‘Blonde Bombshell’ – Tom Holt (Orbit)

If I’m after something a little humorous in my reading then I never seem to travel too far from the tried and tested authors that always make me laugh. Sometimes you just have to stick with what you know, especially you’re a little low and need your spirits raising. For me, my ‘humorous writers of choice’ are messrs Pratchett and Rankin; two writers who never fail to make me chuckle at the very least. I’m always after trying new stuff out though and although Tom Holt doesn’t quite fall into this category (having read ‘Paint Your Dragon’ some years ago) it had been long enough for it to feel like I was trying out something new for the first time!
Things didn’t quite work out the way I’d planned...

A planet destroying bomb has been fired from an alien planet and it’s aimed directly at Earth. You would have thought that the job of such a bomb would be fairly straight forward but when there’s a certain level of sentience involved that’s when things get tricky...
Before the bomb can fulfil its primary objective there’s one small job that it has to do first. Another bomb had been fired at Earth some years ago; the Earth is still very much there but the bomb itself has vanished. Where did it go? ‘Our’ bomb has to answer this question if it’s to do its job of protecting its home planet. The way in which it goes about answering this question is about to make things even more complicated than they already were. Certainly more complicated than there was any need for them to be...

The bottom line is that you either find something funny or you don’t. There’s no middle ground; even if something only elicits a quiet chuckle then that’s enough, you found it to be funny. That’s quite a fine line for a book to tread when you think about it. A comedic book is going to stand or fall on it’s humour and jokes; like I said, no middle ground...

With this in mind it’s probably fairest for me to say that if you’re a fan of Tom Holt’s work then you’re going to enjoy this one. If you find his jokes funny then you’re in for more of the same. I on the other hand...? Well, I didn’t laugh out loud once. Not a chuckle, not a snigger. The corner of my mouth may have twitched upwards at one point but that could just have likely been my fighting off an encroaching sneeze as it was a smile. I didn’t find the jokes funny, I didn’t find the situational humour funny. It just didn’t work for me. Not good for a book that sells itself as a comedy.

This was more than a bit of a shame really as I liked the concept behind ‘Blonde Bombshell’ and the way that seemingly disparate strands of plot all seemed to come together at the end and form something cohesive. I also liked the clever little riff on ‘Planet of the Apes’ that was present throughout the book. I found myself wondering how different my opinion would have been if ‘Blonde Bombshell’ had been marketed as sci-fi instead of humour. There was certainly a story there that was worth a look.

The thing was though that ‘Blonde Bombshell’ was marketed as humour and that’s where it fell down for me. I didn’t find it funny and a result of that was that I was faced with characters who were trying to be funny but not succeeding at all. An interesting concept that came across as flat in it’s execution.

Humour is a funny thing though isn’t it? ‘Blonde Bombshell’ wasn’t my thing but, like I said earlier, if you’re already a fan of Tom Holt’s work then it could very well be yours...

Six out of Ten

Mini Reviews?

Earlier this year I found myself in the enviable position of having a little stockpile of books that I could review while I was reading the thicker stuff. Me being me though, I ended up reading a whole load of other stuff and leaving the stockpile to gather dust in the corner... The way it stands now, you’re not going to get full on reviews of these books as I’d have to read them all over again and I don’t have the time. What you will get though are the impressions that have stayed with me since I read them. The people at ‘Fantasy Book Critic’ have already coined the ‘capsule review’ phrase so I can’t really use that which is a shame as it’s a great phrase. Call this post what you want really but here’s what I thought of the following books...



‘Necrophenia’ – Robert Rankin (Gollancz)
This one took a while to get going but once it did Mr Rankin was on top form. I got the impression that the story suffered slightly this time round by his tendency to go off on an epic tangent whenever it suited him... ‘Necrophenia’ is brimming over with irreverent humour though and it’s chock full of zombies as well so I was happy.



