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The book is divided into titled chapters that focus on various aspects of the octopus alien’s daily lifestyle, including: means of transportation, vacation sites, main sources of food, and marriage. Although the title says that the Octopi are predatory, they were kind enough to show a human, named Daniel, these aspects of life, to help educate the lesser species of humans.
Before even beginning the novel, I was attracted to the small summary given by the author, which said that the book was about alien Octopi and their planet. I am generally attracted to reading material that deals with alien species and their interactions with humans, so I thought that this book would be right up my ally. And for the most part, I wasn’t disappointed. The aliens and their lifestyles were detailed enough to be interesting, even if they were octopi rather than humanoid in species.
I also liked the details that Rosenthal added to this made up species of aliens. Through reading the book, you can tell that thought was given to the overall concept of the Octopi and how they would function. However, I think that the manner in which the concept was presented was lacking and in turn lowered the appeal of the book as a whole. Everything was presented in a clinical manner similar to non-fiction books on species of animals. All the information was presented to seem factual and was a little too dry. Had the book been more like a story of Daniel meeting the Octopi and learning to deal with this new influx of information, I think it would have gone over better. As it was, you only got third person mentions of Daniel, who was supposed to be the person through whose eyes the reader learns about the octopi.
“How about myself simply walking somewhere! Eye miceyself keep myself as a law extremely quiet, very still, do not dares to move my owned limbs a small bit ever normally but keep very relaxed permanently relaxed and still.” (Chapter 8 )
What really killed my interest in reading Planet of the Supreme Predatory Octopus was the horrible grammar and spelling that was sprinkled in throughout the book. This one example of full chapters in this style of writing, made it hard to not only read the text but to understand what the text was trying to say.
The first chapter of the book was written in this style and I almost gave up, simply because I thought that the entire book would be written like this and I was having trouble getting into the story. However, I learned that this writing style reflected one of the characters within the book and that whenever he was narrating, this was the style that was used.
It took me a while longer, to understand why this was the writing being used, when the Octopi are said to be an intelligent species. The truth is that they are a conceited race and the jumbled grammar reflects the lowered intelligence that the Octopi actually possess, without outright stating that they are dumb. I guess that in using this writing style, I have to give some praise to Rosenthal for taking the risk to give more depth in his characters. But, for the most part, I found myself frustrated in trying to understand what was being said and it detracted a lot from the overall book and my overall enthusiasm.
Something that Rosenthal could also improve upon is the repetitiveness of certain characteristics that are described in the book, specifically the cannibalism and its connection to the children that the octopi have. I have no problem with the concept of cannibalism and its use in ficticious narratives, but there were a number of times that I felt like it was being used only for its shock factor to try and keep the book from plateauing. Then coupled with the fact that the octopus babies were the main food consumed by octopi, I just was put off a little. It was mentioned in more than one chapter and the additional times it was mentioned added no new information. It was a restatement of “the octopus aliens eat their babies!! How shocking!” except it didn’t feel shocking.
Another factor that I think could be improved is the lack of a plot in the book. The book focuses primarily on the education of the reader on the Octopus aliens and even the reason behind this detailed education is vague bordering on nonexistent. From what I could deduce, it was mainly the aliens way of trying to inform the less intelligent species of humans on the octopi and how they were able to prosper and create these amazing technological devices. Also, there were also a few sections that tried explaining actual extraterrestrial phenomena on Earth through these alien characters. I thought that Rosenthal did a pretty good job on making these fictitious connections, but overall, there was no momentum to the book. You could stop reading for a week and pick it back up without any confusion and that wasn’t for me.
And lastly, the ending of the book was the biggest disappointment. While I won’t explain what it includes, I will say that it deviates drastically from what the rest of the book was about and I couldn’t understand why it was even included. It didn’t add to or clarify anything that was initially presented with the book.
In conclusion, I don’t think that Planet of the Supreme Predatory Octopus is at the level it could be as a good book. The idea is there but if hidden under loads of information and no spark to make that information interesting. Had there been an understandable plot, even a simple or overused one, this book could have been a 2, but as it stands, it needs a lot more work before I would give it that rating. That being said, overall I would have to give Planet of the Supreme Predatory Octopus, by Daniel H. Rosenthal, a rating of 1 out of 4.
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