Book 50, 2024
Red Pandamonium by Roan Rosser
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I finished reading Red Pandamonium last night. It's the first book in author Roan Rosser's "Chaos Menagerie" series. The main character is Max, whose luck is so bad he likens it to a curse.
Max is so accident prone that he can't keep a job, and he and his friend Brandon have run out of places that will rent to them. For that reason, they're squatting in an abandoned house. Max makes money by selling artwork, and when he's seized by inspiration and draws a realistic red panda it comes to life. In no time, strange hooded figures are trying to kill him with magic, and Max goes on the run with his new familiar, Pog. He finds himself teaming up with a witch, a vampire, and family he never knew he had, all in an effort to stay alive, harness his newfound chaos magic, and rescue Brandon from Faerie.
This was a very different story for me. For one thing, Max is trans. I was not bothered by it, and in fact his gender played a large role in the story. For another, Pog, who began as an elemental before Max forced Pog to manifest as a red panda, has no human gender. Therefore, Pog uses the eiy, eim, and eir pronouns. I did have some difficulty with that, as my brain struggled to make sense of what "sounded" to me like foreign words. Genders aside, this was a fun, rollicking story with lots of humor and heart. Max grew up in the foster system, so finding out he has family was huge for him. He kept encountering one odd thing after another, but he managed to roll with it. And when he couldn't, his magic would explode out of him and create unbridled chaos. I would have liked more world-building, and I wish the plot would have been more cohesive. Instead, it seemed that Max and his allies just careened from one situation to another. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the story.
Favorite lines:
♦ It was nice to not be alone right now, standing on the sidewalk in my underwear, my house infested with attack plants and zombies.
♦ Never let a vampire order your groceries.
♦ "We look like we lost a fight at an orgy."
Lots of laughs and fun, and I would definitely read more in the series. Four stars.