‘Quarantined’ – Joe McKinney (Lachesis Publishing)
I loved ‘Dead City’ so jumped at the chance to read ‘Quarantined’, things weren’t as good this time round. For me, McKInney’s strengths lie in his ability to portray the meltdown of a city the way he did in ‘Dead City’. This wasn’t the approach he took in ‘Quarantined’ though (with San Antonio being locked down after an attack of bird flu) and his tale of a city going through the aftermath of a crisis lacked the punch of his former work. It was a case of comparing ‘something waiting to happen’ with ‘things that are happening in your face right now’... The ‘murder mystery’ element of the plot was fun to follow though.



‘Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ & ‘Restaurant at the End of the Universe’ – Douglas Adams (Pan MacMillan)
You know how it is, you meet a friend that you haven’t seen in years only to find that you have nothing in common and getting back in touch was a mistake. That was me and these two books. I hadn’t read either of these books in a long time (years) and despite them still being as well written as I remember, they just weren’t funny anymore. Had I read them too often as a kid and killed the jokes? Maybe, maybe not. I wasn’t laughing though and haven’t bothered to pick up the others.



‘Broken Arrow’ – Paul Kane (Abaddon Books)
I love reading Abaddon’s ‘Afterblight Chronicles’ and ‘Broken Arrow’ was no exception. It’s lightweight but fun and a very accessible retelling of the ‘Robin Hood’ story. Maybe not the best book in the ‘Chronicles’ but still worth a read if you’re a fan.



‘Winter Duty’ – E.E. Knight (Roc)
If there was ever a reason for not starting a series at the eighth book then this book is it. I thought I’d give it a go and see what happened. What I got was a confusing mish mash of names and references to past events that I had no idea about. If that wasn’t bad enough, the tone was so dry as to leave me dehydrated and the constant recounting of troop deployments did nothing for me at all. Not a great reading experience...

‘Retromancer’ – Robert Rankin (Gollancz)

I’ve been a fan of Robert Rankin ever since college when I realised that the ‘Brentford’ books were a lot more fun to read than what was on the official reading list for the course (so were a lot of books actually but that’s an entirely different story...) Ever since then I’ve made it my mission to read as many books of his as possible, I’m not quite there yet but I’ll keep on going! I still haven’t read last year’s book, ‘Necrophenia’, and that was originally going to be the subject of this post... until I saw the gorgeously pink cover for ‘Retromancer’ (although the cover image on Amazon is purple...) and knew that there was no option but to pick the book up and get reading. I have to say that I wasn’t too sure about ‘Retromancer’ to begin with but, yet again, Rankin totally does the business as far as I’m concerned!

Something is badly wrong in the Brentford of 1967. Could it be the SS officers patrolling the streets and torturing the unemployed? Could it be that the ‘Wife’s Legs’ cafe is serving Bratwurst rather than bangers? Could it be that this is a world where Nazi Germany won the Second World War and the whole of North America is a nuclear wasteland...?
If something is this badly wrong, and needs setting to rights straight away, then there’s only (perfect) man and his acolyte who could possibly take the job on. Hugo Rune offers the world his genius, all he asks in return is that the world covers his expenses and that he is allowed to visit dire retribution on cab drivers everywhere. With his acolyte Rizla, Hugo Rune must travel back to war-torn London and solve twelve cosmic conundra so that the future can be set straight. At the same time, there is a veritable horde of spies, robots, death rays, creatures of myth (and the one and only Count Otto Von Black) to get the better off...

Opening up a new Robert Rankin book is like getting back in touch with old friends after years apart. All your favourite characters are there, doing what they do best, all wrapped lovingly within the same old puns and in-jokes that somehow never stop being funny. It must be a tradition, or an old charter, or something :o) This, of course, may prove a problem if you’re picking up Rankin’s work for the first time. Half the fun of reading these books are the running gags that appear time after time (up to a point though, I’ll go into that more later on). If you’re reading Rankin for the first time then you’ll either get it or you won’t, it’s that simple. As far as I’m concerned, I ‘get it’ and Rankin shows that he still has it in ‘Retromancer’ with choice cuts like...

‘It seemed that we had just caught her as she was on her way out, and her face was flushed and pink.
Mr. Rune made faces at me and introduced himself.
“I know who you are,” I told him.
“I am introducing myself to this lady,” he said.’

Like I said, you’ll either get it or you won’t. Personally, I couldn’t stop laughing the whole way through.

