Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings (Today Show Book Club #25)

Rating:
Summary: Totally entertaining read
Review: There has to be a space for books that are just funny and this is one of them. Yeah, there's some stuff about ecology and the future of humanity thrown in too, but I laughed all the way through this book, and can't give it a higher recommendation than that.

Rating:
Summary: Funny stuff
Review: This book is a quick, fun read that will leave you laughing out loud at times. Also, after reading this book, you will never think the same way about whale penises.

Rating:
Summary: Halfway through, Moore finds the edge, then he jumps.
Review: This is a readable, generally entertaining book. The funny bits - and there are a lot of them - are really funny. But about half way - maybe a little more - he goes from pleasantly wierd to a complete abondenment of any sense of believability. It was a bit like he'd started writing the book, came up with a couple of good gags, found himself in a spot he couldn't think of a way to get out of, and just started randomly inserting impossibilities to make the pieces stick together. The impossibilities bring out the paper thin personalities of the characters, and for me, it sort of unraveled from there. In some ways, the character development of the central characters is summed up on page one. Nate is a researcher, good hearted, obsessed with whales. Amy is young, hot and looks good in shorts. Things happen around these people, we get revelations about their past, but that's about it - the revelations don't lead to any better understanding. For me its unsatisfying - neither the story nor the characters nor the humor really grips.

Rating:
Summary: Way too weird to be funny or entertaining.
Review: This was my first Christopher Moore book, and may be my last. This book started off good enough, I liked the people, their situation, and the interactions between each one. It started off as a good, somewhat humorous tale about whaling research. Funny, amusing - pretty much what I hoped for.

Then all of sudden, the plot went out there. The second half of the book was a giant, "what the heck is this?". From whaling research in Hawaii, it switches to a story about whale boy hybrids, giant Goos controlling the seas, and Amelia Earhart. It just was too out there to be interesting or funny.

Rating:
Summary: Started out great....then took a wrong turn
Review: This was my first of Moore's books. I just happened to pick it up at my local bookstore and read the back of the book and laughed outloud at the premise. I read the first couple of chapters at the store and had to buy it to see what would occur with these wonderful characters. The characters are well thought out, very personable and with such interesting dialogue you feel like you are a fly on the wall in the book. I sped through the first half of the book laughing and enjoying myself immensely, and then BOOM...it became a sci-fi book before my eyes. The dialogue was not nearly as quick and the story became positively dull at times, so much so that I shamefully admit to skimming the last 100 pages of the book just to finish it up and praying for a return to what I had enjoyed. This book hasn't made me not want to read other Moore books, but next time around I will probably check them out from my local library to save a couple of bucks.