Battle Whale

Alan Spencer’s Battle Whale is a parody of the “creature feature” monster thriller books that its publisher usually makes. Its premise and plot (to say nothing of its tone) can be described pretty accurately from just the title. It’s a spoof. But it’s not a very good spoof.

The first problem is that it’s very forced. A good spoof in my eyes needs to be deadpan. This just shoves the wackiness forward at every opportunity. The second is that the joke is repeated for a hundred and fifty pages, which is about a hundred and forty nine more than it would need to be fresh. Third-this isn’t exactly Douglas Adams or Mark Twain in terms of prose.

It does know the genre it’s mocking well. I’ll give it that. But only that.