Rankin’s writing is the work of a man who has got so many ideas in his head that he has to keep writing in order to get them all onto paper before his head explodes under the pressure. Inevitably, this can lead to moments that are more ‘miss’ than ‘hit’ in quality but there is so much coming out all at once that things balance themselves out by the end and you’ve got a book that hits the spot. It’s also a pleasure to see the man’s thoughts take him from A to B, sometimes by way of Q and Z. You may not quite know how you got there but the beauty of Rankin is that you always get there somehow. Just sit down and let the book take you where it has to go...

That’s not to say it’s all good though. ‘Retromancer’ is the sequel to ‘The Brightonomicon’ but sometimes comes across as feeling a little too similar in terms of plot structure to really stand out in its own right. Personally, as I’ve already said, that’s not what I read Rankin’s books for and I certainly got what I was after this time round. There were marked similarities though and I found myself wondering if there was some deliberate plot recycling going on... Ultimately it didn’t matter but it was a niggling thought that never quite went away.

Long standing fans of Robert Rankin should love his latest work. Despite small misgivings I couldn’t help but love it too. When an author is enjoying himself this much you can’t help but go along for the ride and what a ride it is! (Look out for 'Retromancer' in December) Now for a spot of ‘Necrophenia’...

Eight and Three Quarters out of Ten

‘Nightlight, A Parody’ – The Harvard Lampoon (Constable)

This isn’t something that you’ll catch me admitting around here too often so pay attention! One of the first books I reviewed on here (maybe even the first) was Stephanie Meyer’s ‘Twilight’. Don’t hold it against me, everyone has to start somewhere :o) It wasn’t much of a review but, to be fair to me, ‘Twilight’ wasn’t much of a book (although it did keep me reading it)... I know that the phrase ‘wish fulfilment’ cropped up at least once, mostly on Meyer’s part I think...
Although it might not necessarily be what you want to happen, an author can gauge the success of their book by the people queuing up to poke fun at it. Tolkien’s had and so has Rowling; it’s now Meyer’s turn as the Harvard Lampoon present us with their take on ‘Twilight’...

If you’ve read ‘Twilight’ already then you’ll know the story. Come to think of it; if you’ve hung out anywhere on the internet (over the last couple of years) then you’ll know the story. A lonely misfit girl moves to Oregon to live with her Dad, while she’s there she attracts the attention of the hot loner boy in the class and discovers that he’s a vampire. The Harvard Lampoon version sticks to the story but adds a few twists of its own; the result did nothing less than have me laughing out loud and anyone who’s after a send up of Meyer’s work should give this a look though.

‘Nightlight’ did leave me wondering if I had been unnecessarily harsh on ‘Zombies for Zombies’ though as I found that, once again, a joke was stretched to breaking point and almost robbed the book of it’s impact. I say ‘almost’ as ‘Nightlight’ came across as being a lot more inventive in the way that it poked fun at its subject matter. The issue was still there though and I’m left wondering if this is more about what I’m looking for, humour wise, than the book itself. I guess I’m after several different jokes in a book rather than just one continuous one...

Like I said though, the difference here is that while there’s only the one joke the Harvard Lampoon writers attack it in a number of different ways. Even when they don’t, what they did come up still tickled the funny bone.

If you’ve ever thought that the character of Bella was a little too good to be true then you’re in good company. Not only do most people on the internet feel the same way but so do the writers at the Harvard Lampoon. What Meyer did inadvertently is taken up by the Lampooners; there’s nothing inadvertent here as Belle is made out to be totally obnoxious and believing she is better than everyone else. Take the frog dissection in biology...

“Wait!”Edwart declared. “You have to read the procedure first!”
“It’s so easy,” I said, slicing the frog down its middle. I’d done this lab before. At a pond, when I was a little girl.

Not only do the writers poke fun at how ridiculous Belle’s character is but, through the way the plot develops, they also highlight how absurd certain parts of the original book were as well. It’s almost like you get two jokes for the price of one here, seeing the original book in a new light and laughing at the jokes in ‘Nightlight’ at the same time. Belle even learns a few lessons by the end...

