• Paperback: 321 pages
• Christopher Moore’s Website
• List Price: $13.95 US/ $17.50 CDN
• Publisher: HarperCollins (June 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006056668X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060566685

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Just why do humpback whales sing? That’s the question that has marine behavioral biologist Nate Quinn and his crew poking, charting, recording, and photographing very big, wet, gray marine mammals. Until the extraordinary day when a whale lifts its tail into the air to display a cryptic message spelled out in foot-high letters: Bite me.

Trouble is, Nate’s beginning to wonder if he hasn’t spent just a little too much time in the sun. ‘Cause no one else on his team saw a thing — not his longtime partner, Clay Demodocus; not their saucy young research assistant; not even the spliff-puffing white-boy Rastaman Kona (né Preston Applebaum). But later, when a roll of film returns from the lab missing the crucial tail shot — and his research facility is trashed — Nate realizes something very fishy indeed is going on.

Nathan is the main character, a marine biologist trying to figure out the meaning of whale songs. One day while out on the boat with his assistant Amy, he sees a whales back fin & damned if it doesn’t say “Bite Me”. Nathan isn’t sure if he’s hallucinating of if he really did see Bite Me, but when his office gets wrecked & his partner in whale research (Clay) boat is sunk, Nathan has a feeling he’s on to something big. With the help of Amy, Clay & the newly hired wanna-be Rasta Kona they try & figure out why the “Winged Whale Sings”.

I love Christopher Moore’s writing but this book just didn’t do “it” for me. The only thing that kept me reading was to see what Kona said next, cause his lines killed me! Kona (real name Preston Applebaum) is a spliff puffing surfer/blond-headed dread who is convinced he’s a Rastafarian who was born in Hawaii. Reality, he’s from New Jersey. Some of Kona’s lines where just too funny not to post here:

Clay – “It says here that you last worked as a forensic calligrapher. What’s that, handwriting analysis?”

Kona – “Uh, no, actually, it was a business I started where I would write people’s suicide notes for them.” “It didn’t do that well. No one wants to kill himself in Hawaii. I think if I’d have started it back in New Jersey, or maybe Portland, it would have gone over really well. You know business: location, location, location.”

For me, Fluke just seemed to drag on a bit too much. There were a lot of details about whale research, when I say a lot, I really do mean A LOT. While enjoyable, it isn’t something I’d recommend off the top of my head for readers new to Christopher Moore.  It switched quickly from fiction based on reality to far out there fantasy, hybrid humans & marine life that can’t speak much. The first half of the book was great but it fell apart in the second half. I had a moment of “WTF happened?!” The story line, like all Christopher Moore books, is unique & original but just a bit too far out there for my tastes. I would even say it becomes way to technical.

If you are new to Christopher Moore, this probably isn’t the book you want to start with. While funny in some parts, the plot just didn’t do anything for me, thank god there was the funnies.