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Space-Age Bachelor Pad
Sherem is brilliant. She’s travelled the world. She speaks a dozen ancient and modern languages, including Fan-Girl. And she can use—or improvise—a hundred weapons from around the globe or of her own design. Quite the list of accomplishments for a 25 year old.
Or is that 2500?
When best friend/roomies Hamza and Yehat, two Gen-X brainiacs too smart for their own good, meet Sherem during the heat of summer, they take one look at her and expect sparks to fly.
They just don’t expect them to come from the edges of blades.
Minister Faust’s first foray into astonishing adventure, pop culture craziness and Africentric awe, The Coyote Kings, Book One: Space-Age Bachelor Pad is already a cult classic that had readers, critics and even Hollywood fluttering with excitement.
Or is that 2500?
When best friend/roomies Hamza and Yehat, two Gen-X brainiacs too smart for their own good, meet Sherem during the heat of summer, they take one look at her and expect sparks to fly.
They just don’t expect them to come from the edges of blades.
Minister Faust’s first foray into astonishing adventure, pop culture craziness and Africentric awe, The Coyote Kings, Book One: Space-Age Bachelor Pad is already a cult classic that had readers, critics and even Hollywood fluttering with excitement.
408 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 3, 2004
22 people are currently reading
560 people want to read
About the author
Minister Faust
22 books68 followersMinister Faust is a long-time community activist, writer, journalist, broadcaster, public speaker and martial artist in several disciplines.
Minister Faust refers to his sub-genre of writing as Imhotep-Hop--an Africentric literature that draws from myriad ancient African civilizations, explores present realities, and imagines a future in which people struggle not only for justice, but for the stars.
He lives in Edmonton with his wife and daughters, where he also runs Canada's top bean pie bakery, Desserts of Kush.
Minister Faust refers to his sub-genre of writing as Imhotep-Hop--an Africentric literature that draws from myriad ancient African civilizations, explores present realities, and imagines a future in which people struggle not only for justice, but for the stars.
He lives in Edmonton with his wife and daughters, where he also runs Canada's top bean pie bakery, Desserts of Kush.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 65 reviews
October 31, 2017
The choir of TVs sings,”… epicenter at Kalispell, Montana, but at seven-point-two on the Richter scale this is by far the largest earthquake to hit this part of North America in recorded history-“
“Man!” I snap. “I feel like a freakin mope. How could this’ve happened and we not even know about it? Did you know about this, Ye?”
“Nope. Must be our jet-setting schedules.”
“Damn, Ye, the whole freakin planet is crumbling! And what were we doing so we didn’t know about this? We were watching crap on TV! How come we didn’t-“
“We weren’t watching TV.”
“Oh no? Then what were we-“
“We were watching videos-Carpenter’s The Thing and the original 1950s dumb version with the evil scientist and the man-carrot from space-“
“Well, what’s wrong with us, then? Do we have our heads so far up our genre asses we don’t even know it when the earth is splitting open? We’re like fifties housewives hopped up on goofballs, makin SPAM meat loaf an putting our hair in curlers while Kennedy’s threatening to start World War Three!”
“You even know what goofballs are, or you just steal that from Seinfeld?”
“From William S. Burroughs. Okay, not goofballs. Prozac and soap operas!” I scowl, flail, rage on: “Ye, didn’t you think that by the time we were twenty-five we’d’ve done something important, be having adventures or something, not working shit jobs and watching PAL copies of Space: 1999 while the world is flushing itself down a black hole?”
“Hamza, relax, guy-“
“Y’know, we always thought that if we were Luke, when Ben offered the chance to go to Alderaan and become Jedis, we’d jump up and say, ‘When do we leave?’
“But naw, we’d just be a couple of pussies whining about not having enough money to pay the utilities an then go back to playin with our own light sabers.”
CHARACTER DATA
Eric Daniel Gonzalez
INTELLIGENCE: Higher than he thinks; lower than others think
STRENGTH: Uncanny ability to come across as approachable, intimidating, or forgettable at will
WEAKNESS: Passivity +50, shyness +25
ARMOR TYPE: Dark hoodies, blue jeans, Nike sneakers
SHIT POINTS, TAKE/GIVE: 50/50
INTROVERSION/EXTROVERSION: +40/-1 (+3 if around familiar people)
JOKES, FREQUENCY/RANGE/SUCCESS: +12, situational, +6
EYES: Four
RACIAL AMBIGUITY: +10
SPANISH, UNDERSTANDING/SPEECH/LITERACY: +3/+1/+1
TRIVIA DEXTERITY: General TV +15, general movies +15, WWE +200, pro wrestling +100, The Simpsons +100, comic books +15
GENRE ALIGNMENT: Speculative fiction (general), sitcoms, animated sitcoms, comedy (general), comic books (general), pro wrestling, pulp, fanfiction (video games)
IMPAIRMENT: Near-sightedness, insomnia, mornings
AKA: Danny, Uppgreyedd, Upp, “Hey, you”
SLOGAN: “I'm pessimistically optimistic.”
Hamza and Yehat are the titular Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad: intelligent, creative, snarky, black, nerdy 25 year-old best friends and roommates who are underachievers, and they are most assuredly not proud of it. Hamza is an expelled English honors student with a special talent for finding what he's looking for who washes dishes at a restaurant whose clientele and non-kitchen staff he hates. Yehat is an engineer so brilliant he's trying to make his own battle armor who works at a rental video store. On a somewhat unpleasant Wednesday night stroll in E-Town (where the above conversation took place) Hamza and Ye catch sight of a passing eye-catching beauty that Hamza can't get out of his head. And the following day after four not-so-coincidental sightings of this gorgeous sister he works up the courage to approach her and quickly finds himself head-over-heels for Sherem. And with Sherem's sudden presence in Hamza and Yehat's lives the following week ends up being some crazy life-altering shit.
