This could have been a 5+ star read. There were so many outstanding things about it. It’s a memorable book, filled with quirky characters, as it follows the narrator on a quest to find “up.” The adventures he experiences are refreshingly unique. Seemingly random events somehow conspire to connect in the end. I think my favorite chapter was “Ruffled Feathers,” just over ½ way into the book: “Vision quests prohibited!” For real. I also cracked up during “Life Isn’t a Breeze” for the Italian sign that I had to translate online myself.

Two fun quotes that help to demonstrate the eccentric and poetic aspects of Darrell Mulch’s writing are:

“The carved sandstone walls were etched with the colors of carotene and cyan. The setting sun knifed its way through the cuts in the cliffs, and blasted bands of burgundy into the evening sky.’

“I didn’t leave the military with much, but I didn’t leave the military with much either.”

I can only fault this book for one thing: editing. I wish I could say it was a mild annoyance, but once the text became conversation dense, I wanted to throw my Kindle across the room! A semicolon does not replace a comma! “There” is not the same as “their” (or “they’re”)! For someone who clearly has an impressive vocabulary and a gifted storytelling voice, Darrell Mulch really needs outside help with editing.

Regardless, I highly recommend this book which at times reminded me of Douglas Adams and at other times of Tom Robbins. I am very thankful to have gotten a free copy from NetGalley, but I’ll be the first to say it is worth full price. It’s a great read!

I was excited to read this book after finding it in the Sci Fi and Fantasy genre on Netgalley and reading the description:
In the late seventies, Donato, a man growing up in rural Oregon becomes obsessed with finding the intangible by climbing mountain peaks. His quest for cosmic knowledge borders on the twilight zone, and is driven by karma floating on a river of nostalgia. His spirit guide, a over-sized cane toad accompanies him in a surreal journey around the world until he accidentally finds what he is looking for in the deepest gorge in North America.
Unfortunately, this book had very little in the way of a quest for cosmic knowledge and instead was entirely magical realism and satire, written more like an acid trip than a journey anywhere. I did not enjoy reading this book and would have bailed on it within the first few pages, or at most chapters, if I had not agreed to review it. There are several major flaws with this novel: 1) the lack of plot, or specifically any real quest, 2) the unreliableness of the narrator, 3) the ineffective use of satire, 4) the excessive use of repetition, and 5) grammatical, spelling, and formatting errors.

A book that describes a quest should involve a quest, not just a bunch of random events in a character's life strung together, which is what this storyline was. The main character, Donato, who introduces himself to other characters as Dont, goes to many different places, but not on some quest, or even because he decides to go there himself, but instead, he ends up in these places due to circumstances out of his control. Then when he gets to these places, he decides to climb mountains, but he's really bad at doing just that and would have suffered major injury or death if this wasn't magical realism. There is no indication Dont knows he is on a quest as whenever other characters ask him who is spirit guide is, Dont states that Friday, the over-sized cane toad obsessed with music, is not is spirit guide. While Dont a few times does refer to wanting to understand Up, the place where souls come from, he does not seem to be looking for it and does not gain any understanding or insight about it until the very end of the book. There are points at which other characters try to relay insight to Dont, though the first time does not come until 40% of the way through the book, but Dont does not understand and dismisses this information. This was frustrating to say the least as the description implied the reader would gain some philosophical insight, but simply cannot because Dont is too ignorant to gain or relay any.

Which leads to the second flaw with this book: Donato is an unreliable narrator. This is a device that can, and has, effectively been used, but when combined with magical realism and a description that implies there is a philosophical journey, it becomes extremely difficult to determine what is real, what is magical, what Dont simply doesn't know, and what Don't is simply lying to the reader about. Because of this, anything of value that could have been gained from this book is striped from a reader who is trying to figure out what is going on. There is nothing wrong with having an unreliable narrator, but it does not work in this book and it's incredibly frustrating when the narrator is unreliable both because he is ignorant and because he is lying. For example, early in the book, Dont mentions that he has an Aunt Barbie and Uncle Ken (which, common, really?) in California, but later he reveals (view spoiler). Why does Don't even lie about this? It's not at all clear.

There is a lot of satire in the book, which was not clear going into it, but once it was clear what was going on, the satire was okay. There was a lot of hyperbole, like the ever increasing number of McDonald's when he stopped at a town for the night, which could have led to social commentary, but because of the combination of the unreliable narrator and magical realism, it was hard to discern whether this was commentary, actually happening, or Dont's ignorance. I would have enjoyed this device much more if it was clear it was social commentary. I did not enjoy the other form of satire, which was things like having an Aunt Barbie and Uncle Ken, (view spoiler) or other random one liners or names. For me, it detracted from the novel instead of adding to it. It is possible to use this device effectively, but that was not done here.

Another device that was used which detracted from the novel was the use of repetition. For example (emphasis added):
I would just sit, not thinking about anything, and feel the morning dew evaporate off my toes. I would just sit, not thinking about anything, and mash the morsels with my tongue. I would just sit, not thinking about anything, and watch the sun come up over the Chela Mela meadow.
This sort of repetition happened often throughout the book and detracted from the story.

On top of these major flaws, there were simple spelling and grammatical mistakes, most of which could have been caught with a spell checker. For example, "Well yes. He always bucked me off thougI figured she wouldn't be impressed ..." These true grammatical and spelling errors made it hard to know if other things were errors or some sort of writing device. For example, (view spoiler) Also, my Kindle book had major formatting issues which were frustrating, but did not affect this rating as I was not sure whether that would be a problem for people who purchased the paperback or obtained a Kindle version from Amazon (I obtained mine from Netgalley.) One formatting issue that likely would affect all readers is the drastic change in font size when there are signs in the scene the reader is reading. The text was already abnormally large (even on the lowest font size), but when it came to reading those signs, the font was so small, I could barely make it out. This is a poor design choice and detracted from the story.

I was also not a fan of some of the descriptive language, such as: "It was like his boots had been vulcanized to the bedrock by the canyon heat." I do not know what vulcanized boots would look like, so descriptions like this did not make the book more descriptive or vivid. Instead, they detracted from the book, though I would not call them a major flaw.

Towards the end of the book, there was more of what I was expecting, which was philosophical thoughts, like this one, "Sometimes it seems like it happened a hundred years ago, and my leg hurts a bit. But sometimes it seems like yesterday, and the pain is almost unbearable." It is these rare and brief moments that make this book have potential. There is a story here and it could be good. If the author tried to use less writing devices, had a clearer description, reworked the story, and spent some time with an effective editor, this could be a good book. It could even be great. But it still needs a lot of work to get there, which is why, I would not recommend this book for anyone except those who really like magical realism and satire and do not mind grammatical errors or the overuse of writing devices and are fine with a disjointed story where not much happens.