Sprout Mask Replica - Robert Rankin

    1997; 350 pages. Book 1 in the “Completely Barking Mad Trilogy” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Humorous Absurdism; British Humour; Weird Fantasy.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

 

    The butterfly effect is a famous component of Chaos Theory.  In a nutshell, it states that when a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil, it in turn may be the cause of a tornado in Texas.

 

    The butterfly doesn’t realize this, of course, but it is intriguing to contemplate a small change in a system resulting in significant and unpredictable consequences down the line.

 

    But what if the inverse was also true?  A tornado forms in Texas, a butterfly in Brazil senses it, and instinctively flaps its wings to cancel out the disturbance.  Let's call him "the compensator”.

 

    Our protagonist here is such a compensator.  He has a pretty neat gift, eh?  Well, maybe not.

 

    Because what happens if/when the butterfly stops flapping its wings?

 

What’s To Like...

    Sprout Mask Replica is written mostly (but not completely) in the first-person POV.  The narrator’s name is not given, but he goes by many monikers, including “The Chosen One”, “The Compensator”, the “Mystical Butterfly of Chaos”, and “Dog Breath”.  Since one of his relatives is “Uncle Brian Rankin”, we may logically assume this is Robert Rankin writing his autobiography.

 

    The book is written in English, not American, so us Yankee readers will get weird spellings, such as plough and jewellery; as well as odd phrases, such as “bit of a kip”, “soldier of toast”, and the nifty word “niffy”, which is defined below.

 

    A number of Robert Rankin’s recurring characters are featured here, which you’d expect in his autobiography, including Fangio, Neville, Jim Pooley, John Omally, and the inscrutable “lady in a straw hat”.  And I think this is where Barry the Holy Guardian Sprout is introduced, who becomes a major recurring character.  A portion of his background is given in one of the excerpts below.

 

    In between (most) chapters, Robert Rankin includes some poetry, which I found to be quite entertaining.  I enjoyed sitting in on the “All Brentford Open Lying Contest”, chuckled at the mangled French, and was happy to see my favorite type of word puzzle, “acrostics”, get a brief mention.  The author’s music references are impressive, one of which, The Sonic Energy Authority, may set some sort of record for “most obscure” band ever.

 

    The ending is both witty and enigmatic, which is the norm for a Robert Rankin opus.  The Chosen One finishes his book and heads out for a swim.  A spaceship departs, but I have a feeling we haven't seen the last of it.  All historical paradoxes are repaired.

    Or are they?

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Niffy (adj.) : having an unpleasant smell (British slang)

Others: Sporran (n.); Micturating (v.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.3/5 based on 118 ratings and 30 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.70/5 based on 848 ratings and 21 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    In those days I had a lot of time for Fangio, although thinking back I can’t recall why.  Certainly the guy was fair, he never spoke well of anyone.  And when it came to clothes, he had the most impeccable bad taste I’ve ever encountered.  He suffered from delusions of adequacy and his conversation was enlivened by the occasional brilliant flash of silence.

    Once seen, never remembered, that was Fangio.  Many put this down to his shortness of stature, for as Noel Coward observed, “Never trust a man with short legs, brain’s too near their bottoms.”  (loc. 970)

 

    “I was supposed to be on the job.  Your Holy Guardian.”

    “He’ll forgive you, you’re one of his angels, after all.”

    “Well.”

    “Well what?”

    “Well, I never said anything about being an angel.”

    “You said you’re my Holy Guardian.  That’s an angel, isn’t it?”

    “Well, it can be.  For some people.  But there’s an awful lot of people on Earth.  More people than there are angels, in fact.  Look upon me as your little gift from God’s garden.”

    “What?”

    “I’m your Holy Guardian Sprout.”  (loc. 2483)

 

Kindle Details…

    Sprout Mask Replica currently costs $6.99 at Amazon.  Robert Rankin offers another 3 dozen or so “weird fantasy” e-books, generally in the price range of $2.99-$7.99, plus an autobiographical I, Robert, which costs $9.00.

 

“Run and waggle, chief, run and waggle.”  (loc. 3337)

    There’s very little profanity in Sprout Mask Replica; I counted just six “damns” in the first 50% of the novel.  Insertions of other cusswords are “cleaned up” via appropriately placed asterisks (example: sh*t).  A number of “adult situations” are alluded to, but there’s nothing lurid.

