Planet Earth Adventures is the story of a man named Krakken and his best friend, Chris P. Critter, the millionaire inventor of The Simpleton. Krakken has several utterly useless college degrees. He is also the father of a strange and precocious toddler named Camadan, whom he adopted after a chance meeting with a girl. (“Some guys get herpes from a one night stand. I got a baby.”) Chris is impulsive and hyperactive and more than a little crazy, and he hires Krakken as payback for helping graduate high school.
Chris is on a mission to find a new form of “alt power”, an energy type that he believes will make him a billionaire. He enlists his friend Krakken to go and search for this new form of energy in a vehicle called The Angry Dwarf, using a new invention called The Knows. After several chance encounters with some truly odd and often infuriating people, the two friends finally discover an enormous source of alt power. But in short order, they discover a shocking truth: the energy signature they have found is caused by an alien spacecraft that crash landed on Earth many years ago.
Title: Planet Earth Adventures | Author: DP Elemm | Publisher: Self-Published | Pub. Date: 24 January 2019 | Pages: 88 | ISBN: 9780463489949 | Genre: Science Fiction | Language: English | Triggers: None | Rating: 4 out of 5 | Source: The author provided a copy for review consideration
Planet Earth Adventures Review
‘Planet Earth Adventures’ is a weird ass book. Based on the title, cover and length I was expecting a kid’s book. I thought I’d be reading about a couple of plucky kids meeting a vaguely amusing and/or educational alien and having adventures. I probably should have read the blurb which makes it clear that’s not what it’s about at all. It also confounded my expectations by being REALLY GOOD. The book I imagined it to be would have been inoffensive easy reading with a slightly saccharine message. Instead, I found myself reading something clever, creatively written, satirical and often laugh out loud funny.
Within a few pages of starting it I was looking it up on GoodReads to find out more about it and its writer. That’s where mystery deepened. At the time of writing it has no reviews on GR at all and the only rating is the 4 stars I just happily slapped on it. Furthermore, it is published under a pseudonym by an author who refuses to reveal anything about himself. All that is a crying shame, because, as I mentioned before, IT IS REALLY GOOD.
The plot is bonkers and makes little sense, but I’ve often found that isn’t a problem in the hands of the right author and it isn’t here. It’s about two buddies, Krakken and Chris P Critter who are on a road trip with Krakken’s weird infant son Camadan. They meet some aliens who look like giant dogs (giant talking dogs) and there are some that are like ants and some others too. And lots of talk of bizarrely creative inventions and odd scientific discoveries.
It’s nonsensical, surreal and funny in a way that brings to mind Lewis Carroll or Douglas Adams. The writing is often deliciously inventive (for example the chapter that is called “This is not a chapter”) and it had me grinning as often as it did scratching my head. DP Elemm is clearly some kind of comic genius and I’m now desperate to find anything else he has written so I can get my next fix. DP – if you’re reading this, hit me up!
You can find this book at many retailers via clicking on the appropriate link on Goodreads (Buying direct from retailers is a good way to support indie authors); however, in the spirit of supporting literacy programs, we would like to point out that you may be able to purchase this book through BetterWorldBooks.
Olly joined the team in August 2018. He is our first non-American team member, and lives in the UK. He is the head of our UK team. Olly reviews both science fiction and horror books and movies for the site. He also enjoys writing articles when time allows.
