Sam Baker is an ordinary boy living in a corrupt society. Thanks to an unfortunate combination of a head injury caused by school bullies, a rare form of brain cancer, and the total incompetence of the poorly funded national health service, he faces certain death. Until his distraught mother finds an eccentric doctor with a plan that sounds insane: he surgically removes Sam's brain and replaces it with an Alakazam's. Remarkably, the surgery is a success, creating a human-Pokémon hybrid the likes of which the world has never seen before. With the body of a human and the amazing brain power of an Alakazam, what will the newly monikered Zam accomplish?

I think that nearly anyone who reads this book will tell you straight away that the best thing about it is its humor. You might not expect it from the description I just gave or even from the description of the book itself, but once the story gets going, it's absolutely full of moments that will make you laugh out loud. My personal favorite was the chapter where Zam takes his girlfriend Taylor to the park, where he uses his understanding of Pokémon language to hear all the crazy things the Pokémon are shouting at the oblivious humans.There are also great back-and-forths between characters, funny situations, and sentences formed with just the perfect blend of unexpected twist and comedic timing.

The real pity is that more people haven't read this book, given how fun and enjoyable of a read it truly is. And I think one reason for this might be precisely because the average reader wouldn't even realize that it does have humor in it. Gremlin, I know you won best humor in the 2017 Pokémon Watty Awards. Mention it at the bottom of your description! Also, I know you're particularly attached to your British "u"s, but do yourself a favor and add a "humor" tag alongside your "humour" tag just for those silly American readers who are searching for it.

Seriously, though, there are some other things you can do in order to show off the humor of this book a little better. And make what I would argue is a better beginning altogether for this book. As it is, the first two chapters of the book are written from the perspective of a character we never meet again. Main character Sam is nowhere to be found, presumably lying in a coma while his tearful mother pleads for him. All in all, it's pretty sad, especially if you think about the fact that the old Sam is literally becoming brain dead. That's a bummer for his mom, the only real sympathetic character present at this point. Even though the story tries to spin the surgery as a good thing because the mother would rather have a son with a new brain than lose her son entirely and because the doctor who no one takes seriously gets to actually pull off a medical marvel, I personally found it tough to get over the straight facts of the matter.

Chapter Three starts off with Sam adjusting to life with a new Alakazam brain. We pop into his perspective and never look back (for the most part). The point that really stuck out to me as a critic, however, was the fact that Sam hasn't been told that he got a surgery to replace his brain, which means we get several scenes of hints being dropped about him being different and having no idea why, followed by a scene in which his mother has to tell him... a summarized version of the first two chapters. So this is a red flag for me because it means the reader is spending all this time knowing something that the character doesn't know. This is called dramatic irony and can be used for excellent effect, but it doesn't add a single thing in this case. Even worse, the reader has to read through a retelling of information that zie already knows, which personally makes me skip ahead while saying "blah blah blah" inside my head.

If I was writing this, I would start with Chapter Three or maybe even Chapter Four, the one where Sam goes back to school. Put the reader immediately inside the head of our main character, a young boy who might be similar in age to the intended audience of the story, a boy who seems to have a mystery surrounding him, a boy who is having difficulties with learning and adjusting to life and with bullies at school. All of this makes him a sympathetic character who the audience can probably relate to and is embroiled in a set of circumstances that catches the attention and makes the readers want to read on to find out what's happening. Even if the description gives away the fact that he's a hybrid, there would be interest in the form of wondering exactly how this has affected him and what he's going to do when he finds out about it. As the hypothetical writer, my answer is that the first thing he's going to do is get the first part of the story out of his mother and then visit the good doctor, meaning that we get the first two chapters, but from Sam's perspective and with him reacting to them.

What does this accomplish? It means that, even though we find out that the old Sam died, we've gotten to quite like the new one and are happy that he was given a new life. It gives the writer a chance to start off the story on a lighter note that showcases some of the excellent humor that is currently found later in the story (if we start on Chapter Four, there's a nice bit with the teacher). It creates a space in which to build a more complex understanding of Sam/Zam and how he views himself. It creates an opportunity for someone to wonder why the Alakazam who "donated" his brain had been attacked and left for dead, which the doctor didn't care about but which felt like a big unresolved plot point for me as a reader and which I'd bet anything that the guy who owns that brain would want to know about.

The other big advantage this would have would be in giving the readers a more accurate representation of which characters are actually important in the story. Since we start out with Mrs. Baker and the doctor and since they're both characterized fairly well, the readers form a natural expectation that there will be more to come from them. In reality, the more you read and think about the story, the more you realize that the author intended for them to be minor characters.