Normally, when I struggle to remember the plot of a novel (and this is probably the same for you) that's a tell-tale sign of a story that wasn't worth my time, my money, or my brain activity. But in spite of the genre (mystery, sci-fi, paranormal) trappings Minister Faust's debut novel (which was originally a film script, which explains a lot) is a character study stuffed with gut-busting laughs; multiple first-person narrators whose narrations each drip with their own personality, style, and charm (no joke, each narrator has their own RPG character sheet); and some truly heartfelt talk regarding the unfulfilling, disheartening aimlessness of early adulthood that will painfully resonant with anyone who spent any number of years in their twenties complacent and dissatisfied, simply going through the motions of your routine day-by-day working at your (likely) shit job with your hobbies being the only thing that can get you through the whole week, knowing deep down you're partially if not mainly to blame for your existential funk.
So once I was done I found it easy to forgive the shortcomings of the not-all-that-intriguing plot (something Faust seems to have been aware of since the epilogue is at the beginning of his novel and his prologue is at the end). I even found myself forgiving the other flaws of The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad that bothered me more, such as out of all are colorful, lively narrators only one was female (who was the love interest, and she's the only female character active in the story), and as interesting as Sherem is she's arguably a manic pixie dream girl. There are also so many pop-culture references that more than a few times I found myself thinking, I get it, Faust, your reservoir of geek and nerd knowledge is deeper than mine will ever be. But, man, if The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (which, hoo boy, that mouthful of a title is hard to forget, isn't it?) ain't physical proof that personality and character can go a long way then call me a jimp.
In advance, shut up. I know epilogues go at the end. My point here, which should have been obvious already in my opinion, is that I am telling you some of the end of this story so as to get you to comprehend the mind-set under which I am currently operating and during which I am escaping.
I think that made sense.
The point is, is that this summer has been really, well... it has included an unexpected series of events.
"Events."
That doesn't quite... episodes? Adventures? Harrowing escapades? Whaddya want me to say? Things.
Basically, what? I'm supposed to make sense of this? Okay, in the space of, like, a week, I find out, well, confirm, really, ten years after the fact, that two of my best friends from high school are scumbags on a scale that will take me the rest of this space to divulge in full vulgarity and horror...
... and that my roommate is a brilliant antisocial son of a gun (damn near literally) who abandoned me at the moment of my greatest epiphany and my most supreme terror...
... that washing dishes at the preppy-restaurant equivalent of a roach motel is not and was never supposed to be my destiny...
... that a gang of crack criminals in a ninja van from hell were in league with (who else?) Satan...
... that the woman of my dreams-strong, smart, beautiful, who can accurately and appropriately quote Star Wars and 2001-has fins, and her pursuit of a seven-thousand-year-old vendetta would almost get me killed about a million times in the Wednesday-to-Wednesday space of the middle of July. That she could both rebuild my heart and break it. And I still don't know if that's the correct order...
... and, of course, that magic is real.
It was the worst week that summer.
And the greatest seven days of my life.
3 3/4 stars
“Man!” I snap. “I feel like a freakin mope. How could this’ve happened and we not even know about it? Did you know about this, Ye?”
“Nope. Must be our jet-setting schedules.”
“Damn, Ye, the whole freakin planet is crumbling! And what were we doing so we didn’t know about this? We were watching crap on TV! How come we didn’t-“
“We weren’t watching TV.”
“Oh no? Then what were we-“
“We were watching videos-Carpenter’s The Thing and the original 1950s dumb version with the evil scientist and the man-carrot from space-“
“Well, what’s wrong with us, then? Do we have our heads so far up our genre asses we don’t even know it when the earth is splitting open? We’re like fifties housewives hopped up on goofballs, makin SPAM meat loaf an putting our hair in curlers while Kennedy’s threatening to start World War Three!”
“You even know what goofballs are, or you just steal that from Seinfeld?”
“From William S. Burroughs. Okay, not goofballs. Prozac and soap operas!” I scowl, flail, rage on: “Ye, didn’t you think that by the time we were twenty-five we’d’ve done something important, be having adventures or something, not working shit jobs and watching PAL copies of Space: 1999 while the world is flushing itself down a black hole?”
“Hamza, relax, guy-“
“Y’know, we always thought that if we were Luke, when Ben offered the chance to go to Alderaan and become Jedis, we’d jump up and say, ‘When do we leave?’
“But naw, we’d just be a couple of pussies whining about not having enough money to pay the utilities an then go back to playin with our own light sabers.”
CHARACTER DATA
Eric Daniel Gonzalez
INTELLIGENCE: Higher than he thinks; lower than others think
STRENGTH: Uncanny ability to come across as approachable, intimidating, or forgettable at will
WEAKNESS: Passivity +50, shyness +25
ARMOR TYPE: Dark hoodies, blue jeans, Nike sneakers
SHIT POINTS, TAKE/GIVE: 50/50
INTROVERSION/EXTROVERSION: +40/-1 (+3 if around familiar people)
JOKES, FREQUENCY/RANGE/SUCCESS: +12, situational, +6
EYES: Four
RACIAL AMBIGUITY: +10
SPANISH, UNDERSTANDING/SPEECH/LITERACY: +3/+1/+1
TRIVIA DEXTERITY: General TV +15, general movies +15, WWE +200, pro wrestling +100, The Simpsons +100, comic books +15
GENRE ALIGNMENT: Speculative fiction (general), sitcoms, animated sitcoms, comedy (general), comic books (general), pro wrestling, pulp, fanfiction (video games)
IMPAIRMENT: Near-sightedness, insomnia, mornings
AKA: Danny, Uppgreyedd, Upp, “Hey, you”
SLOGAN: “I'm pessimistically optimistic.”
