Book Review: The Great State of West Florida

This is one of those books that just grabbed at me from the bookstore shelf.  First, there's that gorgeous cover.  Then the promised story, of West Florida breaking away via legislative process from the rest of Florida to become a U.S. state in its own right seems like an interesting tale, picking up on an old thread of history (see map) and extrapolating it into the near future.  After that, the cover blurbs promising "a punk ethos, apocalyptic plot, grindhouse style and swagger."  With all that going on, it seemed a sure bet.

I have seldom been so disappointed by a book.

Ultimately, it's just the story of a family of demented, down on their luck dreamers and a bizarre representation of a clique of crypto-theocrat-politicians who worm themselves into the Florida legislature to get a secession bill passed.  After achieving this, they subsequently attack each other for no apparent reason.  It's also a love story between two teenagers who seem more of middle-aged in their prudent restraint.  (teenagers, yeah right)  Then there are the bizarre futuristic elements of robotic prostheses, a gunfight meet-up app called 'DU3L' (with which law enforcement seemingly has no problem), robotic gundogs – and all this by 2026.  As a work of speculative fiction, it is hopelessly inept.

But wait, I'm just getting warmed up here.  The real sin of this book?  Not much actually happens.  After a smash'em-up first chapter, it morphs into a beer-and-dope addled drift between dismal lodgings and low-life parental stand-ins for an orphaned 13 year old boy.  Oh, a piece of legislation gets passed, only to be handed up to the Federal level for permission to cleave off West Florida, something that seems unlikely be granted.  That's hardly a plot-driver.  Contrast this with, say, Greer's Twilight's Last Gleaming, a near-future story about a relatively peaceful dissolution of the United States following one overseas military intervention too many coupled with a trillion in Federal debt too much.  In that similarly-sized book, there are at least a half-dozen plot driving incidents.  Things happen there for reasons, some good, some bad, some unexpected, but for reasons nonetheless.  In The Great State, it's like a five year old's view of causality: grownups do stuff, that's why stuff happens.  

So why did I even bother?  At the paragraph-level, the writing's actually pretty good, with all the snap and crackle the cover promised.  It's hard not to like the grandpa-appointed cyborg Governor of a not-quite-state.  The fact that she drives a white pony car is a small personal bonus.  After that though, it's yet another extended exercise in creative writing: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.