Book Review: The Reluctant Journey of Manfred Bugsbee

Ricardo Cruz

The Reluctant Journey of Manfred Bugsbee by Michael Farfel, Montag Press, 2022

Reviewed by Scott Neuffer

Right off the bat, I will tell you: I’m not the best person to review this book. I don’t regularly read fantasy, and I recognize trampset contributor Michael Farfel’s The Reluctant Journey of Manfred Bugsbee is some kind of epic fantasy. That said, I enjoyed the book. And the fantasy genre elements I did recognize — arduous landscapes, battles, mythic swords — were all infused with the author’s raw, boundless imagination.

I first encountered Michael’s imagination in a story he published with us about oven repair. It was reading this piece when we discovered his talent for building worlds within worlds. Bugsbee showcases that talent on a huge scale. The plot concerns an average-seeming guy, Manfred, who spends his days drinking at pubs and working as a copywriter before being thrust into another realm where a battle is raging for the fate of all realms. Saint Erneel — one of many crusty yet potent characters — takes Manfred under his wing as they try to stop an enemy army that likes to eat suns and wipe out existence. We watch as Manfred grows from diffident slouch to epic hero.

It’s a grand, thrilling journey, tumbling through Farfel’s mind as he creates worlds. His prose is vivid, grounded in sensory experience that gives these worlds life. Here is Manfred eating a squirming, alien fruit: “The juice of the fruit pumped a cool breath through his whole body and for a moment the colors of the world were more vibrant.”

Farfel ups the stakes of the book when exploring the metaphysical. He takes the genre elements and folds and unfolds them in visionary passages. With the same depth he unveiled in the trampset piece, he maps space and time with a keen sense of paradox: “As he looked at it, it revealed itself to be both a pinprick at the edge of the universe and the whole of the world around him.”

Bugsbee is a journey worth taking, if you’re up for it. It is at times brutal, drenched in the gore of battle, and at times as lovely as the grasses and flowers of strange worlds Farfel describes. At its best, the book offers the psychedelic — a heady trip through the cosmos and the self.