GBT Featured Book Review: Olsen’s Nation (A Story of Hope for Change)
Randy Quarles (Author)
( 8+ Reviews )
The book begins with the bowel movements of Lex, the protagonist’s pug who also packs personality. Protagonist Marvin Edwards is a high-level government official who works at the Department of Universal Health and Life (DUHL). His elderly neighbor, ‘Crazy Frank,’ needles Marvin into changing Frank’s priority number so he can have a colonoscopy by attempting to bribe Marvin with bacon. Marvin refuses at first, but after he is rescued from a smoking television by Crazy Frank, decides to do Crazy Frank a favor. What follows is a romping road-trip to Mexico so Frank and a few others can seek healthcare, where healthcare is less regulated and hence more abundant.
Oh, and by the way, bacon is now ‘delicious contraband.’ That’s right – Olsen, the charismatic president, has banned bacon, as well as passed a myriad of laws in the quest of the greater good. Quarles’ vivid world is refreshing and thought-provoking. The government has more or less taken over the country, and is continuing to do so, with President Olsen pressing to run for a third term.
Olsen’s Nation includes Kentucky Baked Chicken restaurants, televisions that could possibly be watching its viewers, and soy strips that substitute bacon (which is now nearly as valuable as gold). This information and backstory does not bog down the story, however. Instead, the reader is kept entertained by smooth-talking characters like Frank, who is never short of a strong opinion, and Lex, the constipated pug.
Readers will find that Olsen’s Nation not only parodies government regulation but the opposition as well. Lemon Puss, an opposition talk-show host, is ignorant, self-obsessed, and plain unlikable. Olsen’s Nation does not take sides, but rather raises issues the reader may mull over at one’s own leisure.
Thrown into Olsen’s Nation are also parodies of the media – the blockbuster movie Spiderman now not only has four sequels for fourteen, and is divided into parts. Mainstream news stations kiss the floor President Olsen walks on and hilariously distort the truth about the enemy. Olsen’s Nation is a well-written, refreshing parody about politics and the media with a very colorful cast of memorable characters. – GoodbooksToday.com Reviews
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Olsen’s Nation (A Story of Hope for Change) by Randy Quarles
Randy Quarles (Author)
ISBN: 978-1484081327
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