When I reviewed ‘Twilight’ I mentioned that the target audience was very obviously teenage girls. ‘Nightlight’ riffs off the same joke a little too much but an older audience, tired of the saccharine sweetness, will get a lot out of it. I certainly did.

Eight out of Ten.

‘Zombies for Zombies: Advice and Etiquette for the Living Dead’ – David P. Murphy (Sourcebooks Inc)

Now here’s a book that I’ve been planning to write about for the last couple of weeks but somehow never got round to. Life has a habit of getting in the way of my plans, even with zombie books (strange but true). Like my rotting heroes though, I got there in the end. If there’s one thing you can learn from zombies it’s the value of just putting one foot in front of the other; you’ll get there in the end...

What would you do if you were bitten by a zombie? Quickly chop the offending limb off? Put a bullet through your head while you still have any say in the matter? I’d probably take the easy way out; become a zombie and let someone else shoot me in the head. It’s not as if I’d know what was going on...
All this is about to change though as David P. Murphy shows us that there is life after undeath. Your body may well be falling apart but there’s still every chance that you can keep your mind in one piece (albeit rotting from the inside out) and live a normal life. Well, I say ‘normal’...

I’m one of those people who read the ‘Idiot’s Guide’ books in the shops when I think no-one else is watching me (I just don’t want to admit that I cannot change a light bulb, it’s tricky!) There was no danger of that happening with this book though; everyone needs to be prepared for the inevitable zombie apocalypse and I’ll do my part to make people aware of this imminent threat! :o)
It was a bit of a shame then that the book left me ever so slightly cold...

Murphy plays things for laughs here and this isn’t surprising when you consider the subject matter. A self help book for people who are about to become zombies can’t be anything else other than comedic! When Murphy hits the spot you’re holding a very funny book indeed, certainly one that had me laughing out loud. The ’14 Habits of Highly Effective Zombies’ was a good source of chuckles as was ‘Who Moved My Brains’; lots of positive reinforcement about why being bitten isn’t the end of the world. I couldn’t help but laugh because... well, it totally is the end of the world for everyone (the bitten and those who are still trying to survive). The blatant spin, in the face of the apocalypse, bounces nicely off the underlying subject matter and what you get is a quirky and fun piece that will make you smile at the very least.

I couldn’t help thinking though that the joke could only go so far and in a book this size (two hundred and thirty nine pages) the joke would be pushed to the point where it stopped being funny. It might work for other people but I was left thinking that ‘Zombies for Zombies’ might have worked better as a pamphlet (or a web page online) rather than a whole book.
Sections like ‘Recipes!’ are one joke that’s needlessly repeated until the effect is lost. We know what zombies like to eat; we don’t like to be told over and over again. Television schedules for zombies might well be a Romero style comment on TV watchers but, again, it’s another joke that’s stretched out until it’s not funny. Dance lessons for zombies would work as a visual joke but you don’t really get to see on the written page. As far as zombie sex goes... Suffice it to say that this section didn’t even make me crack a smile. It felt like Murphy spent too much time trying to justify the idea that zombies could have sex; if you have to justify something to that extent then the end result isn’t going to be funny at all.

What I did get a lot out of though was the darker currents that ran beneath the main concept. Things aren’t as nice out there as they would have you believe and the zombie lifestyle isn’t so idyllic either... This is what kept me reading, an idea that I think could have worked better than what Murphy chose to focus on...

Humour is a funny thing (Pun? No...) and different people find different stuff funny. You might laugh your way through the whole book but I... didn’t. There are some interesting ideas behind ‘Zombies for Zombies’ but it didn’t quite do it for this reader...

Six and a Quarter out of Ten.

‘I Am Scrooge (A Zombie Story for Christmas)’ – Adam Roberts (Gollancz)

There seems to be a conspiracy to make me read more of the classics by cleverly inserting zombies into the mix. I say, bring it on! We’ve already had ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ and in a minute I’ll tell you what I thought of ‘I am Scrooge’. What next though? Instead of ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’ we could have ‘Sitting in the Greenwood Tree, grateful that Zombies cannot climb’. ‘Treasure Island’ would become ‘Zombie Island’. ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ would become... actually, maybe we had better leave ‘Lady Chatterley’ as it is!
Is the market about to be overloaded with zombie adaptations? It could well be but it’s a wave of zombie fiction that I’m going to be surfing! ‘I Am Scrooge’ is a great place to start, a Halloween treat and Christmas stocking present all rolled into one...