Hamza and Yehat are the titular Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad: intelligent, creative, snarky, black, nerdy 25 year-old best friends and roommates who are underachievers, and they are most assuredly not proud of it. Hamza is an expelled English honors student with a special talent for finding what he's looking for who washes dishes at a restaurant whose clientele and non-kitchen staff he hates. Yehat is an engineer so brilliant he's trying to make his own battle armor who works at a rental video store. On a somewhat unpleasant Wednesday night stroll in E-Town (where the above conversation took place) Hamza and Ye catch sight of a passing eye-catching beauty that Hamza can't get out of his head. And the following day after four not-so-coincidental sightings of this gorgeous sister he works up the courage to approach her and quickly finds himself head-over-heels for Sherem. And with Sherem's sudden presence in Hamza and Yehat's lives the following week ends up being some crazy life-altering shit.
Normally, when I struggle to remember the plot of a novel (and this is probably the same for you) that's a tell-tale sign of a story that wasn't worth my time, my money, or my brain activity. But in spite of the genre (mystery, sci-fi, paranormal) trappings Minister Faust's debut novel (which was originally a film script, which explains a lot) is a character study stuffed with gut-busting laughs; multiple first-person narrators whose narrations each drip with their own personality, style, and charm (no joke, each narrator has their own RPG character sheet); and some truly heartfelt talk regarding the unfulfilling, disheartening aimlessness of early adulthood that will painfully resonant with anyone who spent any number of years in their twenties complacent and dissatisfied, simply going through the motions of your routine day-by-day working at your (likely) shit job with your hobbies being the only thing that can get you through the whole week, knowing deep down you're partially if not mainly to blame for your existential funk.
So once I was done I found it easy to forgive the shortcomings of the not-all-that-intriguing plot (something Faust seems to have been aware of since the epilogue is at the beginning of his novel and his prologue is at the end). I even found myself forgiving the other flaws of The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad that bothered me more, such as out of all are colorful, lively narrators only one was female (who was the love interest, and she's the only female character active in the story), and as interesting as Sherem is she's arguably a manic pixie dream girl. There are also so many pop-culture references that more than a few times I found myself thinking, I get it, Faust, your reservoir of geek and nerd knowledge is deeper than mine will ever be. But, man, if The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (which, hoo boy, that mouthful of a title is hard to forget, isn't it?) ain't physical proof that personality and character can go a long way then call me a jimp.
In advance, shut up. I know epilogues go at the end. My point here, which should have been obvious already in my opinion, is that I am telling you some of the end of this story so as to get you to comprehend the mind-set under which I am currently operating and during which I am escaping.
I think that made sense.
The point is, is that this summer has been really, well... it has included an unexpected series of events.
"Events."
That doesn't quite... episodes? Adventures? Harrowing escapades? Whaddya want me to say? Things.
Basically, what? I'm supposed to make sense of this? Okay, in the space of, like, a week, I find out, well, confirm, really, ten years after the fact, that two of my best friends from high school are scumbags on a scale that will take me the rest of this space to divulge in full vulgarity and horror...
... and that my roommate is a brilliant antisocial son of a gun (damn near literally) who abandoned me at the moment of my greatest epiphany and my most supreme terror...
... that washing dishes at the preppy-restaurant equivalent of a roach motel is not and was never supposed to be my destiny...
... that a gang of crack criminals in a ninja van from hell were in league with (who else?) Satan...
... that the woman of my dreams-strong, smart, beautiful, who can accurately and appropriately quote Star Wars and 2001-has fins, and her pursuit of a seven-thousand-year-old vendetta would almost get me killed about a million times in the Wednesday-to-Wednesday space of the middle of July. That she could both rebuild my heart and break it. And I still don't know if that's the correct order...
... and, of course, that magic is real.
It was the worst week that summer.
And the greatest seven days of my life.
3 3/4 stars
October 3, 2007
Afro-Canadian political activist, poet, and playwright Minister Faust's first novel, The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad, begins at the end. Protagonist Hamza Achmed Qebhsennuf Senesert, a disenfranchised twentysomething living in 1995 Edmonton (E-Town as he calls it), freely admits, "In advance, shut up. I know epilogues go at the end." The opening is the most conventional piece of this nonlinear novel.
Hamza and his best friend/roommate Yeh (Yehat Bartholomew Gerbles) are the Coyote Kings. Steeped in the world of pop culture, the Coyotes see everything within those terms. Comic books, Star Trek, science fiction movies, Philip K. Dick, and much more obscure references litter the prose.
Faust's humorous novel is not merely a collection of cultural trivia. He has produced a well-conceived story about redemption, friendship, and the possible end of the world with heaping samples of politics and religion thrown in. For the most part, the characters are divided into amusing protagonists and singular antagonists. The Fanboys, a collection of five geeks, are the extreme revenge for anyone who was ever picked on as a child for being different. Their employer, an ex-jock and successful entrepreneur, devises a plan for metaphysical Armageddon. Hamza's girlfriend – an enigma who worships Alan Moore, can accurately and appropriately quote Star Wars, and is given to erratic and sometimes dangerous behavior – is the one person who can stop the diabolical scheme.
