Book Review: Real Ultimate Power: The Official Ninja Book

My wife bought me a book she found on ThinkGeek called Real Ultimate Power: The Official Ninja Book. I'm always going on about how cool ninjas are - not many children of the 80's will disagree with me on that point. I even remember taking Ninjitsu classes for a little while when I was around 12. So my wife was browsing saw this and thought it sounded just like me. I've said some wild things about ninjas, but this is....well crazy.

Let me first say that although this book reads like it was written by a 14-year old, I wouldn't recommend it for children - you'll understand why in a minute.

Although the book claims to be all about Real Ninjas, it is in fact (and not surpringly so) about anything but. It contains a seemingly never-ending narrative about how "sweet" ninjas are and how they kill everything, interspersed with random footnotes which are not footnotes in a traditional sense at all, but represent conversations the author had with his editor, and with his mother.

The book is so bizzare it almost defies description. The best summary I can make is that it is a purile and impossibly absurd piece of literature that reads like a gigantic run-on sentence that was written by a 14-year-old with ADD, a huge sugar high, and an unnatural appreciation for a completely fantastical image of ninjadom. It is replete with what I would call "locker room" or "bathroom humor" Erections and poop are frequently part of the discussion. There are quite a few sexual references, but they are written from the perspective of a very sexually immature individual, so while they could be construed as explicit, they are really just as absurd as the exposition about ninjas.

Random and inane observations just suddenly appear in the middle of an unrelated topic with no preamble or explanation. Most of the "facts" about ninjas are the product of an overactive imagination and a very loose grip on reality.

But in the end all of this serves to make it a very funny read, which I suppose is the point. I've been reading it off and on for the last couple of days and it has caused me to laugh out loud in an otherwise quiet room more than once. I'm still not sure whether the author really is a 14-year-old with ADD or just really good at portraying one. I suspect the latter because of a couple of lucent moments, but I could be wrong...