Book Review: World Revolver By Gina Ranalli

World Revolver By Gina Ranalli

Paperback, 176 pages

Published March 2016 by Bloo Skize Books

Gina Ranalli is one of the weirdest writers to come out of the bizarro movement. I am talking about her writing, personally I have lots of love and respect for Gina. She has written books ranging from the surreal Wall of Kiss, to the monster Sillyness of Swarm of Flying Eye Balls to my personal favorite the creepy ghost story House of Fallen Trees. It would be hard to pin rules down on a writer who wrote a love story about a woman who falls in love with a wall. It has been awhile since I reviewed one of her books and that is my bad.

This novel is the story the story of Jeffery Eon who is offered a chance to indulge his drug habit with an experimental drug called Satellite. It has a crazy effect it sends the users mind through universes to alternate realities in the body of his multi-verse duplicate. Each time he finds a different version of himself, from the rock star to the bartender to the transgender version of himself.

In a more hard sci-fi book the different worlds would not develop such wildly diverse takes on the same person. Ranalli is exploring lots of different things in the short page count of this novel. Certainly she is exploring identity and how we choose to become the people that we are, and the paths we take.

The concept is science fiction sounding, but Gina doesn't really write science fiction, she skirts it in this book and one of my favorites of hers the dystopian Mother Puncher. This is short and effective book that tells the story needs to without alot of frills. Most important is the idea it explores - finely realized in the last few pages.

Also my favorite first sentence I have read in awhile. infact the opening prologue seemed at the start to be kinda of a different tone or set apart from the story. That is not the case at all. It was not until right at the end that I realized that we were revisiting that opener, that the book was coming around. Not a twist at all, but an excellent pay-off.