Zoey Is Too Drunk for This Dystopia was my first experience of the Zoey Ashe series. Although it is the third book in the series, it worked fine as a stand alone novel. The author has created a truly unique sci fi, and yes, dystopian, future with our heroine and her team, the Suits, living in a gaudier version of Vegas located in Southern Utah. Zoey, who was brought up in poverty by a single mother in a trailer; has suddenly had an entire empire of property, wealth, and the team thrust upon her when her father died. While certainly bringing infinite benefits (anything money can buy); the responsibilities and burdens of running this empire wear heavily upon her. Now she finds herself in the middle of a political battle that ultimately will determine much more that just who becomes mayor of Tabula Rasa. It might determine the fate of the entire population of the planet, in fact.

The writing is well done and the book is filled with humor. There is also some blood and gore and graphic violence. Zoey lives in a world where you are almost always on camera (and social media via a universal app called Blink), where everyone is a streamer, where drones follow you anywhere and everywhere filming all. No one, especially Zoey, knows who is telling the truth anymore, as truth and lies have merged into a nebulous territory full of layers. Reality can be manipulated in many different ways, we discover; even if it's being streamed "live".

The story is entertaining and the characters are brilliantly portrayed. Zoey is trying her best to stand up for people, and they love her for it. It's a world of greed and crime and all at the expense of those who aren't rich. Although this world is somewhat fantastical and "futuristic", I found the parallels to things happening now to be chilling. So many details struck me as quite possible and in some regards, just a small expansion on what's already happening. That realization is disturbing and depressing, because it just rings too true.

But ultimately it boils down to the question of if Zoey and the Suits can save the day and keep the "bad guy" from taking power and taking away all rights and freedom. (This concept also gave me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach due to current events in the U.S.). It's an enjoyable book and makes me curious about the rest of the books in the series and the author's other works. ( )

I love all Jason Pargin’s books. They’re a combination of dark comedy and action/adventure. Unlike the “John Dies at the End” series, which is horror-comedy, the “Zoey Ashe” series focuses on futuristic science fiction. More specifically, “what if Las Vegas was turned up to eleven?”. And thus it is an examination of political and social issues, especially when they come into conflict with human nature and desire. This particular book has three central facets. One is an election (and what those parallels are), second is a music festival that reminded me of Woodstock ’99, and a third is a murder mystery.

All this takes place in a blanket of social media and influencer culture, where we are our own Big Brother. In this city, humanity is at its most hedonistic. How do you cultivate an economy of vice? Between events, there are what I call “author has social arguments with himself.” Which is fine–I write the same way. I set one character against each other to examine both sides of an argument and end up solving nothing. But asking questions is the goal, not solving them. Especially when one of the questions is “who is responsible when your followers set a detractor on fire and you didn’t tell them not to.” (Obvious parallel to the Jan. 6 insurrection is obvious) But that’s the point of the book–using science fiction as the lens to examine our present and to ask questions about it. Because our present determines our future. Highly recommended. ( )

There’s a mayoral election coming up, and Zoey has to be involved because one of the candidates is a fascist, Trumpy type who threatens ruin both physical and financial. Unfortunately the opposition is corrupt too. Also, a prankster keeps breaking through her security, which she finds unaccountably hot. It’s a good continuation of the series with plenty of absurd action and discussion of how to live in an imperfect world. ( )

"It was a now-familiar sensation… starving while wanting nothing on the menu." (pg. 150)

In my previous reviews I've expressed my lukewarm feelings about the Zoey Ashe series, but Zoey is Too Drunk for This Dystopia, the third (and hopefully final) instalment was the first occasion in these books where I actually felt bored. The first two books had at least brief glimpses of the author's talent, shown vividly in his other, far superior series (the John Dies at the End books), and though such glimpses didn't justify their books' ponderous length, they at least had things to keep you going. But in this third book, author Jason Pargin, having now completely abandoned his successful David Wong pseudonym, has seemingly left behind much of what made his writing interesting too.

If you can struggle to the half-way point of Zoey is Too Drunk, things begin to happen. Not especially interesting things, but the book does become leaner in its second half, not least because we actually begin to figure out what is happening. In the first half, it's not clear what the plot is, what Zoey and the Suits are doing, or why we should care. There's a disturbing serial-killer plot which feels out-of-place, and an aimless, hyper procession of scenes (including a tedious election campaign for mayor) seasoned with the usual glut of Tabula Ra$a gaudiness. The villain – a candidate for mayor who wants to clean up the town – would convince as an antagonist if it wasn't for the fact that he is clearly just a straw man for Christian law-and-order conservatives (who the author paints as "fascists"), or the inconvenient fact that the depraved and predatory city of Tabula Ra$a seems in dire need of such a leader. There is a deluge of clunky polemical dialogue shoehorned in – stuff the author finds interesting, but with none of the finesse or judiciousness of previous Wong books. Here, we pass from one pop-lecture to another, like one of the author's old Cracked.com listicles. It feels like a book caught in the trap of the low-attention-span, social-media-scrolling generation.