It’s the night before Christmas, a time when you might expect people of a miserly nature to be taken on a metaphysical trip, to realise the error of their ways, not facing off against their undead business partner. Scrooge has no time to set his life straight and give the Cratchits the Christmas they deserve; Marley’s dead (again), just a whole city full of zombies to go...
The ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future are on hand to guide Scrooge through the zombie hordes but will they be enough? Especially when the true (and tiny) threat is finally revealed...

‘I Am Scrooge’ is a mere slip of a book, weighing in at an almost anaemic one hundred and fifty three pages long. This is certainly one of the reasons why I finished it off so quickly but it could have been five times the length and I still would have gone through it in one sitting. ‘I Am Scrooge’ is nothing less than great fun from start to finish.

The feeling I got from the book was that Adam Roberts really enjoyed himself pitting Ebeneezer Scrooge against zombie hordes across the gulf of time. The book flies along at an exuberant pace and while this may cover over the fact that explanatory pieces are pretty thin on the ground (as well as authors and fictional characters mixing together), you’ll be enjoying yourself too much to care. ‘I Am Scrooge’ isn’t so much about why things are happening as it is about shooting zombies, name dropping everyone within arms reach and having fun with the English language. If you find this book in your stocking on Christmas morning then it will get you through to Christmas Lunch rather nicely :o)

I’m a fan of books (especially re-imaginings of established works) where the villain is the last person you would ever expect; ‘I Am Scrooge’ takes one of Dickens’ cutest characters and turns them into an evil mastermind. I never really got much of an idea behind this character’s motivations but, again, that’s not really the point. The point is that Roberts did this for the simple reason that he could and who else would be better for this villainy than... that would be telling.

A short book never equates to a long review here so this is where I’ll be tying things up. ‘I Am Scrooge’ is never going to stand up to a more in depth read but if that’s the kind of read you’re after then you’ve picked up the wrong book! If you’re after something irreverent and good old honest fun then pick up ‘I Am Scrooge’. You’ll be glad you did.

Eight and Three Quarters out of Ten

‘The Da Da De Da Da Code’ – Robert Rankin (Gollancz)

‘Godmother’ was a great read but it left me in real need of some cheering up, read the book and you’ll know what I mean... With this in mind, it was back to my pile of books that I bought at the Gollancz author event for a book that I just knew would put a smile back on my face.
I used to be a big fan of Terry Pratchett’s ‘Discworld’ books (used to get the latest one every Christmas and not talk to anyone until I’d finished it) but stopped reading them once I started to feel that the humour was taking a real back seat to the plot and the messages in it. Plot is always good but if I’m reading a humorous book I want it to be funny dammit! Luckily Robert Rankin hasn’t let me down yet, as far as this goes, so I was sure that his book ‘The Da Da De Da Da Code’ would help me get over the ‘post Godmother blues’.
I was right, I finished the book this morning and I’m still chuckling to myself even now!

Jonny Hooker knows he is not a well man mentally. If it’s not the ghostly farmer’s market in the attic (that he can’t get to shut up) it’s his ongoing war of attrition with Mr Giggles the Monkey Boy, an imaginary friend who just won’t go away. Time spent in psychiatric institutions has meant that life has passed Jonny by. Until today that is...
Jonny is delivered a letter that promises him a grand prize but only if he can unlock the Da Da De Da Da code... Jonny’s after that cash prize but what he will find is a conspiracy theory wrapped up in a conspiracy theory served up with a side helping of invisibility suits, magnetism and the reason why talented musicians inevitably die at the age of twenty seven. Oh yes, and the end of the world...

