They Eat Puppies, Don't They?: A Novel

Christopher Buckley is one of my favorite authors. But this is not one of my favorite of his books.

Buckley’s books follow a similar path. Washington insiders, in a cynical, but somewhat believable way push a line that seems absurd, but much of the time you could actually see things working out in real life like they do in his books. It is satire. What makes Buckley one of my favorite authors is that he ridicules all sides of the political spectrum, he keeps his books funny and in the end his heroes usually see the error in their ways.

But this book is not as funny as most of his other books. It is satire, and you can see him poking fun at lobbyists, at the defense industry, at the media. But it is not sharp, it is not very funny and it feels phoned in.

What I am most disappointed in is that I do not really like most of the characters. In many of his others books, the characters, even when they do reprehensible things are still people that you want to root for. The reader wants these people to turn out well. In this book, I would be fine if all of these people had a big accident and disappeared. The only likable people in the book are the Chinese President, his aid and the head of the NSA. And none off them are really the main characters, so 85% of the book I am reading about people that I really don’t care about.

I like Christopher Buckley, but I would encourage you to skip this book. Instead, read Supreme Courtship, God is My Broker or Boomsday, all are worthy of your time.

Buckley seems to have lost his touch.
Most of his so-called surprises brought Yawns to me as i had already deduced the author's move. Muon bombs, Bird sleeping with Angel, etc.

His best work was Thank you for Smoking.

Add to that a lackluster performance...

This story was entertaining, and the voice actor did his best job conveying the tongue-in-cheek satire that makes a Christopher Buckley novel great. But, when held against beautiful and hilarious works like "Thank You For Smoking" and "Boomsday", it simply fell flat.

Pretty good political satire but sort of hard to follow. Maybe if I listened to it again I would rate it higher and maybe I just wasn't in the mood for off the wall political humor. Still the author was above average in the clever department just thinking up the plot line

No disappointments here, and lots of the expected Buckley fun. The women are more overdrawn than usual, but the stereotyping contributes to the story. I especially liked the Chinese characters.

I'm often accused of saying that conservatives aren't funny. That's not true. The trick is that good humor, especially satire, has to have some basis in fact to build upon. Even when you're writing in an absurdist vein you need to plant some of it in reality and too few "conservative" writers today know how to base their humor in reality. Christopher Buckley is a conservative who can be extremely funny, especially since he knows how to skewer everyone, not just his political opponents. This latest book shows Buckley is still in fine form and still hilarious. Robert Petkoff's voice and delivery are perfect for the tone of the book as well. This one is worth your credit.