Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie
218 pages
Published 2010
Read from February 12 to February 14
Rating: ★★ out of 5
Well now, this was a huge let-down. A painfully unhip attempt to connect with those video gamin', cyberspace chattin' kids these days, Luka lacks much of the sense of playfulness that made Haroun and the Sea of Stories so winsome, and forces a basic Prometheus myth into an embarrassing and silly console quest with save points and extra lives and annoying chatterbox companions. I wanted to like it, but even Rushdie's wordplay was channeled into allegories that rubbed me the wrong way (e.g. the Respecto-Rats, the unoriginal strawman of "political correctness run amok!"). Maybe this would be more enjoyable if I were a kid and couldn't see every plot point a hundred miles away (or wouldn't care if I did), but I'll be blunt and say Rushdie was coasting entirely on his reputation here. If any journeyman children's book author scribbled this out, no one would have paid it any mind, and it would have sank into out of print obscurity by now.
No comments:
Post a Comment