∎ PDF Gratis Meddling Kids Edgar Cantero 9781785658761 Books

Meddling Kids Edgar Cantero 9781785658761 Books

Download As PDF : Meddling Kids Edgar Cantero 9781785658761 Books

Meddling Kids Edgar Cantero 9781785658761 Books

I had plans to read a different book this summer. And I would have gotten away with it too, if not for Meddling Kids.

Have you ever wondered how the Scooby Doo gang made the transition to adulthood? Not so well, as it turns out!

Ok, so this book isn't really about the Scooby Doo gang exactly, but the allusions to that Saturday Morning source material are clear. They're mostly played straight too, which is a good decision. The author makes this book something more than just a fun ride for grown-up Scooby fans. It explores real questions about childhood trauma and their impact on adulthood, which are relevant even if you don't care much about the source material.

Kerri experiences night terrors, Nate is institutionalized, Amy has steeled herself perhaps too much, and Peter is dead from a heroin overdoes. These are the scars affecting our cartoon heroes when we discover them again as adults. Can they find what made them heroes again in order to face off against the monster at the heart of their last case?

Speaking of monsters, that's another fun angle to this book. Fans of the Scooby series will remember that, no matter how spooky things got in the case of the week, the supernatural threat was ultimately revealed to be a thief in a costume who had staged an elaborate ruse. What if one time, it wasn't just another guy in the costume? What if the kids stumbled onto a real Lovecraftian horror at one of those old haunted mansions, and the guy in the suit was just a ruse?

This thing hits a lot of my buttons. I love Lovecraft. I like Scooby (although I am by no means a super fan), I love monster stories, and I love "returns" stories, where the old gang has to take get back together and remember who they were. In that way, the book is reminiscent of Stephen King's It, which of course has plenty of fans. They'll find a lot to love here too.

So far all I've described here is the great concept behind this book. But that means nothing if it's not executed well. Thankfully, it is. Cantero's prose is lively and compelling. Other reviews have cautioned about his unconventional language. I barely noticed this. When I did, I found it delightful. It's a feature, not a bug.

What are you waiting for? Go read this thing.


Tags : Meddling Kids [Edgar Cantero] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers.,Edgar Cantero,Meddling Kids,Titan Books Ltd,178565876X

Meddling Kids Edgar Cantero 9781785658761 Books Reviews

I must have found this book in a search for something new and different. I like to vary my reading as a steady diet of histories can be monotonous and dreary. After reading a few pages I began to feel the pangs of regret. What had I gotten myself into with this book? A crew of children that formed a club of detectives for Summer entertainment go about solving local "crimes"? Apparently they did stumble onto something of a local mystery and managed to "solve" it to the satisfaction of local authorities and the press. The real story begins thirteen years later when and one of the "detectives" decides that their solution to that "crime" was wrong and the club has to reunite and go back to finish the job correctly. So Nancy Drew and company grow up and relive their childhood fantasies? Please no, not a juvenile mystery from the young adult section. Well I was spared the worst. It isn't what I feared but it also wasn't my cup of tea either. If you are a reader that enjoys tales involving things like vampires, zombies, occult incantations, strange and monstrous creatures and a little mystery then you will probably enjoy this book more than I did. Was it well written? Yes, but the author did seem to enjoy writing descriptions of fighting sequences a bit more than I cared for. Was it entertaining? Again, I would have to say yes though not as much to me as to somebody in to this genre. Would I recommend it? Probably not, unless I knew the reader like this form of adventure. I give it three stars as a well written addition to this genre of literary entertainment but, again, not my thing at all. (less)
There are lots of very earnest reviews of this book that highlight it's take on Scooby-Doo and similar kid detective classics. (The book has shout outs to Enid Blyton and Nancy Drew and so on, and about a million sly references to the whole Scooby-Doo canon, right down to who has red hair. And of course there are lots of Lovecraft references.) There is also a lot of discussion by readers about whether the book works as a horror/humor/Lovecraft/detective mashup. All of that, of course, is legit, interesting and helpful.

