Kill Baxter – Charlie Human

Published:  17 July 2014
Publisher: Century
Pages: 304
Series: Apocalypse Now Now #2
Format Read: Audibile
Duration: 11hours

Blurp:

The world has been massively unappreciative of sixteen-year-old Baxter Zevcenko. His bloodline may be a combination of ancient Boer mystic and giant shape-shifting crow, and he may have won an inter-dimensional battle and saved the world, but does anyone care? No.

Instead he’s packed off to Hexpoort, a magical training school that’s part reformatory, part military school, and just like Hogwarts (except with sex, drugs, and better internet access). The problem is that Baxter sucks at magic. He’s also desperately attempting to control his new ability to dreamwalk, all the while being singled out by the school’s resident bully, who just so happens to be the Chosen One.

But when the school comes under attack, Baxter needs to forget all that and step into action. The only way is joining forces with his favourite recovering alcoholic of a supernatural bounty hunter, Ronin, to try and save the world from the apocalypse. Again.

Thoughts:

Hello there folks! Salty here again, seeing as Dave has become a little bit too lax with his reviews these days I thought I could fill in again…

As I had a lot of akward fun with the first book in this series I thought I might as well check out the second installment. Very much like the GoodReads description states, our South African version of Harry Potter gets shipped of to get schooled on his recently awakened capabilities. While I was not too much in love with the fact that Baxter had to trade in one school for the other, I was not at all sad when shit started hitting the fan almost right at the point he got to the South Africanized version of Hogwards. Tutoring gets put nearly on a permanent hold as a war breaks out and Baxter needs to fight not only for his life but his sanity aswell.

While I would love to go into depth about what goes down and how the adventure continues from then on I have to make a small confession. You see I read this a month ago and for the life of me cant even really remember what went down. I know I enjoyed it as it was going on and that I remember thinking to myself that Human tried very hard to expand on this alternative version of S.A that he established in book one. I felt a bit let down as I wanted to see more of that mythical creatures explored and less of Baxter’s personal problems and all out whiney schoolboy antics. Woe is him, no one loves him, boo hoo cry him a river type of antics. In the end he does lighten up at least and the story can continue. Just a sample of one instance: “Even having saved the world doesn’t make me feel good about myself. Perhaps it’s something you get habituated to; each new world-saving moment has to be bigger and better than the last to give you that same dopamine and serotonin kick. Maybe heroes are just junkies.”

It was right at that time that Jackie Ronin joins up again that things evened out a bit beter. The two had a real love hate relationship going on at some point that started grating on me, but Jackie was still the light at the end of the tunnel for me. If I am allowed to give one professional bit of critisism regarding the narrator of this audio book it is this: Next time when picking some one to read a novel that has Afrikaans slang in it as well as cursing in one of the other eleven official languages that is part of the make up of South African culture, pease, at least have some one school the voice guy in the correct pronunciation of the word. As a fellow native to that country I had to cringe every time a word that, when uttered in the right tone of voice. can give the best indication of the person’s mood, delivering the monotone flat utterance of that word just does massive unjustice to that whole sentance. I respect the narrator for trying at least. At certain stages he pulled of mean South African English accent, but other times it was just hard to decern what people were saying. At another point there was a poem in Afrikaans that sounded so Alien to my ears I did not even know what it meant in the end and it was pretty crucial to the story…

All gripes aside. I did say I had fun as it went along and it did not overstay it’s welcome. I gave this a 3 out of 5 on GR and can only recommend it to fellow country men and people that really want to learn how to swear in 11 tongues… Other than that it is safe to skip this series…

Sorry for this badly written review. A month between reviews is a right bitch on my brain. I will try post as soon as I finish a book.

Salty out.