Diary Of A Farting Noob 1: High School

Jesus, Mary and St. Joseph, what the hell did I just read? Although a better question is - why in the world did I decide to read this in the first place?

A little backstory

I bought the second volume of My Brother's Husband on Google Play Books (because they were offering it for €3.99 and I am poor, okay? D:) and decided to check out what other books they have to offer. To my great (cheapskate) delight, they had a whole section of free books that I decided to check out (I think I was also procrastinating that evening).

Among a ton of murder mysteries, cheapy fantasy novels, free samples of books I might actually want to read, or companions to otherwise paid audio books, I found this. I gotta tell you - if it hadn't had the word ‘farting' in the title, I wouldn't've payed much attention to it, but now that it did, I rolled my eyes, while also being intrigued by it. “Surely,” I thought to myself, “this can't just be a book about a kid who farts all the time?” Weeeell... yes and no.

So what exactly is this book?

The story is based on an MMO game creation system called Roblox (this is an actual thing), where users can create their own massive multiplayer online games that other users can play. I feel like the book references various Roblox-based games as well.

I couldn't find anything about the author, aside from the fact that he's written quite a few of these books (some of which are even available as paperbacks!). He's also not unique in this genre of unofficial game-based adventure story - I quick search on Amazon gave me such titles as “Tales of an 8-Bit Kitten: Lost in the Nether: An Unofficial Minecraft Adventure”, “Diary of a Farting Zombie Kid” (which is also based on Minecraft) or some from Roblox variety: “Diary of Mike the Roblox Noob: Murder Mystery” (another noob, but with a different author), “The Adventures of Nooby Norman: Book 1 - Phantom Forces (An Unofficial ROBLOX Book)” (yet another author), or if you're tired of reading about a Noob, why not try “Nub's Adventures: The Great Jailbreak - An Unofficial Roblox Book”?

Boy, the internet sure is a place of wonders.

The story

The premise (on the first glance) is quite generic - a boy moved town and starts going to a new school, where he gets in trouble with a school bully, finds that one loyal friend, tries to talk to the girl he likes and gets embarrassed by his older brother. Well, that plus all the farting. And let me tell you - the title ain't no liar - he really is a FARTING noob.

In this universe, farting is almost a superpower. You can use farting as a weapon to knock someone out, you can use it as sleeping gas. Our eponymous protagonist, however, doesn't always have control over his farts, as he is prone to farting when nervous.

The whole book is written like a diary and spans about two weeks. Noob usually wakes up all hopeful for a new day, adds an entry to the diary and goes to school. When he returns from school, he adds another entry, stating that the opposite happened to what he was expecting.

We also learn about Noob;s family and his relstionship to his parents and brothers, which, I think, is an important addition, since this is a book for kids and the familial relationship is portrayed realistically (or as realistically as it can be in a book when farting is almost a martial art).

Why only two stars?

Among technical problems, like spelling, grammar mistakes (“Did you called in sick with Miss Peregrine yesterday?”), weird punctuation, or bad stylistics, Nooby Lee doesn't really develop his characters. Noob's best friend Diggle seems to appear out of nowhere and doesn't really do much. He's just there (is that what true friendship is like? Have I been doing it wrong all those years?).

I'm also not a big fan of bodily fluids, of which we get plenty.

Moreover, some characters' decisions seem to be inconsistent and the whole thing feels like it's the first draft. Interestingly enough, the first half of the book actually feels like it's written by a 9-year-old, but later the language gets more complex (in terms of expressions).

If it's so bad, why not one star?

Believe it or not, some parts of the book are actually fun to read! The pacing is very fast, which means a lot happens in this tiny span of pages.

But that's not all. As I mentioned before, this book has a (mostly) nice depiction of a familial relationship, and the main character gets to learn a valuable moral lesson and grow as a person! I'd easily give this book three stars just for that, if it weren't for the horrible writing.

How horrible is the writing, though?

Well, you can see for yourself. Here's a bunch of excerpts that had caught my eye as I read the book. I also selected them, because they are funny and weird.

WARNING! Portrayal of bodily fluids.

“My eyes water as the green fumes emanating from his ass reaches me.”

“It was the stickiest snot there is, and the poor guy couldn't get it off the back of his shirt once the snot stuck. He had to burn the shirt in the end.”

“Some went as far as to say his farts now are so deadly that plants wither away at his farts......” (yes, there really are six dots at the end of this sentence. I counted.)

“I jumped onto him and hugged him, transferring the poop onto him.”

“Next, it [the school bus] stopped by the prison to pick up the inmates. There were quite a few of them who is studying in Roblox. The guards meanwhile usually drive to school with their van.” Ok, this one is hilarious. Why would inmates go to school with kids? And why aren't their guards traveling in the same bus with them?

Should I read this book?

Erm... Depends? If you're open to new experiences and are not easily grossed out by poop and snot, you can give it a try - it's a super quick read (Goodreads says it's 72 pages long, but the one I got is 41). Other than that, if you're not a 7 to 9-year-old, you won't really get much out of this.