KING DORK (Frank Portman) - January 13/07

This is the sort of book that would have been so much better as a short story. Portman's tendency to ramble on and on and on is virtually impossible to ignore; the book is consequently rife with scenes that either feel superfluous or overlong by several pages. The inclusion of a seriously tedious mystery doesn't help, nor does the fact that the main character thinks he's super-cool and a crazy outsider, but he's really not (aside from jocks, he's about as mainstream as they come). There's some good stuff here, but it's ultimately too hard to overlook the crazy overlength. ** out of ****