SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: March 2022] Nunchuck City
I rather enjoyed Brian Asman’s book Man, Fuck This House. And since I had copies of two of his other books at my desk, I thought I’d give them a try too.
Nunchuck City is a very different books from House. It is an over-the-top comedy/ninja story. It doesn’t exactly travel in cliché as much as it explodes the clichés and goes past them into hilarious territory.
As long as you know what you’re getting with the book, it’s a really fun and funny (and fast) read.
Plus, Asman has a ton of fun with local businesses as well.
The story is set in Turbo City. Skip Baxter, the Most Dangerous Man in Turbo City (even if the city won’t see fit to let him register his fists as Deadly Weapons) is about to get his ass kicked. This is no surprise. Baxter learned everything he knew about Karate from watching a three day binger marathon of kung-fu movies, declaring himself a sensei and opening a gym. He got his ass kicked by eight-year olds. But you can imagine his pride at realizing that he taught those kids to kick his ass.
But this time he is about to get his ass kicked by an actual Ninja, Kundarai Saru. Saru intends to kick the ass of everyone in Turbo City until he can take on the mayor. There is a law in Turbo City that anyone who can defeat the Mayor in battle will become Mayor. And once Saru is Mayor of Turbo City, nothing can stop the rest of his plans.
Then we meet Nunchuck Nick. He was trained to be a ninja. But he found that he preferred cooking. So after an incident he’d prefer to forget, he moved to Turbo City with the intent of selling the best Fondue in the world. He parked his food truck right in front of The Crepes of Wrath, a popular creperie in which the waiters were mean stand up comedians who would personally insult you while you ate.
Rondell, the owner of the creperie came out to yell at Nick, but one taste of the fondue made Rondell decide to be partners with him in a business called Fond Dudes. All Nick had to do was get the paperwork signed by the Turbo City Mayor and they were in business.
On his way to the Mayor, though, is when Saru attacked City Hall, messing up all of Nick’s plans and getting him very agitated. He had sworn to never fight again once he left the tutelage of the ninja school, but this time it was personal.
If you liked the names of the restaurants, you’ll also enjoy the chapter headings like “City Hall? More like Shitty Hall Amirite?”
Nick goes in to see what the situation is when he is ambushed by a bunch of ninjas (the book asks many times with the plural noun for a group of ninjas is…but no answer comes). Just when he thinks he’s done for, he is saved by Kanna, a ninja from his old school. She is out to exact revenge on Saru and stop his plans. Amusingly, he was given the name of Kudaranai Saru and told it meant Golden Warrior, but it actually means Shitty Monkey.
The bulk of the book involves lengthy gratuitous ninja fights. They are reasonably graphic and detailed (but no worse than say a PG-13 movie I guess–although it’s R for dialogue!).
There’s plenty of backstory, but mostly this book is all about Ninjas. And a sumo wrestler. The book is short but it probably could have been a bit shorter–those ninja fights involved a lot of detail including many many uses of the phrase shinobi shozoku (the ninja outfit). And there were about two dozen of them.
The end of the story has some satisfying payoffs.
Is it a great book? Hardly. Is it a good book? For the most part. Is it a fun action comedy? You bet.
There’s also a short story tacked on to the end. Lucas Magnum has written a rather short ninja/horror/comedy in which a priest called on to perform an exorcism actually has to reveal his ninja skills to battle his old enemy who has possessed a little boy.
It’s an amusing mashup and if you’ve seen The Exorcist you’ll smile and nod at the references.
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