09 April 2014

Review: The New Adventures: The Mary-Sue Extrusion by Dave Stone

Mass market paperback, 243 pages
Published 1999

Acquired and read March 2014
The New Adventures: The Mary-Sue Extrusion
by Dave Stone

This is a decently enjoyable book on its own merits-- probably one of the better and more interesting of the Bernice Summerfield New Adventures-- but it didn't entirely work for me because it feels like a dry run for themes and ideas that Dave Stone would return to in his later work, more successfully. The twist about the "Mary-Sue" and Bernice's friend Rebecca was good, but 1) it's not built up to enough and 2) it's just a twist, it doesn't really have any meaning in the story. Whereas the similar twist in The Two Jasons is fundamental to that entire novel. There are a lot of things still to like in this book, though-- I'm a sucker for Dave Stone's metafiction-- and it takes itself seriously enough to make the jokes work really well. Fun, but smart fun.

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