With an attention to detail and an eye for the absurd, it is as if Faust channeled Mark Twain to write a Neal Stephenson novel. Although flawed – the plot unveils too slowly, and there are too many viewpoints – The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad explodes off the page as an intelligent, fun-filled pop-culture adventure.
(This review originally appeared in The Austin Chronicle, August 20, 2004.)
Link: [http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyroba...]
Hamza and his best friend/roommate Yeh (Yehat Bartholomew Gerbles) are the Coyote Kings. Steeped in the world of pop culture, the Coyotes see everything within those terms. Comic books, Star Trek, science fiction movies, Philip K. Dick, and much more obscure references litter the prose.
Faust's humorous novel is not merely a collection of cultural trivia. He has produced a well-conceived story about redemption, friendship, and the possible end of the world with heaping samples of politics and religion thrown in. For the most part, the characters are divided into amusing protagonists and singular antagonists. The Fanboys, a collection of five geeks, are the extreme revenge for anyone who was ever picked on as a child for being different. Their employer, an ex-jock and successful entrepreneur, devises a plan for metaphysical Armageddon. Hamza's girlfriend – an enigma who worships Alan Moore, can accurately and appropriately quote Star Wars, and is given to erratic and sometimes dangerous behavior – is the one person who can stop the diabolical scheme.
With an attention to detail and an eye for the absurd, it is as if Faust channeled Mark Twain to write a Neal Stephenson novel. Although flawed – the plot unveils too slowly, and there are too many viewpoints – The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad explodes off the page as an intelligent, fun-filled pop-culture adventure.
(This review originally appeared in The Austin Chronicle, August 20, 2004.)
Link: [http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyroba...]
October 18, 2011
This book pulled me in fast, and it'll probably pull you in too if you're enough like me that you're reading my book reviews -- that is, a fan, a geek, or at the very least some variety of nerd. It slows a little in the middle as we begin branching out to follow other, stranger characters, but it pulls together and starts rushing forward again soon enough. Every section is written in first person, but we follow a variety of people, some of them mercifully briefly when they narrate in heavy dialogue (it was saved from being awful by the sheer chutzpah of oh yes, he's going to take this to its horrifyingly logical conclusion, really and truly); many of the sections are preceded by mock-RPG character sheets (fear not any roll-the-numbers scenario with stats like "wisdom: fortune cookie +8, experiential -2" or "shit points, give/take: +3000/0"). All of the characters had a certain something that made them interesting and memorable, including the bad guys, but I was definitely with Hamza and his fanpair Yehat the whole way down, rejoicing to see characters so much like me leading in an adventure story -- which might seem odd on the face of it, as I'm neither Black, male, Canadian, underemployed, single, nor heterosexual, but was instead quite straightforward as it felt like Hamza and Yehat and I approached these identity points with the same attitudes and that is how the identification actually happened, even beyond the huge common point of fannish geekiness -- and also to see characters who are so close and yet so very far from me (these would be the Fanboys) get...well, I won't spoil it, but I think you know what I mean.
This isn't a particularly easy book to put down and pick up, but once I settled down with it it wasn't a hard book, although I had to pause for contemplation of the sheer awesome occasionally. I won't give away the ending except to say that it was not what I expected but it was what I wanted. Oh, it absolutely was, in all sorts of fantastic ways.
This isn't a particularly easy book to put down and pick up, but once I settled down with it it wasn't a hard book, although I had to pause for contemplation of the sheer awesome occasionally. I won't give away the ending except to say that it was not what I expected but it was what I wanted. Oh, it absolutely was, in all sorts of fantastic ways.
August 28, 2011
Although I found that I wasn't terribly invested in the actual plot (dealing with Egyptian, Sudanese, and North American mythical figures and histories), Minister Faust is a genius at developing characters' voices. There are many characters here, and each of them gets at least a brief turn at first-person narration; in another writer's hands, this would likely be quite confusing, but their voices are so distinctive and interesting that it is not only easy to follow but extremely entertaining. And I loved the two main characters, Ye and Hamza, particularly their pop culture references (those to nerd culture, movies, conspiracy theories, and world music were particularly notable) and the strong and nicely developed friendship between the two of them.
August 26, 2012
Kot-tam, this was a hell of an adventure. Rich cultural interplay, delicious language play -- I'm not at all surprised that Faust is a poet, among his other talents; it's clear that he loves (and is great at) making words do tricks -- thrilling adventures, delicious use of mythology, and a wonderful, heart-of-hearts bedrock-solid friendship as the emotional core of the story.
My one major caveat is that it's a total boys' club of a novel: there's only one female character who has an agency, and she's the Beautiful And Mysterious Plot Instigator; in the meantime, several of the minor-character POVs are misogynist in varying levels of explicitness. Still, it didn't do as badly on that front as it could have, and there was so much good stuff going on that the lady problems didn't ruin it for me.
My one major caveat is that it's a total boys' club of a novel: there's only one female character who has an agency, and she's the Beautiful And Mysterious Plot Instigator; in the meantime, several of the minor-character POVs are misogynist in varying levels of explicitness. Still, it didn't do as badly on that front as it could have, and there was so much good stuff going on that the lady problems didn't ruin it for me.
May 23, 2018
More wonderful the second time around. Coyote Kings could very well be re-titled, Canadian Gods or maybe even Godscrash, as Minister Faust's first novel has the power and depth of Gaiman and Stephenson, resting as they all do on the complexities and realities of myth and legend. This is a rollercoaster ride, from laugh-out-loud comic touches to graphic horror. I'm so looking forward to the sequel. I want to know what adventures Hamza and Yehat will face next. They are wiser and tougher; I expect the stakes will be higher as well.
