Island of the Sequined Love Nun, by humor writer Christopher Moore, begins with a ne’er-do-well pilot named Tucker Case, hanging upside down from a breadfruit tree, about to be a cannibal’s next meal. After crashing a plane belonging to the Mary Jean Cosmetic Corporation, he gets a job offer from a missionary doctor on a tiny island in the Western Pacific ocean. An adventurous trip just trying to get to the island ends with him in the tree and begins the mysterious story of the island itself. Sarapul grinned. “Ever eat a guy?” Kimi shook his head. “No.” “Tastes like Spam,” Sarupal said.Who exactly is the strange Doctor Sebastian Curtis? What experiments is he performing? Why are the Shark People forbidden to access the doctor’s compound? Where did the “Sky Priestess” come from? Why do they even need a pilot?Tucker begins investigating what’s really going on between the good doctor and the Shark People, who believe in a god called “Vincent”. According to Malink, the old chief of the Shark People, Vincent came to them in a plane when Malink was very young and said that one day he would return with cargo. Dr. Curtis is known to the natives as “the Sorcerer” and his assistant (Mrs. Curtis) as “the Sky Priestess.” The natives believe that the two of them are a link to Vincent.Meanwhile the ghost of Vincent appears at odd times to Tucker or Malink and gives them cryptic messages. Vincent swaggered out of the taro. His flight suit and bomber jacket looked exactly as Malink remembered. “You’re always gonna be a squirt, kid. You still got that lighter I gave you?” Malink nodded. “That was my lucky Zippo, kid. I shoulda hung on to it. F*** it. Spilt milk.” Vincent waved his cigarette in dismissal. “Look, I need you to build some ladders. You know what a ladder is, right?” “Yes,” Malink said. “Of course you do, smart kid like you. So I am needing you to build, oh, say six ladders, thirty feet long, strong and light. Use bamboo. Are you getting this, kid?” Malink nodded. He was grinning from ear to ear. Vincent was speaking to him again. “You’re talkin’ my ear off, kid. So, anyway, I need you to build these ladders, see, as I am having big plans for you and the Shark People. Large plans, kid. Hugely large. I’m talking about substantial f***ing plans I am having. Okay?” Malink nodded. “Good, build the ladders and stand by for further orders.” The flyer began to back away into the taro patch.As with the other Moore novels I’ve read, (The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror, and You Suck) there are plenty of chuckles to be had. Moore tells a fine adventure story here with interesting characters. I liked that there were plenty of characters with just enough backstory that you understood why they were the way they were.Kimi is Tucker’s Filipino navigator on his boat trip to the tiny island of Alualu. He has a pet fruitbat named Roberto. Kimi and Roberto are an especially great addition to the story. I got to know them and love them. Tucker Case heard the beating of wings above his head and suddenly there was a familiar little face in front of him… “Roberto! Buddy!” Tuck smiled at the bat. Roberto squeaked and bent forward to lick Tucker’s face. Tucker sputtered. He could smell papaya on the bat’s breath. “How about climbing up there and gnawing through these ropes, little guy?” Roberto looked at him quizzically, then laid a big lick on him, right across the lips. “Ack! Bat spit!” Tuck heard a weak voice from above. “He no gnaw rope. His teeth too little,” Kimi said.If you’re in the mood for something fun and easy, jump onto The Island of the Sequined Nun. Due to a bit of sexual content, I would recommend this book for young adults and older.Paperback, 336 pages, Published May 25th 2004 by William Morrow Paperbacks (first published August 1st 1997) ISBN 9780060735449Disclaimer: I purchased this book with my own money. I was not paid any money to write my review.
