Bodyslick an Afrofuturistic story. By John H Sibley

This is a book I’ve been wanting to read for a long time.  This is one of few books I bought NEW.  Most of the books I buy are either from an author or from a used bookstore but this was a book I wanted, no I needed to read.  I first saw Bodyslick in an ad in Vibe magazine.  The cover was nice and it looked like an album cover more than the cover of a book.  I consider myself late to reading because I didn’t start reading for fun until my 40s.  I blame the lack of interesting books among other things.  I love Science Fiction but even the books which had interesting and crazy monsters on the cover read boring.  They had weird words and corny reactions.  I feel that if there were more people like me in the stories I would have read more.  That’s why as a writer I am writing for myself at 16.  That brings me back to Bodyslick.  Since it looked so Hip Hopish I thought it might be good and similar to my own writing and goal.

Bodyslick was exactly what I thought it was.  It is a fast moving, urban talking story.  It reminded me of my own writing.  Bodyslick has the tough edge of Streetlit with the Sci-fi setting of Blade Runner.  Bodyslick tells the story of a human body parts dealer Malcolm Steel Jr aka Bodyslick.  It takes place in the year 2031 not too far into the future but far enough to have some major differences.  In the story humans have developed a sophisticated body parts underground trade.  The story follows Bodyslick as he does business around the world selling legs, hearts and even heads.  

 Bodystlick was more Streetlit than it was Sci-fi.  It had a few elements of Sci-fi but more Streetlit elements. There were some pretty gangster scenes in Bodyslick. While the pacing was fast and the chapters weren’t long I felt the story was long.  It reminded me of the movie Sin City where the story went all over the place but came together at the end.  If I could improve on something in the story, it would be to focus on the main story because I felt a lot of the scenes weren’t important to the main conflict of the story.  Bodyslick was an enjoyable read and I think it was a good book.  I like the characters being black.  I like the variety of elements in the story.  They surprised me.  Robot love and gangster kill scenes were not what I expected.  This book is a good entre into Sci-fi for Streetlit readers.  We need more male readers and this book has just the Donald Goines edge to interest them. 

I give this book 3 stars.