‘The Da Da De Da Code’ is a book that had me laughing from the very first page right up until the end. Here’s the thing though; Rankin has been writing for an awfully long time and has gathered together a lot of long running ‘in jokes’ in the meantime, pretty much all of them are in this book (although the General Electric Minigun didn’t really get a look in this time round which was a shame). As a result there’s a lot in this book that might just go over the head of the first time reader. Long time fans will settle right in and pick up right from where they left off in the last book. If you’re thinking of picking up one of Robert Rankin’s ‘Brentford’ books (of which this is one, albeit loosely) then I’d recommend ‘The Anti-Pope’ as perhaps the best place to start.

There is a beginning, middle and end to the plot (which seem to flow well into one another) but the main point of it is really for Rankin to hang as many jokes off it as he can and he does this with great aplomb. Not only is Rankin’s humour better grasped if you’ve read other books of his but it comes at you in a scattergun approach that is definitely an acquired taste. Toilet humour, Monty Python style jokes and word play all hang out together on the same page. I’m a big fan of Rankin’s work but did find that some of the intended humour passed me right by. That was ok though, Rankin comes across in the book as having write extremely quickly just to get it all down on paper (before his head explodes) so if you don’t find a joke particularly funny then it’s fairly safe bet that the next one along will do the trick!

Like I said, I’m a fan of Robert Rankin and knew what to expect from ‘The Da Da De Da Da Code’. I had a great time with it but did come away with the feeling that it wouldn’t be one for first time readers of Rankin. Different people find different things funny as well, have a flick through the first couple of pages and see what you think...

Eight and a Half out of Ten

‘The Stupidest Angel’ – Christopher Moore (Orbit Books)

It’s not often that I get to sit at my desk and read a book when I should be working. In fact I never get to do this at all! However, a power cut that has lasted most of the day meant that I could take it easy and finish off ‘The Stupidest Angel’ (a book that I started on the train last night).
I’ve read a few books by Christopher Moore and have to say that I never really got the joke, until now that is. I’ve just spent the last few hours, at my desk, trying not to laugh out loud at brain eating zombies, a psychotic ex-film star and a seven year old child with an interesting way of describing wine. This is a book that I’ll be reading every Christmas!
The yuletide season has arrived in the sleepy town of Pine Cove but a little boy (who thinks he has just seen Santa being killed) is about to inadvertently condemn the town to a night of terror. His wish, for Santa to come back to life, is picked up by the Archangel Raziel who (not being the brightest Angel in the heavenly choir) completely misunderstands what is being asked for. Cue the zombies…
‘The Stupidest Angel’ is only a couple of hundred pages long so this isn’t going to be a particularly long review! Suffice it to say that there weren’t very many pages where I didn’t find something that made me chuckle at least. The surreal humour is very much along the lines of Robert Rankin and the situational ‘comedy of errors’ reminded me (a little bit) of P.G Wodehouse. The ‘seasonal relationship breakup syndrome’, which was prevalent throughout, also lent the proceedings a touch of pathos which offset the comedy nicely but also made me want to invest a little more time getting to know the characters (rather than just reading a story). The characters themselves can be found in many of Moore’s other works, making ‘The Stupidest Angel’ either a great place to get reacquainted with old friends or a good point to start reading these books. I mentioned before that some of the situational stuff was sublime, I particularly enjoyed the meeting between Theo and Tuck (cannabis growing policeman and accessory to murder) while the drug induced demons that Molly and Theo faced (just to buy each other the perfect Christmas present) were funny yet strangely touching at the same time.
There were moments where the jokes didn’t quite work but I’d say that was more down to my taste in humour than any failing on Moore’s part.
On the whole, I really enjoyed ‘The Stupidest Angel’. Any book that can carry off the line “No-one knows why, but second only to eating the brains of the living, the dead love affordable prefab furniture” (and this book does) will sit comfortably on my bookshelf!
’The Stupidest Angel’ is a fun, fast read that pretty much hot the spot for me laughter wise, a nice little stocking filler for any fan of the genre.

