Pokémon Book Reviews

Individual Review of Zam the Hybrid by DI_Gremlin

Sam Baker is an ordinary boy living in a corrupt society. Thanks to an unfortunate combination of a head injury caused by school bullies, a rare form of brain cancer, and the total incompetence of the poorly funded national health service, he faces certain death. Until his distraught mother finds an eccentric doctor with a plan that sounds insane: he surgically removes Sam's brain and replaces it with an Alakazam's. Remarkably, the surgery is a success, creating a human-Pokémon hybrid the likes of which the world has never seen before. With the body of a human and the amazing brain power of an Alakazam, what will the newly monikered Zam accomplish?

I think that nearly anyone who reads this book will tell you straight away that the best thing about it is its humor. You might not expect it from the description I just gave or even from the description of the book itself, but once the story gets going, it's absolutely full of moments that will make you laugh out loud. My personal favorite was the chapter where Zam takes his girlfriend Taylor to the park, where he uses his understanding of Pokémon language to hear all the crazy things the Pokémon are shouting at the oblivious humans.There are also great back-and-forths between characters, funny situations, and sentences formed with just the perfect blend of unexpected twist and comedic timing.

The real pity is that more people haven't read this book, given how fun and enjoyable of a read it truly is. And I think one reason for this might be precisely because the average reader wouldn't even realize that it does have humor in it. Gremlin, I know you won best humor in the 2017 Pokémon Watty Awards. Mention it at the bottom of your description! Also, I know you're particularly attached to your British "u"s, but do yourself a favor and add a "humor" tag alongside your "humour" tag just for those silly American readers who are searching for it.

Seriously, though, there are some other things you can do in order to show off the humor of this book a little better. And make what I would argue is a better beginning altogether for this book. As it is, the first two chapters of the book are written from the perspective of a character we never meet again. Main character Sam is nowhere to be found, presumably lying in a coma while his tearful mother pleads for him. All in all, it's pretty sad, especially if you think about the fact that the old Sam is literally becoming brain dead. That's a bummer for his mom, the only real sympathetic character present at this point. Even though the story tries to spin the surgery as a good thing because the mother would rather have a son with a new brain than lose her son entirely and because the doctor who no one takes seriously gets to actually pull off a medical marvel, I personally found it tough to get over the straight facts of the matter.

Chapter Three starts off with Sam adjusting to life with a new Alakazam brain. We pop into his perspective and never look back (for the most part). The point that really stuck out to me as a critic, however, was the fact that Sam hasn't been told that he got a surgery to replace his brain, which means we get several scenes of hints being dropped about him being different and having no idea why, followed by a scene in which his mother has to tell him... a summarized version of the first two chapters. So this is a red flag for me because it means the reader is spending all this time knowing something that the character doesn't know. This is called dramatic irony and can be used for excellent effect, but it doesn't add a single thing in this case. Even worse, the reader has to read through a retelling of information that zie already knows, which personally makes me skip ahead while saying "blah blah blah" inside my head.