LOONEY! by Gavin Dillinger and Stephen Kozeniewski: REVIEW

Goodreads blurb

When beloved cartoon characters come crawling out of her TV, army recruiter Gabriella Harman expects a zany romp instead of the hellish nightmare that follows.

One night, haunted by her memories of Iraq, Gabriella downs a stomachful of pills and booze. When her favorite cartoon characters, the Kooky Toons, start crawling out of the TV, she assumes she is hallucinating.

But soon Gabriella finds herself locked in a battle of wits and wills with Herman Hyrax, the world-famous, wise-cracking mascot of the Kooky Korporation. Herman is more than just a stinker, though. He may be a monster, a demon, a god, or something entirely more unwholesome.

Is Gabriella’s descent into a world of cartoonish violence and psychological torment real? Or has she simply gone…

LOONEY!?

My Review

I don’t often accept review requests (I prefer to be the one doing the requesting), because I can be really picky about what I read. I don’t want to give a bad review to a struggling indie author, but I also don’t want to lie and lose my credibility as a reviewer. But LOONEY! sounded like a fun romp, so I figured what the heck, I’d give it a go.

I have to say, I don’t regret it. This turned out to be one of my favourite reads of June.

Let’s get the cons out of the way

As much as I enjoyed it, and I’ll tell you why in a second, I have to be honest about what to expect. This is an independently-published/small-press book, and as such it has quite a lot of typos, grammar errors, and clumsy wording that a big-press copyeditor would have polished out. Just bear that in mind if you pick it up. But it’s well worth seeing past all that to find the gem sparkling underneath.

Now we can talk about the pros

Sooooo I thought this was going to be a “cartoons jump out of the TV and unleash mayhem on the real world” kind of silly-but-gory romp. On the surface, it is, and that part is fun. But the story has actual depth, too. We address racism, sexism, veteran trauma, emotional and psychological abuse, domestic and collective violence, mental illness and suicide, and a host of other societal issues. I feel like some of these could have been explored in even greater depth, but I was pleasantly surprised by what was there and really enjoyed reading it.

But my favourite thing about this book was the reason the ‘toons jumped out of the TV in the first place. I’ve debated whether or not to include spoilers in this review, and I’ve come to the conclusion that offering a few hints might actually encourage more people to try this book. The author(s) clearly put a lot of thought into the backstory of these cartoon characters, and I think that deserves some recognition. But if you don’t want to know anything at all besides the general blurb above, just skip the next paragraph.

Mild spoilers

Are you still here? Okay, here’s the thing – if you’ve spent any time on my Goodreads or my blog, you might have picked up that I’m really into ancient literature, languages, religions, and cultures. Well, let’s just say the ‘toons in LOONEY! turn out to be very relevant to those interests. For instance, there’s a huntress ‘toon whose name is Arty Miss. If you catch the classical reference in that, you’ll probably enjoy the twist in this book as much as I did. I don’t want to say too much more than that, but just be prepared to have some pretty deep reflections on religion in between all the ‘toony shenanigans.

Conclusion

I had a really good time with this comedy-horror fever dream of a book. Like I said, it could have used a good polishing, but the diamond is definitely there and deserves a chance to shine.

Many thanks to French Press Publishing for offering me a free ebook copy of this novel, which is free to read right now on Kindle Unlimited.