Thursday, 14 January 2016

Billy and the Cloneasaurus by Stephen Kozeniewski


Yo guys!
Joe here with a new review for you all!
Today I’m going to be reviewing ‘Billy and the Cloneasaurus’ by Stephen Kozeniewski.

Heres the blurb to get you intrigued:
Six billion identical clones make up the entire population of Earth, and William 790-6 (57th Iteration) is exactly like everybody else. In his one year of life he will toil in suburban mediocrity and spend as much cash as possible in order to please his corporate masters. When 790s first birthday (and scheduled execution) finally rolls around, a freak accident spares his life.
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This book was a really good-weird-fun read!

I got this book from the author for an honest review.
This was possibly the weirdest book I’ve read and possibly will ever read, the author really does know how to make a really interesting story out of a strange concept!
After reading a-lot of his strange, irregular stories, it’s would’ve been safe to say ‘I’ve gotten used to his strange way of writing’ but this story took me by surprise.

William 790-6 is your regular every-day guy, he goes to work in Williomton (which is in Williamerica), he goes to the pub with his friends - who are also called William - and drinks olde Williame; he does everything within the rules and regulations, even when he goes to die, but yet; something happened that day which changed William 790-6’s life forever, he didn’t die - he survived his first birthday… No William's has ever done this in the history of Williams.

The story was very well written and it was so strange that I practically read every chapter twice.
I finished this book fairly quickly (apologies for late review - Uni has been draining) and I ended it with ‘what’ because of how quickly it ended.
To me the story worked well because it was a quick - get tot he point - story; this made it very enthralling and very paced due to the fact so much happened in a short space of time.

The main elements of the story that I didn’t really grasp was that it is called ‘Billy and the Cloneasaurus’ but yet we see pretty much a chapter with ‘Billy and the Cloneasaurus’, not to be a titular line concept, but I kind-of got a sense of misguidance. (I thought the story would be that the main William would create this dinosaur/clone through accidental science; slightly wrong, slightly right)

The story did make me laugh and it made me wonder, but it also made me scrunch my face up in confusion a few times - Though maybe that was what the author wanted from his audience, to figure out the weird and place it in to the wonderful.

The characters were cleverly designed. Every William was the same as every other William,  which was that they were mostly wooden characters.
By this I mean they were not rebellious, they followed each-other like sheep, they were all ‘designed’ a certain way and had the exact same traits.
But when William 790-6 came onto the scene, the authors writing really shined as it showed the dynamic change in 790-6’s character the moment he survived his first birthday, which was that he became slack to the rules and the way he allowed himself to manipulate his attitude and to manipulate his friends.
The other characters that appeared later in the book were pretty well created as-well - they had a simplistic back-story which made them mysterious and enjoyable… and I like that, I genuinely had a nice personal connection with William at some points within this book.

In all fairness, I really do like this author and this might seem like a genuine bias, I haven’t read a bad piece of work from him yet. Yes there are points in Billy and The Cloneasaurus that made me question what kind of book this was, or why the author had written that; but at the end of the book I found myself thinking how clever and witty this author was, which is pretty much why I enjoy his books as they make you question and think everything over, no other author has done that to me.

Overall - I enjoyed this book, it had a fulfilling storyline, the characters were implemented well and developed quite personally.
I urge you to read this authors work, if you don’t fancy this one then you can try one of these two books:

As you will truly find a great author within these books of strange consequences and weird characters.

Again, thank you for sticking with me while uni steals me away from you guys.
You’re all awesome.
Thanks, see ya on the flip side guys.

Joe :)

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