The Unfortunate Decisions of Dahlia Moss by Max Wirestone
My rating: 4/5 cats
4.5 adorably geeky stars cats.
My grandmother used to say that there was nothing worse than trust-fund kids with plans
this is the perfect example of “right book, right time.” i grabbed this from my daunting “promised to read soon” stack because it looked fast and fun and it turned out to be both of those things and also EXACTLY what i needed. i’ve been in the glums lately, which needs to be acknowledged but does not need to be explored any further than that. this book didn’t technically make me laugh out loud, but it made me want to be a laugh-out-loud kind of reader and it definitely put off the glums for a little while. it’s just … fun. it’s a mash-up of a cozy mystery and a geekworld celebration that crams all of its eggs into the basket of voice. if you don’t like the voice, you won’t like the book, which is risky, especially when a male author is writing a geekgirl character, but although dahlia moss references the manic pixie dreamgirl trope a few times, she mostly avoids being one herself, and her *yes* occasionally manic but more precisely breezy and charming commentary and observations drive this book straight to funtown.
With my “quiet girl at the library” look, I am genetically suited to not being noticed at parties. In my best moments, I think I look like Carmen Sandiego, with long wavy brown hair and sunglasses and fedora. Setting aside the fact that I don’t wear a lot of fedoras. In my worst moments, I think I look like Roz from Monsters, Incorporated, but maybe everyone thinks that.
pretty much, yeah.
a quick note – this is not my world. at all. this book is all gaming and cosplay and Doctor Who and a million other references to things that went right over my head. including this jigglypuff thing (which i misremembered as “jiggeldypear”), with which many of you are probably familiar, and if you can help me understand what is even happening in this clip, i will be very grateful because it looks like some jim jones sleepover gone wrong and i kinda want to know what i’m missing*:
rarrrr
HOWEVER – unlike several of the reviewers on here who didn’t like the book because the references were too far removed from their own experiences, for whatever reason i didn’t have a problem at all. sure, i had to do some googling today when i was writing this review, and even after googling i still have some questions, but it’s not like the story is impenetrable if you don’t know who snorlax is. which i didn’t. but now i do. and i want one.
so, if this isn’t your world, you may or may not have problems. for me 1) so much of the book revolves around Zoth, a game that only exists in this book, i feel like every reader should be in the same ballpark of understanding so long as they are aware that there are people who play RPGs online in which things like “The Bejeweled Spear of Infinite Piercing” and treants and warpriests exist. and 2) not everything in this book is about the gaming world – there’s plenty here that’s just part and parcel of the universal fabric of humanity – job interviews, bad relationships, crazy friends, the shame of unemployment when unexpectedly running into more-successful acquaintances… and there are also plenty of nongeek references in here: cormac mccarthy and macgyver nods, a perfect shirley jackson analogy and peter capaldi (which is technically a dr. who reference, but some of us fell in love with him long before he got his license to practice medicine)
and maybe knowing this world intimately would be a bad thing. lord knows i get real critical when authors misrepresent stuff i know a lot about.
so even though i didn’t get every shoutout, i got enough of them and frankly – dahlia had me at the madeline kahn/Clue reference. which is a completely disingenuous statement, since that scene is alllll the way on page 256, and i was had way earlier, but i think it’s important to take a moment to honor every instance of a Clue reference in the world.
i really hope this book is a first-in-series situation. i love the noir-by-way-of-geek-cozy dialogue:
“Don’t laugh, but I kind of wanted to hang out with a private detective,” he explained. His embarrassment lasted nanoseconds, and he was bright again.”Makes you feel like you’re in on something. You know, put the squeeze on the old up and down. Derrick the gin mill. Hoosegow the bean shooters.”
“You’re just stringing together nonsense words.”
“Maybe,” said Nathan. “But you have to grant that I’ve got the cadence down.”
i love the many lessons i learned
I was not cyberstalking Nathan. The line between checking out someone on the Internet and straight up cyberstalking them sits at the twenty-minute mark. Five, ten minutes of checking them out? Awesome. You’re being a conscientious person and a good date, as you will have excellent conversation starters in hand. Thirty-five, forty-five minutes? You are a psychopath. I realize that’s not a wide berth between the two, but them’s the rules.
i love that dahlia hides her money in a copy of Northanger Abbey because knowing the thief liked Jane Austen would make the theft less deplorable. and that, when she is in grave danger later in the book, fearing for her life, she’s mostly concerned about who’s going to return her library books if she gets murdered.
i love Orchardary as a name, i love Threadwork as a character because – dapper cat, but i am mostly in love with detective “let’s-listen-to-King-Crimson” shuler, his Interrupted Cop subterfuge, and his raised-eyebrow patience. this is me, shipping: ditch that botanist, dahlia moss! shuler and frozen custard 4-eva!
anyway, this is a fun book that i read when i was sad. it’s not going to change the face of american literature or anything, but it’s also more than just diversionary entertainment. it’s got admirable wit and it’s like a sweet snuffly puppy you can’t help but fall in love with.
* oh my god and while i was reskimming to write this review, it turns out that with that particular clip i serendipitously stumbled upon the touchpoint to a reference from a different point in the book about falling asleep/face-writing, that dahlia addresses as such:
(This is a hardcore Pokémon reference and if you do not get it, I apologize. If you do get it, I apologize even more deeply)
so if you tell me what it all means, know that you are outing yourself as a hardcore geek. which is awesome.
