Book Review: Drag Wars: Fangula vs. Pridezilla

Drag Wars: Fangula vs. Pridezilla by Robert A. Karl

If you’ve ever wondered what the life of a Drag Queen is really like, you’ll enjoy meeting the variety of characters that are in orbit around Fangula and Pridezilla, drag queens in Philadelphia. Author Robert A. Karl is remarkably brave and honest as he unflinchingly shows us all aspects of their lives, from watching makeup videos on YouTube to graphically portraying the private shows put on for an OnlyFans audience to pay the rent, from good friends who always have their back to family who often fails them.

The club scenes are well written and filled with fun descriptions and dialogue – oh, the snarky dialogue that permeates the story is delightful! In fact, everything about this story is presented in such a fully developed and well-written way that you’ll truly feel like you’ve experienced it all firsthand.

And it’s not all glitter and false eyelashes. When the Queens help out a library’s story hour, the reaction from the public isn’t always good. A nightclub crowd has a collective flashback to the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016. While for the most part the Queens are well-received and loved within their community, there’s still the world at large out there, a world that doesn’t understand them. This book could very well be a step in the right direction toward that understanding.