 

    Typos are rare: one gum/gym booboo and a couple of comma misuses.  The title reference occurs at 93% Kindle, although I’m still not sure what it signifies.

 

    Don’t even try to find a plotline for the first 20% of the book; there’s none there.  Fortunately, Robert Rankin still keeps you entertained with his wit, anecdotal asides, and wry British humour.  The plotline does show up later on.

 

    Veteran Robert Rankin readers will find Sprout Mask Replica satisfying, but if you’re never read any of his novels, don’t make this your introduction to him.  The Amazon blurb says this is the first book in the “Completely Barking Mad” trilogy; but I don’t think it’s necessary to read the books in order.  Robert Rankin is loose with the concept of “trilogy”—one of his contains only two books; another contains eight books.

 

    7½ Stars.  One last thing, a nice tidbit of the abundant wit in the story.  “My brother’s favourite number was 300.  Because if you turn 300 on its side it looks a bit like a bum pooing.”  It's true! Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

You Are Doomed (Sign Here Please) - Andrew Stanek

   2016; 245 pages.  New Author? : No.  Full Title: You Are Doomed (Sign Here Please): The Legally Required Third Installment.  Book 3 (out of 7) in the “You Are Dead” series.  Genres : Humorous Fantasy; Absurdism.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

 

    Fresh from a successful parrying of the evil plans of the Afterlife bureaucrats, Nathan Haynes is moving on from his hometown of Dead Donkey, Nevada.  He’s boarded a bus, eager for adventure, and is headed to Las Vegas.  But he needs to watch out for Afterworld hitmen, who may even be on the bus already, disguised as fellow passengers.  After all, Nathan has been murdered eight times over the last couple days.

 

    Let’s see now.  The bus driver is a big, burly sour-tempered guy, so that seems normal.  To Nathan’s right, a little boy and girl are engrossed in video games.  Behind him, two old ladies are knitting together.  Actually one is knitting while the other one unknits her efforts.  There’s also a crazy man in a poncho who says he’s a serial killer.  And a wild-eyed fisherman who keeps saying “storm’s a-comin’ ”.  There's also a lumberjack carrying a huge axe.  Nearby are an engineer and a philosopher, who can, and do, argue about life, the universe, and everything else.  Finally, there’s an economist who can, and will, tell you why anything that happens is bad for the stock market.

 

    All in all, just a bunch of normal people heading to Las Vegas on a bus.  Nathan’s got nothing to worry about, right?

 

What’s To Like...

    You Are Doomed (Sign Here Please) is the third book in Andrew Stanek’s You Are Dead series, and takes place immediately after the events in Book 2, You Are a Ghost (Sign Here Please), which is reviewed here.

 

    The plotline structure is pretty much the same as in the previous two books.  The bureaucratic executives of the Afterworld, Director Fulcher and Overdirector Powell, once again try to trap Nathan into signing the infamous Form 21B.  Killing Nathan (Book 1) didn’t persuade him to sign; neither did turning him into a ghost (Book 2).  This time they use a “Doom” curse on him.

 

    Once again, the strengths of the storyline are the witty dialogue, Nathan’s unflappably optimistic outlook on life, and Andrew Stanek’s keen insights into all sorts of topics, among which are the necessity of committees, memorandums, and the filling out forms to do anything in the universe.

 

    I liked that the author is also not afraid to render opinions on hot topics, such as anti-vaxxers, nuclear stockpiles, global warming.  The friction between Particularly Cynical Atheists the Slightly Less Cynical Atheists, and the American Society of Skeptics had me chuckling out loud.  Being a chemist, I liked the musings on the bureaucracy exhibited by Hydrogen atoms.  Ditto for the use of physics (Newton’s Third Law of Doom) to counter Nathan’s curse.

 

    The ending is fittingly ridiculous, with a plethora of convenient circumstances and bureaucratic loopholes all leading to Nathan yet again avoiding signing off on Form 21B.  This is not a criticism since the book’s tone is unashamedly Absurdist.  Gregor Samsa of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis would totally empathize with Nathan's situation.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.2/5 based on 401 ratings and 45 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.06/5 based on 212 ratings and 14 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “But Director,” he said, wringing his hands helplessly, “if your superior catches me trying to steal from her, she’ll turn my skull into a cane!  I should explain that Overdirector Powell turns the skulls of her enemies–“

    “Yes, I know that already,” Fulcher said, cutting off one of Ian’s lengthy tirades before it started.  “But she’ll also turn our heads into skulls if we fail to get Haynes’ file in order, and for that we need the backdating device.  You, Ian, are my most loyal subordinate–“

    “No I’m not,” Ian said, terrified.

