*Disclaimer*
Everyone is different and likes and dislikes different things. Reading is no exception. One person’s all-time favorite might seem too bland or too high stakes for another. That being said, the opinions of our judges in this contest are just that, opinions. Just because we let a book go, doesn’t mean it isn’t good. It could be your next favorite, who knows?
Now that we are in the finals, we are going to be doing full reviews for each book. The books are being reviewed in no particular order, not in order of their star rating. We are just reviewing them as we finish reading them.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can learn more about the contest here.
Today we are reviewing Duckett & Dyer: Dicks for Hire for the first annual Self-Published Science Fiction Contest. You can read their review here. And you can see the finalist spreadsheet here.
Summary
Michael Duckett is fed up with his life. His job is a drag, and his roommate and best friend of fifteen years, Stephanie Dyer, is only making him more anxious with her lazy irresponsibility. Things continue to escalate when they face the threat of imminent eviction from their palatial 5th floor walk-up and find that someone has been plastering ads all over the city for their Detective Agency.
The only problem is: He and Stephanie don’t have one of those.
Despite their baffling levels of incompetence, Stephanie eagerly pursues this crazy scheme and drags Michael, kicking and screaming, into the fray only to find that they are way out of their depth. They stumble upon a web of missing people who are curiously linked to a sexually audacious theoretical physicist and his experiments with the fabric of space-time. And unless Michael and Stephanie can put their personal issues aside and fix the multi-verse, the concept of existence itself may, ironically, no longer exist.
Our Thoughts
Duckett & Dyer is a classic buddy cop type story mixed with time travel and alternate worlds. All our judges loved the premise and were excited to crack into the book. We all thought the sci-fi parts of the story were interesting and loved the wise-cracking Stephanie.
Unfortunately, our judges were not as big a fan of her partner Michael. His character didn’t flow as well as Stephanie’s and his jokes didn’t land nearly as well either. Because of this, the story was hard to stay immersed in and ended up falling flat with most of our team.
Our official SPSFC score is 6.2/10, but for our site review we are rounding to 6/10. For more information on the SPSFC you can check out the official website and follow them on Twitter and Facebook.
JC Kang