Eight and a Half out of Ten

‘The Toyminator’ – Robert Rankin (Gollancz Books)

The thing about fantasy and science fiction is that it’s all so serious sometimes. Everything seems to have a noble purpose whether it’s learning to live with alien neighbours or killing your way to the throne of [insert name of country here!]. Don’t get me wrong, I love this stuff but sometimes I want to read something that’s a little bit, well… daft. I want something that’s silly; knows it is but doesn’t care. Something that not only knows it’s silly but deliberately goes out of its way to be even sillier. Something that will make me laugh. When this mood has me in its grip there’s only one thing that I can do. I grab the nearest Robert Rankin book and get reading. This weekend’s reading was ‘The Toyminator’ and I loved it.
A lot of Rankin’s work is set in Britain and has a very British feel that us lot, over here in the UK, love but people elsewhere may have trouble getting into. ‘Toyminator’ (and it’s predecessor ‘The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse’) presents no such problems as it’s set in ‘Toy City’, a place inhabited by living toys and ‘Pre-Adolescent Poetic Personalities’ (nursery rhyme characters to the likes of you and me). Something’s rotten in Toy City, spontaneous toy combustion is rife and many believe that this heralds the end of the world. Only two people can save the day, Toy City private eye Eddie Bear and his loyal sidekick Jack. What they find will turn their world inside out. It will leave you feeling a little odd too as Rankin does not let the normal rules of storytelling get in the way of prose that makes you chuckle, laugh out loud and then think, “hang on, that actually makes a weird kind of sense…”
I’m a big fan of Robert Rankin (so will admit to some bias) but have to say that he has had his fair share of misses as well as hits. I’m happy to say that ‘Toyminator’ is definitely a hit as far as I’m concerned. I got a real sense that Rankin was really enjoying himself when he wrote this, it’s crammed so full of humour that you can almost see the sparks going off in his head while it was being put to paper. There’s a real flow to the story that drags you in and pulls you along with it, I absolutely had to read as much as I could in one sitting and totally begrudged time spent away from the book. For a book that appears to be full of events that don’t really connect with one another, you get to the end and think, “wow, it all makes sense now…”
Rankin does overcrowd the book with a plethora of catchphrases from earlier books (it’s a tradition, or an old charter, or something) but if you’re a fan you won’t care and if you’ve only just started reading his books then you probably won’t notice anyway. Sometimes the ‘joke gun’ does fire a few duds but the funny stuff wins out through sheer weight of numbers so you’ll forgive the odd bad joke here and there.
If you’re already a fan then ‘The Toyminator’ is a worthy addition to the series. If you’re thinking of picking up a Robert Rankin book for the first time don’t start here; pick up ‘Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse’ first and enjoy it in the knowledge that it’s sequel is even better.

Eight out of Ten

'MAD About Star Wars (30 Years of Classic Parodies)' - Jonathan Bresman (Ballantine Books), Review and Giveaway!

The other night, my wife asked why I had just burst out laughing; I told her it was because I'd just seen the cast of Star Wars doing the Macarena… What was I reading? It could only be a collection of parodies from the pages of MAD magazine… Laugh out loud funny stuff which is the perfect antidote to the horrible grey weather which is starting to creep into London at the moment.
Living in the UK, the closest I ever got to MAD magazine (until now) was a book that my Dad had been given. Even now, I still have a little chuckle at the picture of Smokey the woodland 'Ranger Bear' being shot by drunken hunters and being taken home on the back of a car! MAD magazine is a pretty big deal in the states though. Decades have been spent poking fun at the establishment and any form of popular culture that looks like it's getting too big for its boots. With thirty years in the spotlight, there is a lot to deride about Star Wars (especially given the 'quality' of the recent prequels) and all the best 'digs' have been included in this book.
Humour is a funny thing, you either get the joke or you don’t. ‘MAD About Star Wars’ is no different from any other humorous book in that it tries to appeal to everyone and ends up being a bit ‘hit and miss’ in it’s approach. There was plenty there to make me laugh though and I reckon the same will apply to you. I’ve already mentioned the ‘Star Wars Macarena’, other favourites included the Star Wars Musical but the best bits of all were the three panel cartoon strips. Less room to play around in means you have to get it right first time, look out for the strip showing a novel solution to the problem of riding a speeder bike through Endor forest…
This isn’t just a comic book though; it’s also a great source of trivia about what goes on behind the scenes at MAD as well the Star Wars films themselves. If you’re a fan of either franchise then I don’t think you can afford to miss this one!