    “Alright, then.  Allow me to rephrase.  You, Ian, are my most expendable subordinate.”  (loc. 1008)

 

    “I heard you saying that you’d like to be a flight attendant a minute ago, and it would really mean a lot to me.”

    “Sure, I’d love to help,” Nathan said cheerily.  He stood up.  “What should I do?”

    “Well, first, you need to stop the captain from sneaking into the liquor supply.”

    “Hey, if people didn’t want me to guzzle the alcohol, they should have made drinking and driving illegal,” the pilot said.

    “They did,” Brian said, his voice now slurring as he drank down more cola.

    “More illegal, then,” the pilot said.  (loc. 3165)

 

Kindle Details…

    You Are Doomed (Sign Here Please) sells for $0.99 at Amazon right now, the same price as all the other books in the series.  Andrew Stanek has several more fantasy series for you, and just recently published a non-fiction biography of his father.  All his e-books are priced at $0.99, and occasionally discounted to free.

 

“Have you found anything to indicate there might be any positive economic impacts from the bus falling off the cliff?”  “Yes.”  (loc. 3395)

    The profanity in You Are Doomed (Sign Here Please) is pleasantly sparse, which was true for the first two books in the series as well.  I noted just seven cusswords in the whole book, most of them “hell”.

 

    There were a few typos, such as effect/affect, payed/paid, filed/filled, but not enough to be distracting.  The (presumably) erroneous reference to Overdirector Fulcher, which occurred twice, did make my reading mind stumble a bit, though, as I don’t think he was promoted.

 

   My biggest quibble was with the thin plot.  Nathan is tasked with finding a way to counter the Doom curse, and then carrying it out.  This turns into a “needle in a haystack” challenge, which he overcomes without even seriously impacting his journey to Las Vegas.  Yes, this is forgivable since this is an Absurdist tale, but still, the book would be even better if there was a more engaging plotline.

 

    Nonetheless, I enjoyed YAD(SHP).  Its wit and musings override the plotline quibbles, and kept me entertained from beginning to end.  It is an ideal beach- or airport-read, fast-paced, yet manages somehow to be both thought-provoking and humorous.

 

    7 Stars.  One last thing.  At one point a transportation device called a Suborbital Rocket-Powered Unicycle is utilized.  I need to get me one of those!

They Came and Ate Us - Robert Rankin

   1991; 336 pages.  Full Title: They Came and Ate Us – Armageddon II: The B Movie.  Book 2 in the “Armageddon Trilogy” series.  New Author? : Goodness, no.  Genres : Humorous Absurdism; Time Travel; Weird Fantasy.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

 

    Quick, how do you stop an NHE (that’s “Nuclear Holocaust Event” for you Earthlings) after it’s already happened?

 

    Well, as any Phnaarg can tell you, you send someone back through time, or forward in time for that matter, and have him kill whoever was responsible for the NHE.

 

    But what if the assassination attempt fails?

 

    Then you resend your guy and have him try again.  Or send some other person.  Or both.

 

    But that’s messing around with the original timeline!  I thought we weren’t allowed to do that.

 

    The taboo against spawning timeline anomalies is literary laziness preached by sci-fi authors who are afraid it will spread confusion.  Ignore those sissies.

 

    Gee, I don’t know.  It still sounds kind of risky.

 

   Well, ask yourself this: if someone did screw around with the original timeline, how would you know?

 

What’s To Like...

    They Came and Ate Us is vintage Robert Rankin absurdism.  The storyline is engaging and despite being confusing to start out with, it clarifies into several main storylines by the halfway point.  The primary plot threads are:

 

    Who zapped Rex Mundi a half century into the past, and why?

    Can Rex and Jack Doveston succeed in preventing the 1999 NHE, and how?

    Why is Elvis obsessed with killing Wayne Wormwood, and how come he repeatedly fails?

 

    There are talking dogs and sentient bean sprouts.  There are shakers and hackers and demons.  There are a slew of time paradoxes and fourth-wall asides.  The author himself sneaks in, cleverly disguised as one of the characters.

