By Earl M Rauch

This was a Christmas gift from my brother. We have both long been fans of the Buckaroo Bonzai film, which was in our collection of bootlegged VHS films as children. Our own Buckaroo, Our father a physicist at a local university, had built a 20 foot dish antenna and was able to access satellite TV, some scrambled and some not, all before the age of direct TV. At the time MTV was a crazy new thing. He would set the VHS to record overnight on long play, and pirate as many films as he could for us. This I believe was one of them. This film starred Peter Weller (Robocop), John Lithgow, Jeff Goldblum, and Christopher Lloyd to name a few. It centers on the mythical, Buckaroo Baonzai who is a neurosurgeon, Rock Star, astrophysicist, and Comic Book Hero who travels into the 8th dimension and helps save the earth from both the evil red lectroids and the less evil black lectroids who are willing to destroy earth to prevent the escape of the red lectroids. All the aliens are named John, the good guys win in the end, and it is a cult classic, that blends humor and science fiction in a quirky way.

Against the World Crime League is the long awaited sequel to the film. There have been other memorabilia and additional stories and comic books, but this was seen as the direct descendant of the film Buckaroo Bonzai Across the Eighth Dimension. The reviews are already mixed and polarizing even from die hard fans. The book is 620 pages long and language and descriptions are not pithy. It seems to have at least 1 and a half plots that are not fully resolved, making me feel like it might have been better to divide it up, and complete each plot more thoroughly. There are characters that are developed and then they vanish, there are brief appearances by new characters who pop in and then pop out, and many things seem unresolved.

I actually enjoyed this read, and entering into the world of Buckaroo Bonzai again, but I think it may have been better served in smaller concise chunks. It felt like a cereal, which I think it is, but probably could have been 2 shorter more satisfying tales. I am sure there will be more. I believe it is written to keep you wondering what happens next, there are a lot of unanswered questions. I am not turned off, I will read what comes next, but I hope for the sake of the readers with less time, that future episodes can be pared down into more digestible chunks, while still leaving room for world building, cliff hangers, and the like.