This became somewhat painfully obvious for me in the scene in which Zam's mother comes to visit him after he's gone off onto his exciting new plot arc of adventuring and solving mysteries. It starts off very promisingly with a funny situation and the return of a character who I had gotten fairly attached to in the beginning and who I believed to be acting totally in character given the attachment to her son she had displayed in that beginning. Unfortunately, though, as the scene went on, it just seemed to me as though the author hadn't fully fleshed her out as a character. Her defining traits seem to be just typically mother-like, for lack of a better term, and the only thing she seems to care about is wanting her son to be safe and protected. I just wasn't able to puzzle out her motivations or patterns of thinking, and I have to conclude that it comes down to a sadly common failure on the part of young authors to understand the true mentality of a parent. The usual solution to this would be for the author to improve in this area, but, in this case, I think the author can more easily resolve the issue by doing what he had probably intended in the first place, which was to depict this character only through the perspective of a son who's going through a phase of wanting independence from her and who also doesn't understand her as a full person.

As for the other characters, I'd have to say that they're given exactly the amount of attention suited to their roles. Zam as our main character never fails to be interesting, entertaining, and the center of all the exciting happenings of the plot. He has a consistent personality and character traits, as well as a well-executed set of flaws that counterbalance the awesomeness of his superhuman intelligence. Tristan, the neighbor/friend with a thick accent and an unapologetic love for drinking and lusting after women, is absolutely perfect. Duncan, one of the main villains, has a pretty clever plan that's both realistic for the world the story takes place in and presents a sizable threat. He's not an easy target for our hero to take down, which makes for an exciting climax.

As for Taylor the girlfriend, Emily the police detective, and Crawford the additional villain, I like the way that they were handled, but with some caveats. I'm going to start with Crawford because it was just one little part that I took issue with. This would be the scene in which she fails to realize that Zam is pulling the same trick on Duncan as he previously pulled on her. This would be fine for a less intelligent character, but Crawford has been shown to be an excellent lawyer and incredibly clever and detail-oriented when it comes to pulling off her own schemes. I just find it difficult to believe she would have fallen for this and tend to wonder whether she really needed to be present in this scene at all, given that she doesn't do much and taking her out would solve the issue entirely.

Emily also has a scene that could be solved, in my opinion, by taking out just a couple sentences. This would be a scene in which she and Zam visit a suspect and she steps into the door after he blatantly breaks into it right in front of her. I would argue that this doesn't make sense for her at all since it's obviously against the rules she's meant to follow and since her entire plotline is that she's trying to smash some glass ceilings at her job and getting in trouble with her boss would kind of ruin that. I say that it would only take two sentences because she does do her job of telling Zam not to break in before he goes ahead and ignores her and because right after she steps into the apartment she gains something that she could have gained from the outside and which actually is probable cause for entering.

My bigger concern about Emily, though, is not so much with her character as it is with the way her plotline is handled. Don't get me wrong, I love the concept of her plotline, and I really want to love the execution of it as well. The problem is that we never see the evidence of the problem she is fighting. Upon meeting her for the first time, Zam immediately jumps to the conclusion that she's the victim of sexist attitudes in the police force and that her contributions aren't being properly valued nor her skills properly assessed. He does this in a Sherlock Holmes-like way that we're obviously supposed to just accept as a fact from a superior intellect, but it would actually be incredibly easy and much more effective to showcase some sexism actually happening to her. I suspect the author might even know someone who has an idea of what job-based sexism looks like and who he might be able to ask about it.

Beyond that, it felt a bit like Emily was taking credit for Zam's work rather than proving that she also does excellent work that is deserving of recognition. I know it's important for the hero of the story to do some awesome stuff, and the scene of the two of them working together in a particular chase scene in the book is an excellent example of the balance I'd be looking for. The problem I have is with the cleanup from that scene, in which **SPOILER WARNING** I would expect Emily to take the suspect into custody and do the additional work required to gather a body of proof against him, perhaps demonstrate some excellent questioning to draw out a confession, and save the little girl who had been kidnapped. Because, come on, a little girl was kidnapped in a manner that even the usually selfish Zam admits to be disgusting, and I want to know that she's either miraculously ok or that she's at least better off than she would have been if the kidnapper hadn't been apprehended. **SPOILER ENDS** Something like this would fit the bill exactly for showing off Emily's skills as a police officer and proving that she truly does deserve the promotion that she's previously been denied.

As for Taylor, I have to admit that she's much better in the current version of the story than she was in the version I had read before the author made changes to it. I love the picnic scene, the scenes where she's being playful with Zam, the scenes where she's standing her own against him, etc. I also thought she had a compelling personality and very realistic thoughts and emotions. She has flaws of her own that make her not a perfect character, either, which is definitely good for a realistic relationship depiction. The problem is that I don't quite understand who she is outside of her relationship with Zam.