 

    I was pleased to see that there are also some of Robert Rankin’s trademark running gags and obscure (at least to us Yanks) British trivia.  Fangio’s bar makes a brief appearance; so does the inscrutable fighting art called Dimac.  Jim Pooley and John Omally have cameo roles near the end of the book, which makes me wonder if they’ll play a larger role in the sequel.  Trivia-wise, I had to look up both Frankie Howerd and Ray Harryhausen.

 

    They Came and Ate Us is the sequel to Armageddon – The Musical, and if both books reside on your TBR shelf, I highly recommend reading them in order.  I did, but alas I read Book 1 way back in 2013 and thus remembered almost nothing about it.  Thankfully, Robert Rankin provides a brief recap of that tale early on here (pgs. 7-8), for which I am very much grateful.

 

    The ending is over-the-top and replete with plot twist after plot twist.  Earth is saved from the 1999 NHE.  Or is it?  I guess I’ll have to read book 3, The Suburban Book of the Dead, to make sure.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Yobbo (n.) : a cruel and brutal fellow. (English slang)

Others: Librams (n., plural); Putting Pay (v.), Prial (n.); Bunged the readies and seen all right (British slang, for which I never did suss out the meaning).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.3/5 based on 81 ratings and 16 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.89/5 based on 1,411 ratings and 16 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    In the year 2050 planet Earth finally got the chance to enjoy Armageddon.  It had originally been scheduled to occur in 999 and after that fell through, in 1999.  However, due to certain legal loopholes in the original contracts and God moving in the mysterious way he is known and loved for, the thing didn’t get under way until 2050.

    But when it did it was a real showstopper.  Cracking special effects, flaming chariots, angelic hosts, fire and brimstone, the whole kith and caboodle and the kitchen sink.  All in glorious Buddhacolour and broadcast live as it happened.  (pg. 7, and the opening paragraphs.)

 

    “Perhaps it can’t be done.”

    Elvis made a bitter face.  “What do you mean?”

    Rex turned to meet his eyes.  “Perhaps it is impossible to change history.  The Phnaargs tried it with you but it didn’t work.”

    “But I fooled the Phnaargs.  I am here and now.”

    “Perhaps you would have been here and now anyway, which is why you are.  If you follow me.”

    “I surely do.”  Elvis surely didn’t.  (pg. 126)

 

Sam voiced certain words to the effect that the junior officer’s cranium was in fact a male reproductive organ and flung the handset aside.  (pg. 12)

    There’s a moderate amount of profanity in They Came and Ate Us.  I counted 11 instances in the first 10% of the book, 5 of which were scatological in nature.  Later on, there were at least four references to male genitalia and its various functions.

 

    In addition to deciphering the British idioms, the punctuation takes some getting used to.  Across the pond, dialogue is in single quotation marks, not double.  There was an abundance of missing commas in direct quotes here.  Example: ‘And back to you in the studio Ramon.’  Us Yanks were taught to absolutely positively put a comma after the word “studio”.  This type of omission happens so frequently (yet not always), that I was left wondering if there are different rules for it in Britain.

 

    Finally, keep in mind that absurdism rules the roost here.  The crazier and more convoluted the storyline is, the better its entertainment value.  If complex and confusing plot threads bug you, you might want to eschew Robert Rankin's books.

 

    But I confess, I’m a Robert Rankin fanatic.  I’d be disappointed if he wrote a book where I wasn't kept on my toes trying to follow what's going on.  They Came and Ate Us may be a challenging read, but for me it was also a delightfully satisfying one.

 

    7½ Stars.  They Came and Ate Us was published in 1991.  Did Robert Rankin somehow foresee the rise of a prominent 21^st-century American politician?  Check out pages 152-53 and judge whether the person they’re talking about bears an eerie resemblance to one of our present-day newsmakers.

Slapstick - Kurt Vonnegut

   1976; 275 pages.  Alternate Title: Slapstick or Lonesome No More.  New Author? : No.  Genres: Satire; Humorous Science Fiction; Absurdist Fiction; Futurism.  Overall Rating: 7*/10.

 

    Over the course of his long life, Dr. Wilbur Rockefeller Swain, or, as he is called now, Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain, has endured many ups and downs.