May 3, 2012
I've been making a conscious decision lately to try to be more stingy with 5-star reviews, but this book definitely earned all 5 stars. Possibly more.
It was recommended to me by the fabulous Mur Lafferty, on her I Should Be Writing podcast, when I asked about how to write with the POV alternating between characters and still keep the character voices distinct. She said this book would be a GREAT example of this can be very well done. Boy howdy, she was right.
At the start of the book, the various character voices took some getting used to, but I pretty quickly got the hang of it. Before I was a quarter of the way in, I had no problems distinguishing who was speaking. And that's WITH my tendency to have problems mixing up characters when a lot are introduced at once.
The characters themselves are great. I adore Hamza and Ye. You don't often get to read books about geeks, and pretty much every character in this book is a geek (a gang of hardened criminals/drug pushers/murderers who call themselves the Fan Boys? Yes, yes indeed.) and these two show it the most.
This book is also good for geeks- before each character's first POV chapter, there is a stat sheet, with RPG-like stats in various categories, including their main fandoms. High fives forever.
And then the story! It did not go where I expected it to go, at all! And it was FASCINATING to watch it develop.
And Hamza and Ye! Oh man oh man. I don't think I have ever read anything as... deeply touching as chapter 66. What a perfect example of friendship. It's a scene that would be totally normal in a book about girl best friends, but instead it's between two socially awkward, geeky guys. And it's wonderful. And wonderfully written.
The ending is wonderful, too. I am not going to give it away, because everyone should read it, but again it was not what I expected, or what I thought was being foreshadowed. But it was still fitting and kind of perfect.
It was recommended to me by the fabulous Mur Lafferty, on her I Should Be Writing podcast, when I asked about how to write with the POV alternating between characters and still keep the character voices distinct. She said this book would be a GREAT example of this can be very well done. Boy howdy, she was right.
At the start of the book, the various character voices took some getting used to, but I pretty quickly got the hang of it. Before I was a quarter of the way in, I had no problems distinguishing who was speaking. And that's WITH my tendency to have problems mixing up characters when a lot are introduced at once.
The characters themselves are great. I adore Hamza and Ye. You don't often get to read books about geeks, and pretty much every character in this book is a geek (a gang of hardened criminals/drug pushers/murderers who call themselves the Fan Boys? Yes, yes indeed.) and these two show it the most.
This book is also good for geeks- before each character's first POV chapter, there is a stat sheet, with RPG-like stats in various categories, including their main fandoms. High fives forever.
And then the story! It did not go where I expected it to go, at all! And it was FASCINATING to watch it develop.
And Hamza and Ye! Oh man oh man. I don't think I have ever read anything as... deeply touching as chapter 66. What a perfect example of friendship. It's a scene that would be totally normal in a book about girl best friends, but instead it's between two socially awkward, geeky guys. And it's wonderful. And wonderfully written.
The ending is wonderful, too. I am not going to give it away, because everyone should read it, but again it was not what I expected, or what I thought was being foreshadowed. But it was still fitting and kind of perfect.
August 5, 2012
I found this book on the new books shelf at the Orange County Public Library well over 5 years ago. The title knocked me out! When I came to, I did my first sentence test (first sentence being loosely defined) and it passed:
"Epilogue"
"IN ADVANCE SHUT UP. I KNOW EPILOGUES GO AT THE END.MY point here, which should have been obvious already in my opinion, is that I am telling you some of the end of this story so as to get you to comprehend the mind-set under which I am currently operating and during which I am escaping."
I was hooked. I had to read this bold thing.
I've never seen a writer write the way Minister Faust does. I'm a fast reader and tend to miss a lot, sadly (but it's just how I read - it's who I am) so on this rereading I'm trying to take it slow and see it all so I can LEARN IT!
This book appeals to the science-fiction, hip-hop, funky side of me: the characters are introduced with a stat page, like you'd see in a D&D game. One character is building armor (R-Mer). There's a mysterious box. There's funky music! (I wish there was a soundtrack to this book.)
It also appeals to my desire to now and then read books about people who do not look like me: these are young, single Canadian black men strongly rooted in African heritage. I'm a middled-age, married American white woman who like to think of herself as Irish sometimes. Now that's different - at least on the surface.
I also wanted to read a book about people who are like me. And these people are: they struggle, they hurt, they are petty, they are lonely, they fight the good fight and fail. Yeah, these are my people.
And the writing....holy frak! Descriptions like nothing I've ever read. (Power lines are spider webs and traffic lights are flies caught in the web.)(Mysterious flashbacks to a memory that never happened - a woman, a cliff and the end of the world.)
I have GOT to slow down so I can catch everything but I so, so very much want to find out what happens next. I've fallen into this book and don't want to give up.
"Epilogue"
"IN ADVANCE SHUT UP. I KNOW EPILOGUES GO AT THE END.MY point here, which should have been obvious already in my opinion, is that I am telling you some of the end of this story so as to get you to comprehend the mind-set under which I am currently operating and during which I am escaping."
I was hooked. I had to read this bold thing.
I've never seen a writer write the way Minister Faust does. I'm a fast reader and tend to miss a lot, sadly (but it's just how I read - it's who I am) so on this rereading I'm trying to take it slow and see it all so I can LEARN IT!
This book appeals to the science-fiction, hip-hop, funky side of me: the characters are introduced with a stat page, like you'd see in a D&D game. One character is building armor (R-Mer). There's a mysterious box. There's funky music! (I wish there was a soundtrack to this book.)
