Come one, come all, and get your freak on for Jack Jetstark’s Intergalactic Freak Show!
That could have been how this story begins. This book, by Jennifer Lee Rossman, has a lot of fun moments to it. Although the writing style was fun, it wasn’t my favorite book of the month. For me, it was a book that started off strong but finished just okay.
Jack Jetstark is a circus performer who travels throughout the universe with a small band of “freaks.” Set in the far off future, there is a set of conjoined triplets, a girl with angel wings, and a mutant whose ancestors described the destruction of earth. Like most circus acts, there’s a catch to the whole thing. They only become these mutant creatures for a short period of time each day, when a song plays over their speakers.
As the story progresses, we discover that his former lover, Diantha, is the person that has been performing these songs for the past several years. When she stops performing the song, the circus ends. Oddly enough, all of these people start turning into their freak show selves.
That was the part that I enjoyed most about the book.
I didn’t dislike Jack Jetstark’s Intergalactic Freak Show, but I wasn’t as enchanted about the part where they were trying to sneak onto Diantha’s world in order to save the rest of the “freaks” (who were actually genetic experiments). There were questions about whether Diantha was good or bad, and I didn’t really find myself caring as much, because we didn’t get to interact with her that much. Her daughter did have a fairly big part in the book, and I liked her.
The book also had a couple of weak romances in it. I just didn’t see enough of the love interests together to care all that much. There was a love triangle in the book as well, but again, I didn’t see enough of the characters interacting to care too much about their relationship.
I did like the message that Jack Jetstark’s Intergalactic Freak Show was trying to convey. Just because someone is different doesn’t mean that they are lesser people.
Overall, I found this book good, but not amazing. If you read a lot of science fiction books and need something for your TBR, this book might be for you, but if you’re only going to read ten books this year, I probably wouldn’t make this your highest priority.