly convincing of this fact. He sees Zombies everywhere and those who become food. In the first few pages he even offs his own parents completely convinced they were about to eat him. Again though I'm confused is his parents really zombies or is he making this up and did he just slaughter them for no good reason. Or heck did he only kill them in his mind and this is all a dream.

The Writing in this book. Oh where to start...It's written very chaotically for lack of a better expression. It's not written badly just like someone who is thinking really fast (ie possibly in a dream state or a schizo having a conversation with various voices). It at many times is a run on mess of adjectives, verbs and nouns. The Title Alone should be an indicator of whats to come writing wise.

This is supposedly the first in a series (Oh please help us). I think many people will find this book completely amazing, I however feel like I need to scrub my mind clean of the mind screw that was Ninja Versus Pirate Featuring Zombies. Overall I liked it but am left in such a sorry confused state that I cannot in good faith give this book any higher rating then 2★★.

*I received a copy of this to review through netgalley. All opinions are my own and I was not compensated in any way for them.