But, it should be noted and emphasized that this is a book by Edgar Cantero, and that guarantees it will be both more and less than just a straight up entertainment. Cantero's "The Supernatural Enhancements" delighted some and frustrated, annoyed and outraged others, and this book is a milder chip off that block. So, be warned that this book is a lot more than just a fond trip down Scooby-Doo memory lane.

At the risk of introducing the dreaded "meta-fiction" word, that's in part what we have here. Cantero comments on his book as a book within the text of the book. (Along the lines of "...two lines later, they were still stunned".) He occasionally throws in a script format. He makes up words. He uses ridiculously obscure words. ("Borborygmic thunder", where borborygmic means the rumbling sounds made by movement of gas through the intestines.) He addresses the reader. He uses inapt similes and metaphors. He peppers the characters' dialogue with non sequiturs and random thoughts. Verbs become nouns and anything can be an adjective or adverb. People don't see things when they can laser them. Sometimes his intentionally awkward sentence structure makes Cantero feel like English is his second language, after Venusian. Some readers, like me, think this is a hoot; some just get fed up. (BTW, actually and truthfully, he usually writes in Catalan or Spanish. "The Supernatural Enhancements" was his first novel in English.)

What is sometimes off-putting with Cantero is that he occasionally seems willing to mock the characters, the genre and his readers. One sometimes gets the feeling that he is above the whole writing-a-book thing and exists on some higher plane than mere book-reading mortals. But then, he tosses in some heart-breaking or lovely bit of prose, or some ridiculously funny throw away line, and you love him all over again.

So, you can read this and enjoy it as a Scooby homage/lark. Or, you can read it as an idiosyncratic, experimental, anything-for-a-laugh, meta project by an interesting and sometimes maddening one of a kind author with a taste for disguised bizarro. Whichever way you go this is certainly a lot more interesting, entertaining and rewarding than any other Scooby-Doo based novel you're likely to find. I always enjoy checking out what Cantero is up to. Consider yourself warned, or is it invited?

(Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence, (which I would in any event ignore), regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)
I had plans to read a different book this summer. And I would have gotten away with it too, if not for Meddling Kids.

Have you ever wondered how the Scooby Doo gang made the transition to adulthood? Not so well, as it turns out!

Ok, so this book isn't really about the Scooby Doo gang exactly, but the allusions to that Saturday Morning source material are clear. They're mostly played straight too, which is a good decision. The author makes this book something more than just a fun ride for grown-up Scooby fans. It explores real questions about childhood trauma and their impact on adulthood, which are relevant even if you don't care much about the source material.

Kerri experiences night terrors, Nate is institutionalized, Amy has steeled herself perhaps too much, and Peter is dead from a heroin overdoes. These are the scars affecting our cartoon heroes when we discover them again as adults. Can they find what made them heroes again in order to face off against the monster at the heart of their last case?

Speaking of monsters, that's another fun angle to this book. Fans of the Scooby series will remember that, no matter how spooky things got in the case of the week, the supernatural threat was ultimately revealed to be a thief in a costume who had staged an elaborate ruse. What if one time, it wasn't just another guy in the costume? What if the kids stumbled onto a real Lovecraftian horror at one of those old haunted mansions, and the guy in the suit was just a ruse?

This thing hits a lot of my buttons. I love Lovecraft. I like Scooby (although I am by no means a super fan), I love monster stories, and I love "returns" stories, where the old gang has to take get back together and remember who they were. In that way, the book is reminiscent of Stephen King's It, which of course has plenty of fans. They'll find a lot to love here too.

So far all I've described here is the great concept behind this book. But that means nothing if it's not executed well. Thankfully, it is. Cantero's prose is lively and compelling. Other reviews have cautioned about his unconventional language. I barely noticed this. When I did, I found it delightful. It's a feature, not a bug.

What are you waiting for? Go read this thing.