Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Well, I'm a longtime fan of all of Brite's work have been eagerly awaiting Soul Kitchen since I first saw the preorder page here on Amazon. By a fortunate accident, I managed to get my copy of Soul Kitchen several days early (not that I'm complaining), so yay I get to be one of the first to review it here.
First of all, the protagonists Rickey and G-man and are as lovable as ever and it's their sweet, subtle relationship that keeps me going back for more. Brite never fails to deliver with wonderful interaction between them that can go from making me cry to going all warm and fuzzy (multiples times with the same book, in some cases) with these two. Soul Kitchen delivers on that mark.
I also liked the aspect of racism and homophobia and the way that they are viewed from both sides. All of her characters offer diverse insights and the book makes you think about your own stance on certain issues from time to time, or at least it made me think. But don't worry, it's not preachy by any means. The "have gays suffered the same way black have" issue is still one I'm not 100% sure how I feel about. It's new territory for a Brite novel, so congrats on pushing forward rather than backtracking old ground PBZ. =)
The plot was good, the new crooked villain was not quite as interesting as Prime's but not as annoying as Liquor's. I've read before that people think her villains often lack luster, and being a big villain fan I should probably care, but overly intruiging bad guys would most likely take away from the heart of the series, so I'm not complaining.
There was the obligatory "is there going to be any cheating going down" factor that appears throughout the series (when I speak of the series, FYI, I'm including TVOX and the stories in TDYK), which always makes me uneasy. It's good that she can write so convincingly that I actually deeply care whether or not fictional men practice fidelity or not, but still it gets a little tired. I hate it when characters cheat and even the slightest possiblity of it occuring puts me on edge. ><
Though I loved this book and I love the entire Liquor continuity, the reason that I knocked the rating down to a 4 was largely in part to all of the recapping. I understand that a lot of people may be new to the series and reading it out of sequence, but it seems like there's recapping of something that happened in one of the other books (and at least once that I counted that happened in TDYK) at least once per chapter. For the avid Liquor reader, it gets repetitive kinda quickly.
As per the food aspect of the book, I must confess I'm completely ignorant of 90% of ANYTHING having to do with the food mentioned in the series. I kind of feel like a kid watching a grown up movie. I can really love it and enjoy it, but a lot of stuff goes right over my head and I don't "appreciate" it the way that a knowledgable person would. In Soul Kitchen though it talked about a lot of new concepty food and stuff that was really fascinating, and I'm sure anyone would get a kick out of it regardless of prior cuisine experience.
Anyways, on the whole, this book is an excellent addition to the series and I eagerly await D.U.C.K and Dead Shrimp Blues. . . Just with a little less summarizing next time.
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