 

    As a child, he was “neanderthaloid” ugly and stupid, so much so that his own mother referred to him and his twin sister Eliza as “a pair of drooling totem poles”.  Yet, when Eliza and Wilbur were in each other’s company, they connected like two specialized halves of a single brain, and produced genius intellectual concepts that would send Einstein back to the drawing board.

 

    As an adult, Wilbur became a Senator from the state of Vermont, followed by two terms as President of the United States.  The country prospered swimmingly until getting devastated by a plague called “the Green Death” combined with a sickness called “the Albanian Flu”.

 

    Now, as a 102-year-old geriatric hanging out in the lobby of the ruins of the Empire State Building, Wilbur decides to write his memoir.  His life seems to him to have been sort of like a slapstick comedy, something akin to a Laurel and Hardy routine, hence its title.

 

What’s To Like...

    Slapstick is a loosely autobiographical work by Kurt Vonnegut, with extra emphasis on his relationship with his older sister, Alice, who died in 1958, when Kurt was still a struggling writer.  I read the “Rosetta Books” e-book edition, which claimed it was 275 pages long, but it seemed much shorter than that.  The story is written from the first-person point-of-view, with 49 extremely short chapters (Wilbur’s memoir) bookended by a prologue and epilogue which are sort of an introduction and afterword from Kurt himself and kind of a “mini-memoir” of his life.

 

    While the 49 chapters do indeed provide a fictional chronicle of Wilbur’s life, the book is really just a means for Vonnegut to air his views on all sorts of his favorite subjects, including what the afterlife holds in store for us, and the feeling of “disconnect” in everyone's day-to-day life.  Indeed, someone (Amazon perhaps?) has suggested the alternate title “Lonesome No More”, which is both a sacrilege and a improvement over just plain “Slapstick”, as well as Wilbur’s campaign slogan when he runs for President.

 

    I chuckled at the role China plays in the story, especially since this was written in the 1970s.  Vonnegut portrays them as technologically superior to us: they’ve somehow transported several hundred explorers to Mars, without using a space vehicle; they know how to miniaturize humans down to where they can fit in a coat pocket, thus significantly lessening the amount of food needed to sustain the population; and probably screwed up gravity in the process, since it is now a variable, not a constant.  Some days all you can do is lay pressed to the ground during a period of high gravity.

 

    The suggested “cure” for Loneliness was fascinating.  As President, Wilbur ordains that everyone gets a new middle name (see second excerpt below for details); which instantly means you have thousands of cousins, brothers, sisters, etc. any and all of which you can contact for support, care, and affection.  Alas, even here in the story, mankind still fails to achieve a state of complete harmony.

 

    As he did in Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut comes up with a catchphrase to close out any important point he’s making.  In Slaughterhouse Five, it was “And so it goes”; here it is “Hi ho.”  Those who are allergic to cusswords will be happy to know the first 93% of the book is remarkable clean (just eight cusswords noted), but at that point we encounter someone with Tourette’s Disease, with an outburst of its requisite swearing.  Subjects like incest, spousal abuse, and erections are also discussed in brief along the way.

 

    The ending is classic Vonnegut, having surprises and twists to it while at the same time somehow being not exciting or climactic.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.2/5 based on 644 ratings and 215 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.86/5 based on 37,892 ratings and 1,649 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Panjandrum (n.) : a person who has or claims to have a great deal of authority or influence.

 

Excerpts...

    We made at least one prediction that was so deadly accurate that thinking about it even now leaves me thunderstruck.

    Listen: We began with the mystery of how ancient peoples had erected the pyramids of Egypt and Mexico, and the great heads of Easter Island, and the barbaric arches of Stonehenge, without modern sources and tools.

    We concluded there must have been days of light gravity in olden times, when people could play tiddledy-winks with huge chunks of stone.  (loc. 5237)

 

    “Your new middle name would consist of a noun, the name of a flower or fruit or vegetable or legume, or a bird or a reptile or a fish, or a mollusk, or a gem or a mineral or a chemical element—connected by a hypen (sic) to a number between one and twenty.”  I asked him what his name was at the present time.

    “Elmer Glenville Grasso,” he said.

    “Well,” I said, “you might become Elmer Uranium-3 Grasso, say.  Everybody with Uranium as part of their middle name would be your cousin.”