Ultimately, Zoey is Too Drunk for This Dystopia is the natural culmination of a series that has, from the start, failed to spark. The transition of our main characters from menacing crime-lords to wise-cracking scrappers never convinced when it was attempted in the first book, Futuristic Violence & Fancy Suits, and the concept's been doomed ever since. These are uber-rich, ruthless people, yet Pargin has always attempted to channel us towards rooting for them as though they are underdogs. Zoey herself is a dull, low-energy heiress and has never been a likeable character, which makes the author's persistence with her rather forced. The characterisation in general remains off, so much so that the death of one character apparently devastates the rest, but all the reader thinks is "Who? Oh, that guy." The author seems to have abandoned any attempt to consistently bring humour to the series, and while the humour misfired in the previous books (which had a cruder tone than the meta-comedy of the John Dies at the End series) it had at least been welcome.

But the worst thing about the failure of the Zoey Ashe series is that it means one can level at Pargin/Wong an unfortunate charge. Considering he wrote some of my favourite books (the John Dies at the End series) it's not with any pleasure that I say that, in each of these Zoey books, he seems insincere. The Zoey series reads like something conceived in a marketing department to hit a certain demographic: YA-tinged millennial feelgood adventure, with cats, hugs, social justice and a petty misandry. The book leans so hard onto this man-hating, women-are-oppressed mindset – so popular nowadays – that when one male character, bloodied, crippled and near-death, has a moment of clarity and urges Zoey to flee and save herself, his noble self-sacrifice (he is sworn to protect her) is insulted when Zoey instead opts to lecture him on "how men let their emotions get away from them in situations like this" (pg. 348). It's a cheap attempt to subvert the cliché that women are the emotional ones, and is done solely to push some "Ugh, toxic masculinity, amirite?" buttons. From a writer in the millennial, pop-feminist milieu it would be irritating enough; from a male writer in his forties, it just seems cynical. While Zoey is Too Drunk is not a "bad" book as such, in that it remains continent despite its rumbling bowels, it's not a success either. One can only hope that Pargin/Wong recognises this – perhaps one of his pop-lecture riffs with the topic of the 'sunk cost fallacy' could inspire him? – and returns to his other series, or births a new one, which would better express his significant talents. ( )

(I received an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.)

The Zoey Ashe series has been described as "twisty wit and fun" or "trite crap", depending on the publication. It's hard to imagine that the latter reviewer read the same series, however -- all three books have been sharp, clever, satirical, biting, and laugh-out-loud funny.

The latest entry, "Zoey Is Too Drunk For This Dystopia," is no exception. Through a sci-fi lens that could easily go undercover as an episode of Black Mirror, Jason Pargin (the real name of the author formerly writing under the pen name of David Wong) presents a future that could easily follow from the present. That's not to say that the premise is entirely realistic -- instead, the contrast is dialed up to the max, so that all the colors are extra bright, so to speak. The result is a world that is as funny as it is insightful.

The first entry in the series, "Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits," felt like the pilot to an ongoing series. The second volume, "Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick" was more a mid-season episode, in which characters are developed but the status quo does not change. In these terms, "Zoey Is Too Drunk For This Dystopia" is the season finale, full of twists and gamechangers that serve to set up the future, which giving the reader a satisfying, self-contained story at the same time.

It's clear that Pargin was having a lot of fun as he wrote. For example, there is a long list of band names approximately halfway through the novel which are worth the cover price by themselves. But I will caution the reader that there are serious moments as well. A few times, I had to set the book aside because of how angry it made me. Not because the author had done his job badly, but rather because he was doing it too well. He paints characters that could have stepped out of the pages of the national news, while lifting up their masks to reveal them for the monsters they are.

If "Zoey Is Too Drunk For This Dystopia" has a fault, it is the tendency to pause the action from time to time for what amounts to a philosophical discussion between the characters. These conversations have a tendency to sap the momentum, especially in the first half of the novel, but the pacing picks up considerably in the second half. But these interludes are well-written and full of quotable lines. The characters never feel like mouthpieces -- that is, the digressions feel justified by the characters who are speaking the lines, and even act to advance their characters. In other words, Pargin does the best job he can with incorporating them into his narrative in a natural way.

But this is a small quibble, and nothing that detracts from the five stars in my rating. "Zoey Is Too Drunk For This Dystopia" is another strong entry in the Zoey Ashe series, one that honors what came before it while setting up for future development. While it could serve as an entry point for the series, do yourself a favor and start at the beginning. You've got quite the journey ahead of you if you do. ( )