Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse is a 2008 post-apocalyptic novel by Victor Gischler, written in a humorous tone. In it, nine years after the end of the world, Mortimer Tate emerges from seclusion, whereupon he has many harrowing adventures.
Gischler has gone for humor and action over character and story. Go-Go Girls certainly is action-packed, as the main character and his associates go through one action scene after another, often without any real flow, rhyme or reason. Any interest this might generate is diminished by the lack of attention to character. Gischler doesn't particularly care about his characters, so why should the reader? And ultimately, Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse just isn't that funny, so it doesn't have that going for it either. On the whole, it feels like a disposable story – action for its own sake, and little else. Gischler has gone heavy on sex and violence by and large for their own sakes, in a way reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino (not a compliment). It's typically pointless and often vile.
There are a number of narrative details that Gischler loses track of. For example, the main character loses his pinky at the very beginning of the novel. He suffers no ill effects from this whatsoever, and Gischler only mentions it two or three times over the rest of the novel. Things like this add to the reader's feeling that Gischler just dashed this thing off. If he's not invested in it, why should the reader be?
In the manner of a bad action movie, Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse is an unfunny novel of dubious entertainment value. Mindless entertainment is well and good, unless it forgets to be entertaining.
