Native Tongue

Native Tongue by Carl Hiaasen          Audio Book:  15 hours, 45 minutes        Mass Market Paperback: 481 pages           

Francis X. Kingsbury has a personal vendetta against Walt Disney and wants very much to one-up Walt Disney World in Florida with his own similarly themed park “The Amazing Kingdom of Thrills.”    Kingsbury refers to Mickey Mouse as the rat and does his best to come up with amusements and wonders of his own to draw the tourist trade away from Disney to his own hackneyed knockoff.    In this other side of the looking glass bizzaro world Kingsbury goes the cheap route on everything and “creates”  wondrous creatures to “astound” the world like coloring two voles’ tongues blue in order to fictionalize a rare endangered creature called the Mango Blue-Tongued vole, why there are only two left in the world…yeah…that isn’t his only spectacular find but these two RARE creatures are stolen then tossed into other vehicles going by and later one is shot by an officer of the law while “saving” some tourists from an infestation!   The story is a really good one with lots of quirky characters, good people with bad tendencies and bad people with guilty consciouses.    Never get between an elderly woman with a cause and her goals to achieve victory for that cause or mayhem will ensue.   Kind hearted women with phone-sex jobs and desires to give great performances over the phone to their clients.   One woman especially strives to become a successful writer of phone porn scripts there are tie-ins all over the place between the amusements going on at the park and amusements going on everywhere it seems.    I really liked this read, all of the characters are well fleshed out (no pun intended) and I liked them all (yes, even the sleazy ones are funny).    A good book,  a fun read.    The reader will never look at theme parks for their face-value alone again.   I highly recommend this book – some adult situations so event though there are animals and theme parks there are some very violent scenes described so no recommendation for kiddies on this one only adults.  Good book, I do recommend it.   It has a lot of surprises in it.    Good story.