    “That brings me back to my first question,” he said.  “What if I get some artificial relative I absolutely can’t stand?”  (loc. 1416)

 

Kindle Details…

    Right now, Slapstick sells for $13.99 at Amazon.  There are a couple dozen of his books available in Kindle format.  They vary in price from $1.99 to $14.99, and some of his more popular works come in several editions, so compare prices.

 

“History is merely a list of surprises. (…) It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.”  (loc. 1939)

    I noted only a couple of typos (hypen/hyphen, saving/saying) in Slapstick, which no longer surprises me in anything published by Rosetta Books.  It didn't happen enough to be a distraction, and the bigger issue I had was with the plotline: there wasn’t one.

 

    Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain writes his fictional memoir (is that an oxymoron?), with lots of fascinating trivia, both real (the origin of “Robert’s Rules of Order”) and made-up (“The Church of Jesus Christ the Kidnapped”), but it never progresses into anything.  The problem isn’t Vonnegut’s writing skills, he’s a master at his craft, but the storytelling is nonexistent.  After a century of living, Wilbur is about to pass away, wiser perhaps from all the amazing things that have happened to him, but not noticeably happier.

 

    For me, Slapstick marks the start of a decline in the quality of Kurt Vonnegut's novels.  Everything before this – Player Piano, The Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, Cat’s Cradle, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, Slaughterhouse Five and Breakfast of Champions – sparkles.  Everything from here on in, at least the ones I’ve read so far – Slapstick, Galapagos, and Hocus Pocus – are ho-hum.

 

    Hi ho.

 

    7 Stars.  We’ll close with a brain teaser from the book.  At one point Wilbur is subjected to an IQ test, with one of the questions being:  How many digits are there to the left of the decimal place in the square root of 692038.42753?  Vonnegut may have been just making this up, but the geek in me just had to solve it.

 

    It took me about five minutes, with no calculator, computer, or pen-&-paper to do so.  Can you?  Answer, and the logic I used, in the Comments section.

Valhalla - Tom Holt

    2000; 261 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Mythopoeia; Humorous Fantasy; Absurdism; Satire.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    Valhalla!  A great hall located in mighty Asgard, administered by Odin, and every Viking warrior’s idea of paradise.  If you die in combat, the Valkyries will personally escort you there to spend the rest of your eternal existence in utter bliss.  But what exactly do dead heroes do to pass the time there?

    Well, Valhalla is a drinking hall, so that’s one activity.  And since the Norsemen there have been fighting all their lives, that’s also what they probably consider to be a fun time.

    But lately Viking warriors dying in battles are few and far between.  So The Valhalla Group Incorporated (they’re a business now) has branched out.  If one has enough money and the right connections, even common folk like you and me can enter Valhalla.  Odin will even tailor an afterlife to suit your fancy, at least to the best of his understanding of the modern way of life.

    For instance, if you've been a cocktail waitress all of your life, you might end up as a serving wench in Valhalla.  For eternity.  Catering to Viking customers with some very outdated ideas about the role of women.

    Or if you loved to play simulated war games with your buddies on weekends (think “paintball” or Civil War reenactments), you could find yourself doing the same sort of thing in Valhalla.  Except with real weapons and ammunition and getting blown to bits every day, then reincarnated every night.

    For eternity.

What’s To Like...

    Valhalla is one of Tom Holt’s mythopoeic stories, and those happen to be my favorite subgenre of his works.  I’ve read his hilarious takes on the Holy Grail myth (Grailblazers, reviewed here) and the Flying Dutchman (Flying Dutch, reviewed here) and found both of those to be quite entertaining.  Valhalla measures up nicely as well.

    As with any Tom Holt offering, there are multiple storylines to follow, meaning readers need to stay on their toes to keep up with all the zaniness going on.  I noted five storylines in Valhalla.  They are:

1.) Carol finds herself wenching in the mead hall, and doesn’t want to do that for eternity.

2.) Her dad, Lin, an agent for the gods, pulls strings to rescue her.

3.) Howard plays real war games each day, every day, whether he wants to or not.  He dies a lot.

4.) Attila the Hun and other famous war leaders watch paint dry.

5.) Vinnie miraculously escapes death in disaster-after-disaster, no matter how long the odds.

     Tom Holt is a British author, so Valhalla is written in English, not American.  You’ll travel on the M5, put on armour, be sceptical, get a flat tyre, become stroppy, put up with cissies, wear pyjamas, and use sellotape.

