Book Review: Structophis

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It’s been a while since I picked through a book on my blog, and while I have read several books since my last review, I wanted the focus of these reviews to be on indie books. So today we’re going to go off the beaten path again and delve into a slice of wackyness in Structophis by Joseph Lallo; you’ll be better off remembering the book as ‘the pizza dragon’ book.

Yep, pizza dragon.

Characters:

The protagonist of this book is Markus Spiros, and right off the bat we get a small smattering of information about this person. He’s trying to find his footing in life, and struggling, and… well that’s about it. Beside the short background we get at first, Markus is a tabula rasa and, to be honest, he fills the blank ‘everyman’ sort of character we see in young adult/new adult fiction. This books is positively brimming with quirky characters, so it’s a bit odd to me that Markus himself doesn’t much have his own ticks. Perhaps the author wanted the protagonist to be the voice of sanity in a slightly mad word, but I personally think crazy is better with company.

Counterpart to Markus is Gale, a doctoral student in veterinary science, and avid aficionado of the Structophis Gastrignae (that is the scientific name for pizza dragons). Gale is an extremely quirky character who oozes her charm right off the page. She epitomizes the notion of ‘brilliant but foolish’ where she possess an undeniably brilliant intellect, but can’t seem to make a wise decision if her life depended on it. I adored and connected to the character of Gale, and her incessant clipboard scribbling always got a grin out of me.

Of course, no examination of this book would be complete without the mention of the eponymous character; Blodgette the pizza dragon. This book is ultimately a ‘what-if’ sort of scenario that asks, “what would you get if you crossed a dragon with a pizza oven and dropped it in the real world?” The answer is Blodgette. By the way, I was laughing for a good couple of minutes at the dragon’s name since Blodgett is a company that makes commercial-grade pizza ovens. Blodgette herself is a real sweetheart, and even though she doesn’t say a word, she says some of the strongest messages in this book about family and morality. If Gale is the intellect, and Marcus the reason; then Blodgette is the heart of this story.

The minor characters are also a good source of humor in the book, too. Dimitrios Spiros is a classic ‘wacky uncle’ type that was realized so well that I could practically smell his bad breath. The German villains were very ruthless and precise, which made their interactions with said uncle all the funnier. And, aunt Sabina’s penchant for cyclical sentences was hilarious whenever another person had to interact with her.

Plot:

The narrative arc of the book is relatively straightforward. In fact, if you read the book’s blurb you’ll have the basic idea of the whole book’s plot. Marcus finds Blodgette, struggles to find ways to care for her, then several complications are thrown in. The plot is one that you can probably guess the ending by the time you finish reading the blurb and is not the draw of the book.

It feels harsh for me to say this, but the plot points are all rote and well-trod in fiction. I’m of two minds concerning this: on one hand the simple plot makes the story feel shallow, but on the other hand the unassuming story arc gets out of the way to let the characters shine.

Regardless, the plot is fast and rarely suffers a dull moment, making the book a breeze to skip though the pages. Coupling the short page-count with the popcorn-style plot makes this a good one-day read. As of writing this review, there are still a number of good summer days left, so this is the sort of reading that would be perfect for a patio chair and a beautiful day.

Setting:

Unfortunately, there isn’t much to note about the setting in this book. While some may consider this story to fit in the ‘urban fantasy’ genre, I think that would be misleading. Rather, I feel it’s humorist fiction, and as such, it’s set in the (more or less) real-world. The only real difference between our world and the world of the pizza dragon is the pizza dragons themselves. Even at that, they are such rare creatures that not much lore or setting-building exists around them (at least to the reader’s knowledge).

As I noted with the plot, I don’t know if the simple setting was a deliberate choice by the author to keep the focus on the characters, but it’s a risky move. I would have like to seen some quirks in the setting to reflect the wacky characters, or even a solid idea of the time of year the book takes place.

Recommended for: people looking for a quick, fun read that won’t weigh them down with details and convoluted plot. Anyone who wants to know what the heck a ‘pizza dragon’ is

Say away if: you want a meaty book to get lost in, or lists of characters and highly-developed setting.