It also appeals to my desire to now and then read books about people who do not look like me: these are young, single Canadian black men strongly rooted in African heritage. I'm a middled-age, married American white woman who like to think of herself as Irish sometimes. Now that's different - at least on the surface.
I also wanted to read a book about people who are like me. And these people are: they struggle, they hurt, they are petty, they are lonely, they fight the good fight and fail. Yeah, these are my people.
And the writing....holy frak! Descriptions like nothing I've ever read. (Power lines are spider webs and traffic lights are flies caught in the web.)(Mysterious flashbacks to a memory that never happened - a woman, a cliff and the end of the world.)
I have GOT to slow down so I can catch everything but I so, so very much want to find out what happens next. I've fallen into this book and don't want to give up.
December 29, 2010
It was a complex, jumbled, difficult read because of all the shifting first person narrative:
Hamza.
Yehat.
Allen.
Each of the FanBoys: Digaestus, Frosty, Alpha Cat, Zenko.
Sherem.
Kevlar and Heinz.
But their voices were all distinctive with weird little verbal quirks (Yehat and his eternal variations on the word "jimp", Allen and his eternal variations on calling people ass-[whatever]). The accents were spelled out in unique ways that made me have to slow down and read.
The language goes from eloquent (Digaestus stutters profusely when he speaks but is well spoken in his own mind) to ridiculous (Alpha Cat is apparently a white guy who insists on affecting a Jamaican accent) to profane (variations on typical urban profanity) to the sacred (Hamza is a lapsed Muslim so says "kot-tam" instead of God damn so as not to take God's name in vain).
And did I mention that Hamza, the hero of the piece, is black, and a Muslim and the hero of the piece? I did, and it bears repeating because that's such a phenomenal thing in this day and age.
There are odd "we grew up in the 70s and 80s" bits of pop culture sprinkled in for flavor, and there are several twists, turns and tragic shocks.
Do not let the strange narrative jimping around throw you. There's a really deep bit of story under all the tug of war for the narrative.
Hamza.
Yehat.
Allen.
Each of the FanBoys: Digaestus, Frosty, Alpha Cat, Zenko.
Sherem.
Kevlar and Heinz.
But their voices were all distinctive with weird little verbal quirks (Yehat and his eternal variations on the word "jimp", Allen and his eternal variations on calling people ass-[whatever]). The accents were spelled out in unique ways that made me have to slow down and read.
The language goes from eloquent (Digaestus stutters profusely when he speaks but is well spoken in his own mind) to ridiculous (Alpha Cat is apparently a white guy who insists on affecting a Jamaican accent) to profane (variations on typical urban profanity) to the sacred (Hamza is a lapsed Muslim so says "kot-tam" instead of God damn so as not to take God's name in vain).
And did I mention that Hamza, the hero of the piece, is black, and a Muslim and the hero of the piece? I did, and it bears repeating because that's such a phenomenal thing in this day and age.
There are odd "we grew up in the 70s and 80s" bits of pop culture sprinkled in for flavor, and there are several twists, turns and tragic shocks.
Do not let the strange narrative jimping around throw you. There's a really deep bit of story under all the tug of war for the narrative.
July 30, 2016
I struggled to rate this book. I did enjoy it, but my enjoyment sprang primarily from the quality and style of the writing, rather than its content.
Minister Faust has a gift for character voices. Each narrator was distinct within a line or two. That's a gift that I respect. And the writing! So many poetic turns of phrase, and so very many quotable things! I want to praise this book all over the internet!
...but I can't.
As beautiful and as captivating as Minister Faust's command of language is, his command of the plot is distinctly lacking. and that's a problem.
The first couple hundred pages were actually quite interesting. But as I read further, I fojnd myself caring less and less. At the end of the book, I don't feel like there was any major take-home message. I don't think the characters were as fully developed as they could have been. I just... mostly, I suppose that I'm disappointed.
And I'm disappointed because I really wanted to like it. In a lot of ways I do like it. But it's not enough.
I don't know. Perhaps there's something here that my eyes can't see. But at over 500 pages, I'm unlikely to reread later.
Minister Faust has a gift for character voices. Each narrator was distinct within a line or two. That's a gift that I respect. And the writing! So many poetic turns of phrase, and so very many quotable things! I want to praise this book all over the internet!
...but I can't.
As beautiful and as captivating as Minister Faust's command of language is, his command of the plot is distinctly lacking. and that's a problem.
The first couple hundred pages were actually quite interesting. But as I read further, I fojnd myself caring less and less. At the end of the book, I don't feel like there was any major take-home message. I don't think the characters were as fully developed as they could have been. I just... mostly, I suppose that I'm disappointed.
And I'm disappointed because I really wanted to like it. In a lot of ways I do like it. But it's not enough.
I don't know. Perhaps there's something here that my eyes can't see. But at over 500 pages, I'm unlikely to reread later.
April 16, 2011
The first of my CW 2011 reading list.
I'm really glad I read it. I think it was a bit too long, and the plot - good guys, bad guys, Egyptian gods, cannibalism - was sort of beside the point. But I'm so glad I got to meet Hamza and and Ye. I enjoyed hanging out with them, whether they were moping over girlfriends lost or walking around Edmonton wearing a cape. Some books have indelible characters, and this was one.
Now that it's over, I'm going to miss those two jimps.