    I’m a history buff, so I was happy to see the Battle of Chalons cited; it was the turning point for Attila’s invasion of Europe.  Ditto for the nods to Mithraism, Henrik Ibsen, and Robert the Bruce’s spider.  My present residence of Arizona gets mentioned twice, and I recall the Tesco’s stores from my visits to England, but had to look up  what “The Two Ronnies” is.  The “anti-thanaton displacement beam” may not be real, but it is way-kewl.

    At 261 pages, the book is relatively short, and the 15 chapters average out to about 17 pages/chapter.  There’s a fair amount of cussing, but that’s about it for R-rated stuff.  Valhalla is a standalone novel, and not part of any series.

Kewlest New Word (and all of them are Britishisms)...

Mug’s game (n., phrase) : a profitless or futile activity.

Others :  Breeze block (n.); Faffed (v.); Penguin biscuit (n.) .

Excerpts...

    It was bathtime; culture shock registering 10.9 on the Richter scale.  Not that old Attila had never got wet.  Far from it.  He could remember days and nights of unspeakable discomfort as the caravan trudged and squelched through snow and driving rain, the water streaming down the inside of his saturated clothes.  He’d always put up with it – no choice in the matter – but it stuck in his memory as one of the most wretched things he’d ever experienced.  Here, for some bizarre reason, they got wet on purpose; these people, with their amazing watertight roofs, had even built a special room just for getting wet in.  Perverts, the lot of them.  (loc. 1667)

    “You hear the voice of Ronald McDonald inside your mind?”

    “All the time.  Actually, he confuses me sometimes.  I remember once, we were besieging this castle in Normandy and nobody could understand why I kept ordering the artillerymen to bombard the walls with sesame seeds and dill pickle.  Still, he’s a bit more lively than the speaking clock.”  (loc. 3358)

Kindle Details...

    Valhalla currently sells for $5.99 at Amazon, which is the price for most of Tom Holt’s e-books there.  You can find a couple going for $4.99, and his half-dozen or so most-recent e-books sell for $9.99.  Most, if not all, of Tom Holt’s novels are now available in Kindle format, which is a great thing, since finding them in the local used-book stores here in Arizona is a rare occurrence.

Your worst nightmare, if you’re a god: humanus ex machina.  (loc. 4560)

    The ending is adequate and twisty, but not compelling.  All the disparate story threads mentioned above are deftly brought together and tied up, but to me things seemed rushed (it’s all done in a single chapter), and a case of humanus ex machina.

    Still, Tom Holt novels are always steeped in absurdism, so this sort of ending should be expected, and might even be deliberate.  I’ve seen Amazon and Goodreads reviewers express difficulty in following the storylines in Tom Holt books, but that’s the essence of the absurd.

    I tend to think Tom Holt books are an acquired taste.  They’re difficult to read at first, but once you get the hang of them, they’re delightful satires..

    8 Stars.  If you end up reading Valhalla, like it, and want more of the same motif, I highly recommend Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips (reviewed here).

The Brentford Chainstore Massacre - Robert Rankin

    1997; 366 pages.  Full Title: The Brentford Chainstore Massacre : The Fifth Novel in the Now Legendary Brentford Trilogy.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Absurdism; British Humor; Fantasy; “Far Fetched Fiction”; Running Gags.  Laurels: Nominee, British Fantasy Society “Best Novel” (1997).  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

    The year is 1997, and the world is starting to make plans to welcome in the new millennium.  Of course, it’s still a couple years away, so there’s lots of time to form committees, schedule celebrations, and come up with whatever other festivities are appropriate for welcoming in a new thousand-year stretch of time.

    But in quaint little Brentford, the time schedule is different.  They're planning for the  millennium to arrive two years early, and that means it’s just around the corner.  They’re entitled to this, they claim, because of some sort of document, issued by some Pope way back when, as a Papal Bull and called “the Brentford Scrolls”.  In it he bequeathed Brentford two extra days per year.  And as everyone knows, you can’t rescind something the Pope writes.

    Well, that might sound pretty silly, and it doesn’t help that no one remembers exactly where the Brentford Scrolls are located anymore, or indeed if it still exists.  Maybe it’s all a hoax, or an urban legend.

    But what if the Brentford way of calendar-reckoning is correct?  What if they’re the only ones who will be ushering in the new millennium at the precisely correct moment?  It might unleash something really cosmically good into the world.

