Set in an alternate reality where cartoon characters are real, physical beings, Perlmutter’s ORTHICON is a political satire of recent American government policies and political figures. In it, the “very-right wing Republican” majority controlling the US government is hell-bent on expunging so-called ‘toons from the country because they are a “threat to children” due to their socialist agenda.

After the election of Republican President Saunders Mucklebackit, he and his Cabinet order cartoon characters rounded up with a giant vacuum—the SuperSucker—and banished to a planet called Orthicon, an indeterminable distance from Earth. Long-known but kept secret, this world has been wholly colonized and partially terriformed. Nothing is said about its larger geography or ecosystem, but it has a government-made city on its surface that looks like Minneapolis to hold the abducted cartoon characters indefinitely.

Written as a collection of diary entries from cartoon characters, government officials, and civilians, the story unfolds in first-person accounts compiled for a report on the Cartoon Character Colony of Orthicon (CCCO) published at an unspecified later date. In a painfully asymmetrical narrative arc, the first half of the novel recounts the same half hour of the SuperSucker incident from a dozen perspectives. With too many characters to keep track of, this repetition is keenly felt. The remainder of the story relates the goings-on of the Orthiconian city-colony, government official buffoonery, and cartoon character unrest.

World-building is lacking or inconsistent, making for a noticeable absence of mise en scène throughout. And, unfortunately, character voices are indistinct or else clumsily characterized. This is an especially noticeable omission for a book built on first-hand accounts. The dialogue is, by turns, crudely fashioned or nonsensical. The text itself would benefit from a firm copy edit to address missing letters, inaccurate spacing, and strange punctuation.

ORTHICON seeks to satirize a world of extreme injustice, racism, and political divides, but its execution is shambolic. With hijinks from sinister but inept authorities and outlandish characters and comments at every turn, it often seems to aim for absurdity for its own sake. Altogether, it makes for a harebrained story in which it’s difficult to suspend one’s disbelief.

A satire turned farce of a Republican-controlled US government, ORTHICON’s poor pacing and sloppy characterization makes for a ludicrous, confusing novel.

~Remy Poore for IndieReader