This was originally to be read a month ago, as part of what I deemed the Calamity Song detor, then the tsunami happened and I didn't find it clever any longer. I dove into this last night and read half of it. the concluding half was digested today as the rain returned. The author's composure is promising, there is better work ahead -- once he outgrows his snark. ( )

Jamestown by Matthew Sharpe is an odd, modern-day dystopian novel. Sharpe calls Jamestown, "an ahistorical fantasia on a real event." What he has done is take the historical Jamestown story, added Disney's Pocahontas to it, as well as other more diverse elements, and set it in an uncertain future USA.

Chapters are each told from a different character's point-of-view. At the beginning, the story alternates between Johnny Rolfe and Pocahontas, while later sections add the first -person accounts of other characters. At first I really enjoyed Jamestown. The premise was intriguing and the often satirical, black humor was funny. But soon it became a bit over-the-top for me. The jokes became stale and eventually the whole novel felt gimmicky.

Jamestown gets some things right. The quality of the writing is good and I liked the alternating chapters told by different characters. On the other hand actual character development is lacking and some of the humor became old. In the end, I think the whole premise of the story is what let me down. While I did enjoy reading it, I wasn't loving it. I felt anxious to finish it and start a more enjoyable novel.

Jamestown is not a book I would necessarily recommend to everyone, but I know it has an audience that enjoys satires and would enjoy it a bit more than I did. I thought Jamestown would be a recommended book until the end when it ultimately was So-so for me. http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/
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Didn't finish. So self-consciously clever as to be off-putting. ( )

I started out really liking this, but it just got tedious after a while. ( )

uhhhh...this has to be the strangest book I've ever read. There were aspects I liked and I have no doubt that Sharpe is a talented author, but I just thought that he took the whole tongue-in-cheek approach too far. ( )