Paul Girard is in a dead-end, no-brainer of a job. He works in a bookshop. He should really like working in a bookshop because he loved books but that's one of his many problems, the books he loves aren't being published. The books that are have the same no-brainer, not going anywhere undertones of his life.

Once upon a time, Paul wanted to write but he realised, unfortunately for him, that he was no good at it. He wasted twenty years of his working life on easy jobs so he could bash away at the typewriter of an evening. Once he realised he wasn't any good at it, gave up and resigned himself to the fundamental fact of life. Life is shit!

Until one day when a cyber shrub disturbs his early morning Egg McMuffin and offers him a Yo-yo and a Nixen Pez Dispenser. The Yo-yo allows him to travel to cross dimensional parallel worlds of his choosing and if he chooses to take someone with him on his travels he offers them a Pez.

The worlds that Paul Girard chooses are quite diverse and span a lot of faiths, scientific prescripts and even have the odd nod to people we know and openly hate! To name but one...Building Gates of the Microsoft Back Door problem! There is an overall feeling of familiarity with scenarios, creating an almost comfortable backdrop.

Paul Di Filippo is best known as an American writer of short stories, collections include 'Ribofunk' and 'The Steampunk Trilogy'. He is mainly published in magazines of the genre and even his books that are published are seldom seen in the UK especially because of the nature of the houses that publish him. His books are quite costly because of this fact, no matter which side of the Atlantic that you reside.

This book starts off incredibly funny. The first chapter, ‘Faces of The First Throw’ is a reflection of Paul Di Filippo's observations of the American life, possibly his life as a writer. I mean this first chapter had me laughing out loud and hoping I wouldn't wet myself! Can you sense that this gets worse? Well, I'm afraid it does.

Once the fun of the first chapter is over we slip into a repetitive cycle of chapters explaining each wish that Paul Girard makes to the Yo-yo. In some of these throws the world he goes to is complex, drawing on the Butterfly Effect in the chaos world and Cellular Automata in the virtual world of logic. Each time the result of the throw is strange and needs working out.

Once the character does, he then goes into great detail describing the science behind the phenomena. Where this idea could be good would be in the subtleties of explaining these worlds, unfortunately it appears too clever for its own good, making for a contrived read. The reader is constantly wondering if he/she is reading a work of fiction or in fact their recent intellectual non-fictional purchase from the bookshop.

Maybe this is how Science Fiction of this nature should be? I have to say though I think not. It drives you to distraction very early on that every disturbing place is explained away, rather than being a story Di Filippo serves up a huge explanation. There is even a comment from one of the other characters after leaving a world in which she has to study textbooks that if she ever read another it would be too soon. Is this Di Filippo's throw away comment about the book we're actually reading I wonder?

This makes it sound like there were no redeeming features apart from the very first chapter, in that sense there were a few more than that. The shrub later comes to explain a problem in the nature of his species and closely related species that are anti-human. It's quite wittily explained by a certain Microsoft programme and that brought a smile to my face. Also the Cellular Automata world had its moments where I was smiling.

One constant in the ever changing world of Paul Girard is that sex and how it happens in each of his chosen places is covered in detail, I've come to understand that reading about sex like this is downright boring. If you have to explain it to that degree then you may as well be Freud, write about sex a lot and resign yourself to celibacy!

I think the problem with this book and perhaps Di Filippo's limited exposure is the very nature of his writing style. At times you feel that Di Filippo's ultimate goal in life is to knock the very profession he finds himself in and perhaps this anti-Midas touch becomes his overriding agenda. What he writes could be called satire but, quite frankly, it just seems like a whinging session. In a way, I found that at times he is almost boosting his ego with what he writes and in the same chapter serves up a plate of self-abuse.

I, myself, like a read that draws on science and is quirky. ‘Fuzzy Dice’ for me though hides behind the quirkiness, a textbook innard that I didn't much enjoy. If you like the very first chapter as I did then read some of the works of Robert Rankin.

While he is not Science Fiction specific, he is damn good at what he does. His books sometimes have absolutely no plot and you would be hard pushed to follow any real story-line but this is how off-the-wall should be done. Whereas Di Filippo's version of off-the-wall has the nails of one hand firmly attached to tangible bricks and mortar.

I have to say then that this book was a complete no-brainer for me, its reader. I wanted to laugh out loud as I had done reading that first chapter but basically I felt like I had been sold short all through the rest of the book. You know the feeling when you are in a situation where a million and one better places spring into your head that you would rather be at? This book epitomises that feeling but there were a million and one books I would rather be reading and some of them aren't that hot either!

Donna Jones