The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad

by Minister Faust

$14.95, Del Rey, softcover, 531 pp

I read this book for the title; I’m a sucker for unusual titles. I spent most of the 531 pages trying to figure out if this was the dumbest book I’d ever read or a gift from a genius.

Our two protagonists are black and the author is black – I’m not. Our two protagonists are fen and so is the author, obviously – me, too. If there were black cultural references that I missed – so be it – it didn’t detract from the story at all. However, if I hadn’t understood the fan references, I would have been lost. Our two boys are a bit lost – life has dealt them some severe setbacks and they huddle inside their bachelor pad and grouse about how lousy their lives are. Yehat builds amazing machines and Hamza finds things and people. One day, they meet a woman. This woman is unlike any other woman Hamza has ever met. She might even be able to help him forget the woman who completely stalled his life; Yehat hopes so…at first. But as events get weirder and weirder, Ye begins to believe the woman is nothing but trouble. She needs Hamza to find something for her – something lost for 7,000 years, something that will change humanity, something for which the bad guys will do anything to have for themselves.

And the bad guys? Boy, oh boy, these guys define ‘bad.’ They’re also fen. They call themselves the Fan Boys and argue Star Wars and Star Trek trivia. They also have superpowers…

The book is peppered with genre references; from Star Trek to comics to games. The characters are defined by their genre leanings. I liked the character development; it was a bit confusing at first but it turned out to be part of the charm of the book. The story was lovely and I could barely stand to put the book down. I so very much wanted our boys to get their heart’s desire. But I was also hooked on one of the bad guys – I almost wanted him to get it so I could see what he would do with it. My single complaint about the book was the Jamaican-wannabe who spoke with such a thick accent that I had trouble reading his dialogue. There is room for another story about our boys and what they found. I desperately hope Mr. Faust thinks so too. - Catherine Book