I'm really glad I read it. I think it was a bit too long, and the plot - good guys, bad guys, Egyptian gods, cannibalism - was sort of beside the point. But I'm so glad I got to meet Hamza and and Ye. I enjoyed hanging out with them, whether they were moping over girlfriends lost or walking around Edmonton wearing a cape. Some books have indelible characters, and this was one.
Now that it's over, I'm going to miss those two jimps.
February 4, 2015
Off the hook...its high time for a new style and Faust is on point. Sharp, funny, touching...an unusual story showcasing multi-faceted, distinct, and unique characters, this book has it all.
December 21, 2018
Highly original plot. I enjoyed the setting, picking out places I knew. A little slow in spots but I'm glad I persevered.
Quibble: Some of the villain POV was hard to get through (and remember who was who amongst the FanBoys)
Quibble: Some of the villain POV was hard to get through (and remember who was who amongst the FanBoys)
August 12, 2019
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.
May 7, 2020
Like other reviews here, I think I'm probably more at a 3.5. I enjoyed the characters and moreover, the formal play with such distinctive and "QUIRKY" (as one reviewer reiterates) points-of-view signaled by shifts in the language. I totally loved the book the first 3/4s, but as it began to wind-up for the main conflict, I felt myself less and less into the book. I suspected I was in more for a looming let-down than anything else, and that's kind of what I got. I won't explain why, for spoiler's sake, but things came together too mechanically, the mysteries raised by the author weren't really worked with as more than what turned into tropes for the mysterious, and the denouement was too rushed, vague, and unsatisfying. A shame, as I'd invested a lot of care and thought into the book, but it felt like the writer didn't know what to do with all he'd put into play, and so the last 1/4 of the book came across as though it were being finished for its own sake, not for the sake of the characters and mythologies put into play. Elements of the plot are under-explained and under-utilized. And despite some sad goodbyes involved near the end of the book (I hope that's vague enough), I feel like I didn't get to have any real closure with the main characters, they just dropped out of my life with no real rhyme or reason.
February 20, 2014
This is a dense book. It spans 8 days as the titular Coyote Kings Hamza and Ye discover a hidden world of magic and mysticism based around ancient African technology. The chapters are all told in first person, but the narrator jumps around. However, only rarely did it take more than a paragraph to figure out who was talking, which is a nice bit of writerly trickery. At times, the shifting perspective bogged me down. This book took me a looong time to get through, partly because of this shifting perspective, but also because it's a lot to take it. I really liked the core ideas, of an ancient magical technology linked to ancient Egypt, and I liked the characters, especially Ye (Hamza I found to be occasionally a bit too much). The last 25% of the story moves much faster than the middle 50%. I think overall it was a solid novel and broke a lot of great ground with an Afrocentric Science Fiction (at least for me).
June 8, 2008
Well, this book is definitely different. Hamza is a young would-be writer who hasn't written anything since he had his heart broken. Yehat is young genius engineer who cobbles together powered armor suits in the back room of the house he shares with Hamza. Together they...watch a lot of science fiction and read a lot of comics.
And then Hamza meets a mysterious and beautiful woman, and gets caught up in a quest to find a magical artifact and save the world.
The book's loving depiction of both sci-fi geek culture and black urban culture and it's gleeful mishmash of Egyptian and Norse and other mythologies are its two biggest strong points. I thought it had a few too many characters, and dragged a bit in the middle, but it was good fun, and I will be on the lookout for the author's other books.
And then Hamza meets a mysterious and beautiful woman, and gets caught up in a quest to find a magical artifact and save the world.
The book's loving depiction of both sci-fi geek culture and black urban culture and it's gleeful mishmash of Egyptian and Norse and other mythologies are its two biggest strong points. I thought it had a few too many characters, and dragged a bit in the middle, but it was good fun, and I will be on the lookout for the author's other books.
October 12, 2012
There's really nothing else quite like it in the realm of urban fantasy or magical realism right now, and that is a damn shame. All too often, those areas are kind of a whitewashed place, so it is hard for me to express how comforting and refreshing it is to find a book centered on characters like Hamza and Yehat, and to read about their friends and families and neighborhoods in the magical land of Canada.
Structurally, I think the constant jumping between character viewpoints works well to keep things lively and exciting, but might be off-putting to readers who prefer to be able to sink into and identify with a single viewpoint character. There are some elements that feel a little bit under-developed, but overall I enjoyed the hell out of the Coyote Kings.
Structurally, I think the constant jumping between character viewpoints works well to keep things lively and exciting, but might be off-putting to readers who prefer to be able to sink into and identify with a single viewpoint character. There are some elements that feel a little bit under-developed, but overall I enjoyed the hell out of the Coyote Kings.
July 24, 2021
Things I learned/discovered/thought while reading this book:
A) It's great when an author provides a soundtrack for their novel; in no particular order, here's a playlist that's a mix of 'suggestions' from the author and what just happened to be playing on my headphones while I was reading. (I was gonna call it The Variable Butterfly, but then instantly regretted it, so just deal, okay?)
1. Fela Kuti, 'Fe Fe Naa Efe'
2. A Tribe Called Quest, 'Excursions'
3. Guerilla Toss, 'The String Game'
4. The Beatles, 'All You Need Is Love'
5. Remmy Ongala, 'Kipenda Roho'
6. Thee Oh Sees, 'The Dream'
7. Saul Williams, 'Grippo'
8. James Brown, 'It's A Man's Man's Man's World'
9. Screamin Jay Hawkins, 'I Put A Spell On You'
10. Massive Attack, 'Angel'
11. Ursula Rucker, 'Humbled'
12. Baaba Maal, 'Daande Lenol'
B) I got so many of the pop culture references that I'm afraid I might be one of the Fanboys.
