Thoughts on Lux the Poet

Imagine putting Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, Douglas Adams, and Neil Gaiman in a blender. You may end up with a writer like Martin Millar.

Lux the Poet features as its main character...Lux, who is a poet.  Picture if you will a young Zaphod Beeblebrox (besides "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe"), who is self-obsessed and completely delusional, wandering around a city-wide riot and trying to get as much attention with as many lies as possible, failing miserably, and stumbling into an assortment of interesting characters, not the least being Pearl, the object of his affection.  (Yeah, you can imagine that not being such an honor, can't you?)

Actually, it's exactly a Dave Barry novel, if Dave Barry were British instead of suffering in Florida through regular inanity he nonetheless turns into brilliant comic material.  So there's a number of ways you can relate to Millar as a writer, but what you really need to know is that he's entertaining and perhaps working toward a masterpiece.

It's also true that he's not quite there yet.  His cleverness can also be compared to the ideas young writers have when they don't really have anything to say, and so they make up as much nonsense as possible just to make it interesting, and Lux reads a lot like that, too, and so Millar is as much a writer with great potential and not inconsiderable skill, but also someone who's incredibly immature in ways he doesn't yet realize, winging it with a desperation that's catchy.  Hey, Neil Gaiman is a fan, so you know he's doing something right.  I just hope that he gets around to doing it better.