Barry Trotter and the Unauthorized Parody - book review

Michael Gerber wrote Barry Trotter and the Unauthorized Parody in 2002 and it apparently was successful enough that he retitled it Barry Trotter and the Shameless Parody and packaged it in boxed set with Barry Trotter and the Unnecessary Sequel and Barry Trotter and the Dead Horse, thus making a parody of the Harry Potter "book a year" publishing sequence as much as the books themselves.

I was impressed with the effort that Gerber went to in mimicking the characters but also in choosing names that are so close but not quite enough to get sued. Griffindor becomes Grittyfloor and Muggles become Muddles, for example. Barry's birthmark is the "interrobang" a combination exclamation point and question mark appropriate for such sentences as "You did what"

Since Barry is now in his 11th year at Hogwash, the situations and the language are a little too old for most of the young readers of the original series and that is probably just as well. If they knew their hero had moved from butterbeer to butterbourbon, they might lose a little faith in him. Bumblemore suffers similarly.

The plot is a complex issue of Barry trying to stop the making of a movie about the book about the making of the movie. Well, you get the drift. It's just enough plot to keep things moving without getting in the way of making fund of the plot, movie, book, or whatever.

Of course, parody can get a little tiresome but fortunately this book ends on page 174 several hundred pages earlier than the original books. But it was fun while it lasted.