C) Drumheller is totally a place where one would fight The Last Battle.
D) Please don't ever make me read a whole chapter written phonetically from the point of view of a fake Rastafarian. Nobody lives long enough to need that in their life.
This was such a fun read; I feel bad, cuz a friend gave it to me quite a few years back, and I sat on it, and only just got to it this week. But, hey, someone had to re-read all those Stephen R Donaldson novels only to realize they were crap.
8/10 would eat here again, as long as there wasn't anyone trying to get high off of my spinal fluid/thought forms.
A) It's great when an author provides a soundtrack for their novel; in no particular order, here's a playlist that's a mix of 'suggestions' from the author and what just happened to be playing on my headphones while I was reading. (I was gonna call it The Variable Butterfly, but then instantly regretted it, so just deal, okay?)
1. Fela Kuti, 'Fe Fe Naa Efe'
2. A Tribe Called Quest, 'Excursions'
3. Guerilla Toss, 'The String Game'
4. The Beatles, 'All You Need Is Love'
5. Remmy Ongala, 'Kipenda Roho'
6. Thee Oh Sees, 'The Dream'
7. Saul Williams, 'Grippo'
8. James Brown, 'It's A Man's Man's Man's World'
9. Screamin Jay Hawkins, 'I Put A Spell On You'
10. Massive Attack, 'Angel'
11. Ursula Rucker, 'Humbled'
12. Baaba Maal, 'Daande Lenol'
B) I got so many of the pop culture references that I'm afraid I might be one of the Fanboys.
C) Drumheller is totally a place where one would fight The Last Battle.
D) Please don't ever make me read a whole chapter written phonetically from the point of view of a fake Rastafarian. Nobody lives long enough to need that in their life.
This was such a fun read; I feel bad, cuz a friend gave it to me quite a few years back, and I sat on it, and only just got to it this week. But, hey, someone had to re-read all those Stephen R Donaldson novels only to realize they were crap.
8/10 would eat here again, as long as there wasn't anyone trying to get high off of my spinal fluid/thought forms.
July 3, 2024
Two best friends - Black twentysomethings in 2004 Edmonton, Alberta - on a slow-burn adventure of love, loss and local intrigue...that gets tangled up in a high-stakes crime thriller about supernatural crack-goop and a millennia-old mystic order. This is the kind of book where the evil henchmen, all written with their own specific accents, argue about Star Trek and Babylon 5. Human sacrifice and a dispute over ice cream sandwiches. The storytelling is most reminiscent of Kevin Smith, which is probably uncharitable, but the main characters being put-upon nerds with good hearts and an innocence easily exploited by beautiful women made it impossible not to think of that kind of geek wish-fulfilment story. Faust is much better at complicating those fantasies, though, and the slower pace gives his character relationships a lot more room to develop. This has a distinctly early-00s nerd culture vibe, but with a heavy injection of Blackness and a loving tribute to the city of Edmonton and its surrounds. Faust's character writing is great: he juggles a full dozen different characters' dialogue, inner monologues and narrative voices in a way that makes each one distinctive and fun. A strange book that I found very easy to enjoy.
March 13, 2018
I tried to get through this book. I really did. The main character and his friend are fascinating (although the main main gets a little too priggish sometimes, jeez). But it felt like I was being beaten with a quirky bat (HE IS SO QUIRKY! SHE IS SO QUIRKY! THIS GUY IS ALSO QUIRKY! QUIRKY! *wham wham wham*). And I couldn't get invested in whatever was actually going on. I got to page 260 (0f 390), and nothing was happening and while I'm kind of curious about what was going to happen I couldn't make myself finish it.
December 7, 2016
This book is overlooked (imo) but is a classic- Minister Faust has a completely unique style of storytelling that features writing that would stand up to the expectations of any literary fiction snob, but somehow balances and delivers the goods that any fanboy/fangirl would want out of their fiction. This is a debut novel that reads like a book by someone who has been in the game for decades. Read it!!!
May 1, 2022
Lush, detailed, intensely weird, startlingly violent sometimes (in a very good way) and almost incomprehensible in places. I really enjoyed it.
I feel like I need to go back and reread it, now that I have a better handle on what's going on, I think it's going to be one of those books that I enjoy even more the second time around.
I feel like I need to go back and reread it, now that I have a better handle on what's going on, I think it's going to be one of those books that I enjoy even more the second time around.
November 7, 2025
I regret not cracking this time capsule sooner! The wordplay on display here is simply wonderful, wind-born lyricism and Minister Faust wields it to breathe life and color into the real-world backdrop for the Coyote kings’ otherworldly adventure! the Cherry on top here is the sheer peppering of pop-geek references throughout the story, enough to fill an encyclopedia nerdtanica.
August 12, 2019
An excellent science fiction novel. I read it a few years ago so it's hard for me to remember all the plot twists, but it basically involved two huge science fiction fans who find themselves thrust into a real-life science fiction experience. A great, fast-paced read.
December 7, 2017
A really different book with a unique voice, very passionate and enthusiastic and fun, with some great characters that stick with you.
January 20, 2019
My copy contains an inscription: "For Brian Thanks for coming and I hope you enjoy the madness." I did.
July 22, 2019
I've never read anything like. Prepare for a smart, funny, insightful, and crazy ride.
December 28, 2019
OMG epic
Mind altering and deep thinking. Excellent SciFi that’s deeper than all humankind. It immersed me in it. These characters live.
Mind altering and deep thinking. Excellent SciFi that’s deeper than all humankind. It immersed me in it. These characters live.
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