Eight out of Ten

Are you a fan of either MAD magazine or Star Wars? Do you want my review copy of ‘MAD About Star Wars’? You do? You do! It couldn’t be easier to land yourself with a chance of winning. Simply drop me an email (address at the top right hand side of the screen) and let me have your postal address as well as your screen name on any boards that you frequent. I’m going to let this one run until next Thursday and I’ll announce the winner on Friday.
Good luck!

'Fluke' - Christopher Moore (Orbit Books)

I like whales, I think they're great. I like watching them on TV and when that whale swam up the river Thames (a while ago) I found myself willing it to turn around and swim back the other way. Unfortunately, my psychic powers aren't fully developed (yet) so we all know how that one turned out. What I'm not interested in though is what whales do and why they do it (just doesn't do it for me I'm afraid) so when I read a book with big info-dumps about whale behaviour a little part of me ends up setting the alarm to go off when something interesting happens…
Nate Quinn is a marine behavioural biologist who is very surprised to see a whale with the words 'BITE ME' written in foot high letters on its tale. Things are about to get even more weird though. Crucial photos go missing, Nate's research facility is trashed and strange grey figures are seen sinking his boat. And why does the strange old woman (on the hill) keep asking Nate to take rye and pastrami sandwiches out for the whales? All answers lie at the bottom of the sea…
Humorous fiction is a funny thing to write about (get it?) because if it doesn't cater to your own sense of humour then you're on a losing streak right from the start. While there were some funny bits (Kona the white Rastafarian made me laugh every time he appeared) the rest felt like a Robert Rankin novel but without the jokes. I just didn’t get it I’m afraid. As I already said, the whale behaviour ‘info-dumps’ were a turn off and (for me) verged on the overly ‘preachy’. I already know that whale hunting is a bad thing; I don’t need it rammed down my throat in a book that I just want to read and enjoy.
‘Fluke’ offers plenty of evidence of a man with a fertile imagination having a fine old time writing about something dear to him and if you’re already a fan then I reckon you’ll lap this one up. I just didn’t get it though and I don’t think I’ll be reading any more of his books.

Four out of Ten

‘A Dirty Job’ – Christopher Moore (Orbit Books)

Charlie Asher is the classic beta-male, low on charisma but making up for this with high levels of imagination and paranoia. Despite this, Charlie is still unprepared for the tragic yet strangely surreal circumstances that leave him bringing up his daughter on his own. The weirdness doesn’t stop there though. Who was the ghostly figure in the hospital? Why is Charlie suddenly getting abuse hurled at him from storm drains? Why are people’s names suddenly appearing on his nightstand notepad (and why are these people suddenly dying)? Charlie has been unwittingly recruited into the world’s oldest profession (Not that one, one that’s even older…), it’s a dirty job but one that he has to do…
I’ve read a short collection of extracts from Christopher Moore’s works, they weren’t as funny as I’d been told they were but they were engaging and made me want to read more. This is pretty much what you get with ‘A Dirty Job’. There were some moments that made me chuckle (Charlie throwing fireworks down the drain) but the humour wasn’t on the level of Pratchett’s wordplay or Rankin’s downright weirdness. What you do get though is a group of engaging characters being put through their paces in a plot that caught my sense of the strange and would not let me go. There are also references to characters and goings on, in Moore’s San Francisco, which lend the story some context and made me interested in finding out more.
What we end up with though is a book that promises one thing, doesn’t really deliver it but ends up delivering something else pretty well. It kept my attention but for all the wrong reasons. My other big problem was the front cover; it’s not often I say this but the cover picture manages to give away a pretty big plot device. It’s also inconsistent with the blurb on the back. I managed to work out what was going on before I even started reading, sometimes this isn’t a bad thing (if you like to know what you’re getting) but on this occasion it lent the story a real sense of anti-climax.
If you’ve enjoyed Christopher Moore’s other works you’ll be getting more of the same with this and you won’t be disappointed. Anyone picking this up for the first time may end up asking themselves what the fuss is all about.
Not a bad book but needs to be clearer about what it’s trying to deliver.

Five out of Ten.