In Roadkill on the Flipside, Wilkin Delgado and Alice Jane Zelinski journey to a war-torn world to stop a rogue black hole that threatens to consume the universe. In this wild, interstellar adventure, the two meet up with a Fanta-loving alien, a 10-year-old war casualty, a deadly assassin, an artificial construct, an army of Scrubbers, a mysterious religious cult, the tunnel rats of Eris, an emotion-reading monster and a 5,000-year-old spaceship. It's a race against time and space to save everything and everybody. (This is volume 4 in the Warrensberg Trilogy.)
Quarter Finalist
Assessment:
PLOT: This fourth book in a humorous sci-fi series is an episodic adventure that takes its two adolescent protagonists on a journey to save the universe. Story asides come across as underdeveloped, due in part to events that have unfolded in the series previously. Obstacles are too rapidly resolved, diffusing much of the narrative's potential tension.
PROSE: The story is told from the alternating perspectives of the quirky and appealing main characters, though Ammerman's periodic breaking of the fourth wall begins to distract readers from the story, rather than enhance it.
ORIGINALITY: Ammerman offers a fresh take on intergalactic catastrophe, featuring quick-talking protagonists and ridiculously delightful details.
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT: The tone of the chapters doesn't vary significantly enough between Alice and Wilkin, making it at times difficult to distinguish between the two characters. Regardless, Ammerman has a knack for crafting ludicrous and inventive circumstances and taking both his characters and readers for a wild ride.
Date Submitted: August 10, 2017