I have a theory about Taylor, which would have most of her plotline make more sense than it currently does if it were true. My theory is that Taylor doesn't have any strong connections, either to family or friends, and that she actually desperately wants to escape from the life she has. This could be because of a tragedy that she's only recently getting over when she meets Zam, which would be the perfect explanation for why some mysterious "friends" (who we never see again and who Taylor obviously doesn't have deep ties to, given later events) are able to drag her out to a crazy party where she gets drunk and winds up in a stranger's bed. This being a set of circumstances which are clearly shown as out of character for her but which could easily be explained if she was trying to distract herself from her recent tragedy and desperate to form a meaningful connection to another person.

It would also explain how she falls so easily and so completely into Zam's life afterwards. And also why she puts up with so much of his selfishness and poor social skills for so long. Zam tells her that she's beautiful. He catches her attention with a face she finds attractive, excellent cooking skills, and a showing of his impressive intellect. This is enough to get her to the actual hooking point, which is the dangerous situation he drags her into that gets her heart pumping and probably causes her to mistake her fear response, at least in part, for falling in love with him. The fact that he wants to keep her around makes her think that he appreciates her in a way that maybe no one else in her life does, and that would be the perfect cocktail to create the situation. Unfortunately, all of this is only in my head.

Even more unfortunate is the fact that I can't come up with an explanation for a particular behavior later in the story. **SPOILERS AGAIN** After Taylor finds out that she's pregnant, she has an excellent scene in which she wants to tell Zam right away and is rightfully upset that she's unable to because of a selfish decision that he's made. The problem is that I have no idea why she agrees to accompany him to the poker tournament after he comes back into her life months later, especially since he claims to need her support and ends up only wanting to have "victory sex" with her. The real point though, is that I have no idea why she doesn't take the first private moment as her opportunity to say: "I'm pregnant, you jerk!" except in much fouler language because that would be entirely appropriate to her character and the style of the book if not to me personally. Why does she wait? Why does she tell him when she finally does? And, speaking of that scene, which was absolutely stomach-churning, by the way, was she planning on telling him that night before he began attempting to rape her, or did his behavior drive her to it? Because, you know, I'd like to know. Also, can the narration somehow admit (even if Zam refuses to) that the reason his apartment is a pigsty after she leaves is not so much because she's not around to clean up after him but because he misses her so much that he's begun neglecting absolutely every aspect of his life? I just want the satisfaction, really. **SPOILERS END**

Moving away from the characters, though, I have to at least briefly mention the action/adventure/mystery aspects of the plot. They're clearly not meant to be 100% realistic, but they match up very well with the sorts of antics that police and detective tv shows use as staples. It's just believable enough for the reader to decide to go with it, and, since it's clearly not taking itself seriously, you have no need to do so either. I'm not even annoyed by the unrealistic computer hacking, even though I know perfectly well how it could have been done better. That's the kind of expertise that the average reader doesn't actually need to have in their back pocket, and the unrealistic version is more fun anyway. The plot also has exciting bits like the chase scene, a good mix of parts where you're impressed with Zam's genius solutions if you don't focus in too closely, some tense standoffs with the villains, and really just some good clean fun. The only part I was really disappointed in was the finale because it's not really clear what sort of impact Zam actually had on the events.

A few minor points before I move on to the obligatory technical section: I want resolution for the baby Torkoal! I love the associate Weedle. The whole "I don't think anyone wants to see [Crawford in a bikini]" line—I see what you did there. And **SLIGHTLY VEILED SPOILER** I thought that Magnezone could float. **SPOILER ENDS**

Overall, this story is pretty good on the technical side, although there were a number of typos scattered throughout and a few issues with words like "nodded" being used as dialogue tags, the only consistent errors were with missing commas. If you don't think about the commas, or, let's face it, if you're the type of reader who doesn't even notice commas, you'll have a pretty clean read.

So, do I recommend this book? I really want to because so much of it is fun and exciting and humorous, and, really, have you seen how much I care about these characters based on the fact that I went on for so long about them? But it also has some issues. I feel like it's right on the edge of earning that recommendation, but Chapter Twenty-Two needs a trigger warning, even though the book as a whole has an "adult themes" warning, and Taylor just needs more explanation. Regardless, I am looking forward to reading the sequel that I sincerely hope is in the works, and I do sincerely think that more people should read the book. So if this sounds like the kind of book that you'd enjoy, then what are you waiting for? Go check it out!