The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad by Minister Faust

The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad by Minister Faust
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Alberta Author!
This book is a killer sci-fi thriller and a mass of complexities. It’s gonna make you work for the climax as Faust writes like point-of-view ping-pong is his very favourite game. He starts the story with Hamza and Yehat, brilliant best friends slogging minimum wage jobs for unpleasant bosses. Considered neighbourhood royalty for Yehat’s technological wizardry, their children’s summer camp, and Hamza’s bizarre ability to find anything or anyone as long as he can visualize it, the duo are greeted by their adoring subjects as the Coyote Kings. Life seems to have settled into petty squabbles over ice cream sandwiches, work grievances, and obscure movies when the alluring Sherem arrives. She speaks multiple ancient languages, quotes Star Wars, reads comics, and is, of course, a bombshell. Hamza is enthralled. Hot on the tail of her arrival in Edmonton, weird things start happening. Murders. Evisceration. Upscale import emporium The Modeus Zokolo, run by the Coyotes’ former friends, the backstabbing Meany brothers Kevin and Heinz, is robbed and a mysterious item searched for over years and held in their possession all of 24 hours, is stolen. Sherem reveals to Hamza that she and a team of powerful temple acolytes are desperate to recover this artifact, and that the fate of humanity hangs on it staying out of evil hands. There are many rival factions after this ancient relic and they are willing to perpetrate horrors to acquire it. And I mean horrors. There are scenes of descriptive violence and torture throughout the book. Drug use is rampant, along with portrayals of out of control addiction. If these are sensitive topics for you, parts of this book will be very difficult. Other parts will be hard for different reasons. Coyote Kings has 11 dramatis personae, of whom Sherem is the only woman (in fact any time a narrator tallies the number of individuals in an area, which happens surprisingly often, there are always fewer women than men), and each one gets a stat sheet with their name and a list of random abilities at the beginning of the first chapter told from their perspective. You will need to pay attention to what their voice sounds like, because the next chapter will be related by someone else and you are going to have to figure out who is talking now. While this adds depth and urgency to the story as we watch all these people scramble for the prize, it makes following the plot really complicated. More so when the teller is someone like Alpha Cat, the white Jafaikan who speaks entirely in patois and whose chapters need to be read aloud to understand a single word. Or Mugatu, who has a very low IQ and thinks in spelling errors. Flipping back and forth, ticking off your mental check list, Coyote Kings is going to put you through some paces. It’s a unique book with a solid story-line, but it’s not a good choice for readers who just want a couple hundred pages of fist fights, pop culture references, and villainy.