Review: Operation Oversex by Anthony Robinson

Anthony Robinson envisions a bizarre female-fueled future in Operation Oversex, an updated homage to sexy and dystopian sci-fi literature of the past.

When Chad O’Connor and Tyrone Jackson sign up for a groundbreaking experiment in cryotechnology, they hardly expect to overshoot their wake-up window by more than five decades. They re-emerge in 2083, amidst a post-nuclear landscape, unaware that this new world is completely barren of men, though their strangely stoic caretakers immediately hint that something has gone terribly wrong.

After slipping free from the clutches of the all-powerful Union, Chad and Tyrone encounter the resistance army – battle-hardened women who actually don’t want to castrate them – and the two time-warped men are more than happy to get on board (and in bed) with the rebel cause. Trapped in a world overwhelmed with women, the only chance to succeed against authoritarian rule is to produce sons to increase the strength of the resistance, and reclaim some semblance of liberty.

Along this plotline, some of the developments are predictable – the last two men on the planet were inevitably going to be in “high demand” – but there are also a number of amusing twists and suspenseful moments to savor. When Chad and Tyrone are once again captured, and sentenced to death by organ harvesting, they will need to pull off one more unlikely escape.

The authorial voice is unavoidably male, with the depiction of the female characters rarely extending past their physical appearance, including their hair color, height, and the size/proportionality of their breasts. The humor is definitely raunchy, and the prose occasionally teeters towards inappropriate – at one point, Chad subdues a female captor by kissing and overwhelming her with a “heavy rush of serotonin and endorphins her mind simply wasn’t used to handling” – but Robinson steers back from most edges.

Even with the female-dominant cast, the largely superficial, male-gaze tone might be unappealing to female readers, in addition to Chad and Tyrone’s fairly overbearing blend of masculinity. Even during their moments for potential emotional vulnerability, as they are reckoning with losing 56 years of their lives, or considering what this strange future might hold for them, their attitudes feel out of whack with reality. Many of the scenes are comically over the top, such as the classroom lesson in which the teacher crushes a model of male genitalia with a sledgehammer, so the book does work as an off-the-rails satire, but could use more emotional balance to enhance those satirical moments.

The novel also needs a final proofread, with grammatical errors even in the first few pages. These slips pepper the prose, often coming in groupings of clumsy mistakes. Missing apostrophes, unnecessary hyphenations, fragmented sentences, and even inconsistency in the spelling of a protagonist’s name are difficult to ignore throughout. Repetition of language and partially redundant scenes that fail to progress the plot also give the story a sluggish feel.

That being said, this is an inventive, tongue-in-cheek caper with plenty of elbow-nudging jokes (i.e. MILF agents), demonstrating the author’s self-awareness of the goofiness in this genre, and even creating an outlandish genre of his own. So despite the rough edges and rushed writing, this is a fun and frivolous read that’s sure to be unlike anything you’ve read.