Katharina's Reviews > Bad Monkeys

I have no, absolutely no idea how to classify this book. It's like a weird dream twisting back and forth, changing the colours of the settings and the players constantly, a huge mindfuck really, guiding you around until you have no idea what's up and down or left and right.

And it really shouldn't be. It's the typical fight good against evil, black against white. It should be clear and easy. But it really is not.

Jane Charlotte has killed a man, but after hearing her story, the police detectives don't put her in jail. Instead she lands in the psych wing of the local Detention Center in the hands of Dr. Richard Vile whose task it is to assess her state of mind.
So she tells her story again. She tells about the secret organization she works for, fighting evil, the Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons - the Bad Monkeys. She explains her recruitment, talks about the jobs and assignments she had, about all the events leading up to this last kill. But how much of this is true? How much is an outright lie and how much just a refocus of perception? Is she crazy, a liar or is the world really as infused by secret institutions as she makes it out to be?

This book really blew my mind. Not all of it - there were times where I just thought "okay, what the hell?", but then another twist happened and I was hooked again. The things I loved most were the beginning and the end. The beginning set a brilliant scene, the perfect start to an unpredictable, bizarre, and intricate tale. It's the end, though, that really had me staring motionlessly at the last page for a few minutes. And which made me want to reread the whole thing, just to see how this new knowledge might change my perception of every scene described. If you're someone (like me occasionally) that tends to skip ahead and read how things turn out before actually getting there - don't do it here!!! It would spoil everything, seriously!!

As a consequence of this book I've added every Matt Ruff book I hadn't read so far to my to-read-mountain which really says everything worth saying. He just writes so well here (and the same goes for Fool on the Hill, another all-time favourite of mine!) - his tone is casual, authentic, and fits the book and the whole story perfectly.

Gods, am I flashed. I'll just leave any other book be for tonight...