I picked this one up because it's been on my to-read for a while, and I needed something light and funny to cleanse my reading palate, so to speak. This was definitely the right choice.Tucker Case, who shares a history suspiciously similar to a certain Prince of Denmark, gets himself in hot water with a prostitute who wants to join the mile-high club. His best friend gets him out of the way by shunting him off to a job in the South Pacific, where he's supposedly running supplies for a tiny island. But that's not the case at all, and Tuck has to overcome his weakness for a pretty face to do the right thing. Along the way, he meets a crossdressing navigator, a talking fruit bat, a cargo cult, and the ghost of a WWII pilot.The first 100 or so pages drags a bit, as Tuck runs into one mishap after another on his way to Alualu. Once he gets there, though, the story is much more entertaining. Moore turns a lot of notions about superstitious natives on their heads; the Shark People read People magazine and speak English fluently.This isn't Moore's best book, but it's still quite entertaining. It introduces Roberto the fruit bat, who shows up in The Stupidest Angel, which I recommend any fan of twisted Christmas tales read. And it had its laugh-out-loud funny lines, so it gets some credit for that.I'm glad I picked it up. It gave me back my reading momentum.
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This book reminded me of Meet the Parents, a movie that I stopped watching after the main character's name was revealed to be Gaylord Focker (his first name has "gay" in it and his last name sounds like "fucker"! That is hilarious). So when Moore presented the character Zoophilia Gold, I knew that the book could safely be added to my trade-in pile.Granted, my simple lady-mind is ill-equipped to recognize and appreciate humor. In the 30 or so pages before Zoophilia's entrance, nothing struck me as funny, though clearly it was meant to. Hey, the jerk main character Tuck flies a pink jet! Pink! And he's a dude! How wacky! And then he crashes it while initiating Meadow, a prostitute, into the mile-high club, getting his junk impaled on shrapnel in the process. Most of the subsequent "jokes" were about his injured dick. Will he recover before he comes across his next prostitute?!Speaking of sexually objectified women characters, the ratio in the first few chapters was quite high. Meadow introduces herself to Tuck by smooshing her chest into his shoulder. Then there's a nameless priestess wearing nothing but fishnets, heels, and a lot of makeup who touches herself to a news report about Tuck's crash. Mary Jean, cosmetics mogul and Tuck's boss, is not sexualized but instead fills the role of the aggressive, hypocritical business executive. Once again, it's nothing but the same two tired options: sexxxy or megabitch (or dead, in Zoophilia's case, which according to SVU is the best of all). Way to move outside that dichotomy, Moore, you iconoclast!Yeah, humor is definitely a subjective thing. To me, goofy unrealistic names and nutty situations can't stand on their own as humor; they're lazy substitutes for actual comedy that's created from the interactions of established, believable characters and from events observed in a new light. Shoving in cartoony-ass cannibals and slapstick bodily harm isn't going to make a story funny just because it contains those elements. I'm sure I'm missing out on a lot of fart and boob jokes by not finishing the book, but I'll probably survive.
—E
Does Christopher Moore know how to write a bad novel? Does he even know how to write an average novel? While Island of The Sequined Love Nun is not the equal of Lamb and A Dirty Job, it is still a total delight with Moore's cast of insane characters and tightly woven if outlandish plots. And of course It is frigging hilarious. Cargo Cults, talking bats, stripper bimbo masquerading as goddess, pink Lear jets, transvestites. All the sort of things that no one but Moore could tie together in a funny totally satisfying novel. Four and a half stars.
—Marvin
Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore tells the story of Tucker Case, a ne’er do well corporate pilot who, after a hilarious allusion to Shakespeare, winds up in a chaotic Moore created bad trip in Micronesia. Somewhere along the way we meet reformed cannibals, a transvestite Filipino navigator, some wacky Pacific Ocean cargo cults, and the ghost of a WWII fighter pilot. Not one of his best novels, all the same, Christopher Moore novels join the ranks of pizza and sex where a good unit is great and a bad unit is still pretty good. Beth Curtis is one of his most fun characters and I wish he would find a way to bring her back to another novel somehow. Moore fans will recognize the origin of Roberto the fruit bat.
—Lyn
