Crap Kingdom by D. C. Pierson (review)

Tom has read enough fantasy novels to know the rules: just when you think your crappy life couldn't get any crappier, you are whisked away to an alternate universe where you are the hero of an ancient prophecy and are given special powers to fulfill it. Since his ordinary life isn't all that bad, he's not really elated to be whisked away by a strange man to a kingdom that is entirely composed of people living in ramshackle dwellings made from garbage from Earth. He's even less impressed with their king, whose political philosophy consists of keeping everyone's expectations low to avoid the inevitable disappointment of hope. Even the prophecy, a few sentences printed out in 12-point Times New Roman, is disappointing, and since the Chosen One doesn't even get any special powers, Tom declines the position. Later, though, when he realizes he's made a mistake, he's too late, because they've found a new Chosen One, who just happens to be his best friend, Kyle. Kyle manages things much better, and Tom struggles with jealousy—and also with the idea his life has been limited not by lack of opportunity but by his own weaknesses. This insight, subtly introduced and even more subtly developed in Tom's inner reflections, accounts for the deep and devastating humor that permeates the narrative. Tom is in every way ordinary, and part of his ordinariness includes the tendency to see his life as a series of disappointments and missed opportunities that could have been his if he were, well, just better in every way. The book offers a comic send-up both of such teen angst and of the escapism afforded by adventures in secondary worlds, but the trick here is that the novel affirms the genre even as it parodies it. Tom's ultimate adventure is in fact video-game worthy, making this a quintessential example of the YouTube generation's fondness for irony about their own earnestness.