Friday, February 1, 2013

The Karaoke Duo Vs The Karaoke Zombies / Edwin Stark

Reviewed by: ?wazithinkin

Genre: Satire/ Humor

Approximate word count: 50-55,000 words

Availability
Kindle US: YES UK: YES Nook: NO Smashwords: YES Paper: NO 
Click on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords store 

Author:
Edwin Stark lives in Caracas, Venezuela on the edge of a rain forest. This is his seventh book along with AI Rebellion, Eco Station One, Cuentos, The Recycling Kid, and The Clayton Chronicles. He also has a short story in Short Story Strands: Halloween 2012 Edition. You can read more about him on his Amazon author page or his Facebook page.

Description:

A zombie epidemic troubles the fair city of Nosfort, Massachusetts and it seems the Golden Zombiemaster is behind this plague. These are not your everyday flesh-eating zombies; citizens suddenly become mindless creatures bent on performing heinous acts like burglarizing and ringing doorbells (and then running away). What Nosfort needs are a pair of superheroes to save the day. Fortunately, Fermata Girl and The Man With The Mike, the Karaoke Duo, are willing to try their hand in putting a stop to this arch-villain’s wicked plans to take over the city.

Appraisal: 

Edwin Stark’s books are always full of quirky characters with bizarre stories, they are pure escapism. This is not the first time the poor town of Nosfort, Massachusetts has had strange happenings. Sheila Freemont is a law student who has a secret crime-fighting identity as Fermata Girl. Edward Strongbox is a mildly successful author of pornographic novels (under the pen name of Miss Pindleworth); he also has a crime-fighting persona know as The Man With The Mike. They met several months ago at the Cranberry Club during one of their special Karaoke Nights. Together they discovered they had superpowers when they sang certain songs with the right conviction.

The story is very Monty Pythonish in humor and it is engaging, in a comic book sort of way. There is a romantic subplot that reveals itself once the crime-fighting duo is in dire straits. I was a little taken back with the depth of this among all the silliness in the rest of the story. I found it a nice surprise to learn that Mr. Stark is a romantic at heart. But he is first and foremost a character writer, be it horror or comedy, his characters are always fully developed and you are always guaranteed a unique off-the-wall story.
Although I enjoyed the story, this book also suffered from a large number of issues that should have been cleaned up during editing and proofing. 

Format/Typo Issues:

English is not Mr. Stark’s first language and as a result, there were some odd turns of phrase used, occasional wrong word usages, and words omitted throughout the book. If these types of errors bother you, then you had best pass on this book.
I found no formatting errors, although this book could use a good copy editor and another round of proof reading.

Rating: *** Three stars

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