Review from The Washington Times Communities
"Olsen’s Nation is a parody on steroids. At every turn, author Randy Quarles mercilessly lampoons the Obama administration. . . . Olsen’s Nation offers a humorous but serious look into the potential side effects of Obamacare."
-- Joseph S. Diedrich, The Washington Times Communities
Full review at:
http://communities.washingtontimes.co...
-- Joseph S. Diedrich, The Washington Times Communities
Full review at:
http://communities.washingtontimes.co...
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Review: "a romping road-trip"“Olsen’s Nation is a well-written, refreshing parody about politics and the media with a very colorful cast of memorable characters.” - GoodbooksToday.com Reviews
Here's the full GoodbooksToday.com review:
The book begins with the bowel movements of Lex, the protagonist’s pug who also packs personality. Protagonist Marvin Edwards is a high-level government official who wor...ks at the Department of Universal Health and Life (DUHL). His elderly neighbor, ‘Crazy Frank,’ needles Marvin into changing Frank’s priority number so he can have a colonoscopy by attempting to bribe Marvin with bacon. Marvin refuses at first, but after he is rescued from a smoking television by Crazy Frank, decides to do Crazy Frank a favor. What follows is a romping road-trip to Mexico so Frank and a few others can seek healthcare, where healthcare is less regulated and hence more abundant.
Oh, and by the way, bacon is now ‘delicious contraband.’ That’s right - Olsen, the charismatic president, has banned bacon, as well as passed a myriad of laws in the quest of the greater good. Quarles’ vivid world is refreshing and thought-provoking. The government has more or less taken over the country, and is continuing to do so, with President Olsen pressing to run for a third term. Olsen’s Nation includes Kentucky Baked Chicken restaurants, televisions that could possibly be watching its viewers, and soy strips that substitute bacon (which is now nearly as valuable as gold). This information and backstory does not bog down the story, however. Instead, the reader is kept entertained by smooth-talking characters like Frank, who is never short of a strong opinion, and Lex, the constipated pug.
Readers will find that Olsen’s Nation not only parodies government regulation but the opposition as well. Lemon Puss, an opposition talk-show host, is ignorant, self-obsessed, and plain unlikable. Olsen’s Nation does not take sides, but rather raises issues the reader may mull over at one’s own leisure.
Thrown into Olsen’s Nation are also parodies of the media - the blockbuster movie Spiderman now not only has four sequels but fourteen, and is divided into parts. Mainstream news stations kiss the floor President Olsen walks on and hilariously distort the truth about the enemy. Olsen’s Nation is a well-written, refreshing parody about politics and the media with a very colorful cast of memorable characters.
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Olsen’s Nation by Randy Quarles
Harold See*
(*Harold See is a legal scholar, a constitutional law professor at the Belmont University College of Law, and a retired two-term Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.)
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I picked up “Olsen’s Nation” with a general idea what it is about: a comical look at government involvement in the minutia of daily life; in particular, federal occupation of health care.
I have become weary of the hyperbolic tone of today’s political discussions, and I suspect (polls show that it is more than a suspicion) that average Americans are even more turned off by the harsh, partisan rhetoric that bombards them. Yet, it is average Americans upon whom our future, and that of our children and grandchildren, rests. How can anyone get the attention of a talking-points-weary public above the din of the 24-hour news cycle, the group-rights hucksters and the TV and internet narcissists?
I have longed for a way to point out the obvious, simply, quietly, good-humoredly. I have longed for Frederic Bastiat’s “Candlemakers’ Petition,” in which he demonstrated, through the farce of a petition to the government to stop an unfair competitor of the candle makers – a competitor whose costs were much lower and who, therefore, had an unfair advantage over them – namely, the Sun. The absurdity of the petition that the Sun be blocked by law from competing with the candle makers made the simple point, in a humorous, not an ugly or insulting way, that using the law to benefit one group after another results in everyone’s ultimate harm.
Olsen’s nation is in this vein. A non-partisan can enjoy it. Nothing in it is ugly. It is not a name-calling diatribe. It is a joyful romp through wonderland. But it makes you wonder. It is a look, albeit a light-hearted one, in the direction we are heading. And, it makes one think.