Wicked Lil Pixie Reviews

• Ebook: 64 pages
• List price: $0.99
• Publisher: Self-published (September 27, 2011)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B005SUBI6W
  
• RJ Silver’s website

• Amazon

Gerry Lankin has a problem. All his life, women have been hitting him over the head, usually for good reason. Recognizing he’s at fault, he’s about to make big changes in his life, when three older men convince him that the key to romantic happiness isn’t self-improvement; it’s finding a woman with low expectations. Gerry’s about to discover just how wrong three old men can be.

I made no bones about my love for RJ Silver’s The Princess and the Penis. It was laugh-out-loud funny for me, and I love stuff that cracks me up, and it was one of my favorite reads since I’ve started reviewing for Nat. The reason I’m prefacing with that is to give you an idea of what his next story had to live up to.

One of the hardest things with satire is that it is, kind of by its nature, going to offend some people. Social commentary is tough enough, but when you try to make it funny, stereotypes have to be drawn upon. I’m not a person who disbelieves in stereotypes. As far as I’m concerned, traits become stereotypical because of the fact that they are common enough to be noticeable. That doesn’t mean I like seeing stereotypes perpetuated. If you’re going to do it, it has to be really funny (like the innocent virgin in TPatP).

The horn-dog men in My Third-World Girlfriend were stereotypes too: the big, burly Texan, the beer-swigging German, and the English gentleman. But they, and our intrepid hero, all were the worst stereotype of men–the guys in it for the booze and the babes and want nothing to do with settling down. They’re so bad, they travel around the world taking advantage of “bar girls” and drinking themselves to oblivion then moving on when things get tough. I’d have been okay with the men being stereotypes (sort of like I was with the Princess), but it carried over to the women too.

At a certain point, I stopped noticing funny lines and started noticing the stereotypes. That’s not to say there weren’t funny bits, because there were. Here’s a few examples:

We men, on the other hand, are only casual nesters. For us, any old nest will do. In fact, we’re happy flyin’ from one nest to another so long as we have one by the time nightfall rolls around. And even if we do settle in one nest, we’re perfectly content to leave it the way we found it for the rest of our lives.

Here I was, my mind simultaneously racing with caffeine yet still a little woozy from all the booze, and I was stuck in the back of a cab with a Thai Perry Mason.

…the next thing I knew, my lips pressed down on hers, sending an electrical charge through me far more intense than any of the times I’d been tasered.

And the story did come full circle and effectively deliver its message. So, it wasn’t a bad story by any stretch. It did what a good satire should, just for me, it did it with a lot fewer laughs and a bit more teeth-grinding than The Princess and the Penis. 

The problem with rating this piece is that good satire (well, what I consider good) is hard to find, and this is still pretty good satire, ruined only by my irritation at what I found to be offensive stereotyping (which might not bother other people). Had I found it funnier, maybe I would have moved past that and been able to love it as much as I did his previous work, but I didn’t do much laughing after the first couple chapters. Like I said though, good satire is hard to find, and this is still pretty good…and a tale worth telling I think.