Lilibet Bombshell's Reviews > Luda

Talk about hopes dashed and a disappointing read. I don’t think I’ve been so surprised that a book I’ve been looking forward to could fall so far from even the average mark… ever? Yeah. Possibly ever.

Grant Morrison writes a novel with a drag queen protagonist who takes on a protege and passes on her myriad secrets played against the background of rehearsals for a pantomime in Glasgow (which does have a very large drag scene in real life). Sounds absolutely spectacular, but my issue isn’t the plot: it’s everything else about this book that’s the problem.

As I was reading this book, I got the feeling this book thinks it’s precious. Precocious even. It’s not. Told to the readers like we’re sitting there with her as if friends or confidantes by the protagonist, drag queen Luci LaBang, she is narrator, stand-in impressionist for all other characters, her own judge and jury for all actions taken during the tale she’s weaving for us, and both her own comic relief and foil. As is the tradition of novels told entirely in first person when drugs, alcohol, and crime are involved, she’s terribly narcissistic and undeniably unreliable. Yet Luci expects we will hang on to her every word, every sentence, and every god-awful tangent she runs off on. To be honest? This book is utterly exhausting.

Why explain in one sentence what you could explain in three pages? Why stick to a simple explanation when you could spend a whole chapter in sloppy exposition? And for pete’s sake, do you have to fill every sentence with words that most readers will need to look up in the OED?

This book is vulgar in places (which I loved), but also offensive in the wrong way in other places. I don’t know if that’s just me, being American and fond of binge-watching RuPaul’s Drag Race, but I just didn’t have the time to put up with this book and its supposed meta self-awareness and nihilistic outlook. It gets a no from me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine for the opportunity to review this title. Owing to the 3 star or lower rating, this review will not appear on any social media or bookseller website.