Afro-Canadian political activist, poet, and playwright Minister Faust's first novel, The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad, begins at the end. Protagonist Hamza Achmed Qebhsennuf Senesert, a disenfranchised twentysomething living in 1995 Edmonton (E-Town as he calls it), freely admits, "In advance, shut up. I know epilogues go at the end." The opening is the most conventional piece of this nonlinear novel.

Hamza and his best friend/roommate Yeh (Yehat Bartholomew Gerbles) are the Coyote Kings. Steeped in the world of pop culture, the Coyotes see everything within those terms. Comic books, Star Trek, science fiction movies, Philip K. Dick, and much more obscure references litter the prose.

Faust's humorous novel is not merely a collection of cultural trivia. He has produced a well-conceived story about redemption, friendship, and the possible end of the world with heaping samples of politics and religion thrown in. For the most part, the characters are divided into amusing protagonists and singular antagonists. The Fanboys, a collection of five geeks, are the extreme revenge for anyone who was ever picked on as a child for being different. Their employer, an ex-jock and successful entrepreneur, devises a plan for metaphysical Armageddon. Hamza's girlfriend – an enigma who worships Alan Moore, can accurately and appropriately quote Star Wars, and is given to erratic and sometimes dangerous behavior – is the one person who can stop the diabolical scheme.

With an attention to detail and an eye for the absurd, it is as if Faust channeled Mark Twain to write a Neal Stephenson novel. Although flawed – the plot unveils too slowly, and there are too many viewpoints – The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad explodes off the page as an intelligent, fun-filled pop-culture adventure.

(This review originally appeared in The Austin Chronicle, August 20, 2004.)
Link: [http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/review?oid=oid:225323] ( )

Current-day sci-fi set in Edmonton, Canada, of all places. Sci-fi fanboys of various stripes mingle with some mythological (Egyptian (the good guys) or Norse (the bad guys)) forces. The actual end-of-the-world consequences are never fully explained, but suffice to say that the story posits a very much more sinister conception of the crack conspiracy theory than most you've heard. Told in a variety of voices, some almost too distinctly in character and others not quite distinct enough--people need to learn not to borrow from Faulkner's toolbox until they really know what they're doing. But the heroes are loveable, and the book does come closer to answering the question "what if ordinary people were caught up in a sci-fi/fantasy adventure" than many others I've tried.

The voice is definitely unique. Alas, it's not working for me.

Kot-tam, this was a hell of an adventure. Rich cultural interplay, delicious language play -- I'm not at all surprised that Faust is a poet, among his other talents; it's clear that he loves (and is great at) making words do tricks -- thrilling adventures, delicious use of mythology, and a wonderful, heart-of-hearts bedrock-solid friendship as the emotional core of the story.

My one major caveat is that it's a total boys' club of a novel: there's only one female character who has an agency, and she's the Beautiful And Mysterious Plot Instigator; in the meantime, several of the minor-character POVs are misogynist in varying levels of explicitness. Still, it didn't do as badly on that front as it could have, and there was so much good stuff going on that the lady problems didn't ruin it for me. ( )

I gotta say here, what grabbed me was the title. It’s a pretty spectacular title, and while I wouldn’t necessarily want to live in a world where the events in the novel are true, I would not mind sitting around a table of food with some friends and these guys. Truly.

The novel follows the adventures in a week of the lives of Hamza Senesert and Yehat Gerbles specifically (Coyote Kings to you and me), although there are about 10 other meaningful characters with whom the guys interact. Hamza meets a woman, one of the Impossible variety of the species Woman: beautiful, mysterious (as in disappears constantly, has no phone, speaks too many dead languages to be trusted), oh, and she’s on a quest that she can’t talk about that may just involve drugs, cannibalism and a picnic. It is a novel that moves quickly, but I never got the sense of vertigo that I have from novels that don’t seem to care about a story, only the scene changes.

The biggest strength of this book is that Minister Faust has created friends in fiction who are as friends are in life (in my experience), and that is a huge plus in my book. They are flawed, they have history, they know each other’s history, support each other and have an enormous amount of love that is almost never expressed verbally, though it is palpable. Faust uses a technique wherein the voice of the speaker changes from chapter to chapter and while that can be a drawback in a less accomplished or confident writer, he makes it work. He is also kind and only includes a couple of chapters of the thoughts of a few of the more challenging speakers; it’s almost a nod to commitment, but with the side note of understanding (yes, you do need to take this character seriously, but no, you don’t have to read too much more of this, I promise.)

The adventures in conversation and time and mythology are engaging and not a little horrifying. What do you expect when one of the characters is an incarnation of Satan? I appreciate that much of the horror is told second hand, rather than from the first person, and when it is discussed or seen, it is always portrayed as something not right, not good and not to be enjoyed. I refuse to say that it is not the writer’s intent to perpetuate myths about violence and gore, but I do not feel that my brain has been violated in the reading of this novel.

Hamza and Yehat are easily two of the most engaging, thoughtful, creative and proactive characters I’ve encountered in a very long time. They are young men who are definitely not living up to their utmost potential, but they are also not sitting around staring at their navels. They work, they play; they know their neighborhood and their neighborhood knows them, and it is mostly a positive relationship. As the story mostly follows Hamza and how he gets over himself and into the world, I’m left wanting to know more about Yehat, but not to the point that he’s not well-written and believable. Because, believe me, in a tale about a coupla guys who build robot suits and can find anything running around Edmonton dealing with a seven thousand year old quest, drug addicts and a whole array of pop culture references, you need to be able to believe in something.

I will be reading more of this man’s work. Yes. ( )