Book Review: The Psychonauts

Reviewed by Chelsey Tucker

Outrageously funny and outrageously grim—one hero’s journey through the Astral Plane

Artie Lacks is a Revenue Increasement Associate who lives a mediocre life, with each day exactly as the last. That is, until he gets invited to a party by an old friend from college, Lance, also known as SlobDog Millionaire.

When Artie arrives at the party, surprised he actually decided to go in the end, he quickly regrets it. Everyone’s in formalwear, a memo he didn’t receive. But standing out as the poorest person at the event doesn’t turn out to be the worst part of the night. Neither is the part where a girl named Penelope starts flinging food.

The mansion is soon raided by interdimensional traveling aliens with plasma guns who begin killing indiscriminately. Well, it’s really only one person on the killing spree, Lieutenant Karen Krazerback, the second-in-command of the Crunchers. As Krazerback is killing for fun, the leader Crutherford Wenchworth is on a deeper mission: to find the Oracle.

“Wenchworth was a bloodthirsty, violent lunatic, who passed time executing anyone foolish enough to cross his merry band of murderers.”

Wenchworth is an old decrepit-looking old man who wears a cape, carries a cavalry sword, and somehow has Robert E. Lee’s six-shooter. Wenchworth travels through the Astral Plane searching for the all powerful Oracle disguised as a Gibson Les Paul guitar. The only other way to travel through dimensions is using psychedelics.

After Artie is stabbed in the neck and “stretched infinitely through the vast expanse of Void, washed across the tides of time and space and spun through a vortex of parallel universes layered atop parallel universes,” the responsibility of saving the world ends up falling on his schlubby shoulders.

Psychonauts is funny and relatable, littered with pop culture references from Star Trek all the way to Hot Pockets. The complexities of intergalactic travel and astral projection are balanced out with a grounded story about popular people and items that exist in the reader’s world.

The whole story is narrated in third person and follows different characters at different times throughout the book. There are a few instances where it can be difficult to parse together whose perspective you’re in, but overall the unique writing style is successful, cutting back and forth between scenes and storylines like a TV show.

This is a fun heroic adventure for an unlikely hero. Due to some crude humor, murder, and sexual innuendos, it is most suitable for adults. The right readers will be extremely satisfied with this comedic interdimensional adventure featuring a schlub, a millionaire, a beach conservationist, and a raging band of lunatics.

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