    Or something really diabolically evil.

What’s To Like...

    The Brentford Chainstore Massacre is the fifth novel (out of ten, at last count) in the oxymoronically titled “Brentford Trilogy”, and that should give you a hint that the book will be full of the usual absurdities that run through anything penned by Robert Rankin.  The two main characters are Jim Pooley and John Omally, a pair of world-saving antiheroes who love to drink beer at the local pub called “The Flying Swan” and engage in witty repartee.  They are recurring Rankin characters, although I don’t think they are in every book in the quasi-trilogy.

     The storyline is convoluted and nonsensical.  There are two Ultimate Evils: Fred, who’s sold his soul to the Devil, and Dr. Steven Malone, who wants to clone Jesus Christ.  They are joined by a couple of brutish but somewhat dense thugs, Clive and Derek, so our two heroes will have to watch their step.

    The book is written in English, not American.  So you’ll run across words and spellings such as: lino, programme, marvellous, judgement, chilli pepper, and hoovering.  I love books written in English.  You’ll also be introduced to a pair of obscure (but real) medical terms, Idrophroisia and Sacofricosis, neither of which I had heard of before.  Google them at your own peril.

    I loved the ersatz Cockney rhyming schemes, such as “Sandra’s Thighs” standing for “eyes”, and laughed at acronyms such as SUCK (“Secret Unification for the Coming King”).  I was impressed by the two-page run-on sentence (shades of Jack Kerouac!) and another page devoted to F-alliteration.  And the secrets to traveling faster than the speed of light and “de-entropizing” will certainly come in handy. 

    There are 33 chapters (plus three short snippets of stories at the beginning) to cover 366 pages in the book.  There’s even a smidgen of a love story, which is somewhat rare in a Robert Rankin story, but don’t worry, this is not a Harlequin Romance.  The book’s title is referenced on page 242, but frankly, it's a very tenuous tie-in.

    The book’s ending is kind of a stutter-step affair.  The search for the Brentford Scrolls is resolved first, then the millennial celebration begins, with all its looming consequences.  It is all suitably climactic, exciting, and absurd; and you’ll get a new appreciation of the term “deus ex machina”.  Somehow it works out quite well.

    Which is what you’d expect from a gifted wit like Robert Rankin.

Kewlest New Word...

Shufty (n.) : a look; a peep; a peek  (a Britishism).

Others : Dosh (n.; a Britishism); Fractious (adj.); Calumny (n.); Picaresque (adj.); Scrofulous (adj.).

Excerpts...

    A lady in the straw hat sat down beside him.  “Are you lost?” she asked Jack.

    Jack clutched his package to his chest.  “Certainly not,” he told her.

    “Only I get lost sometimes.  I have who’ja vu.”

    “What’s that?”

    “It’s the opposite of déjà vu.  I can be in the middle of the supermarket and suddenly I get this feeling, I’ve never been here before.”
    “I have to go,” said Jack.  “I have a very important package to deliver.”

    “The doctor put me on a course of placebos,” said the lady in the straw hat.  “But I don’t take them.  I’m saving them all up for a mock suicide attempt.”  (pg. 65)

    “I come from a very musical family.  Even the dog hummed in the warm weather.”

    “How interesting,” said the Englishman.

    “Oh yes, very musical.  When I was only three I played on the linoleum.  We had a flood and my mother floated out on the table.  I accompanied her on the piano.  Talking of pianos, the cat sat down at ours once and played a tune, and my mum said, “We must get that orchestrated,” and the cat ran out and we never saw it again.  Now my father, my father died from music on the brain.  A piano fell on his head.”

    “Was that the same piano?” asked the Irishman.

    “Same one,” said Old Pete.  “I never played it myself.  I was going to learn the harp, but I didn’t have the pluck.”  (pg. 332)

“Crop circles are the stigmata of the Corn God.”  (pg. 249)

        There aren’t really any R-rated parts, but there are all sorts of double-entendres and ethnic jokes.  Those easily offended and/or prudish might have some uncomfortable moments.  If little Susie or Timmy reads this book, they might ask embarrassing questions.

    Also, if you’re looking for compelling storyline that will suck you into the tale, Robert Rankin probably isn’t for you.  His books are all about showcasing his delightful writing style, chuckling at running gags and zany happenings, learning all sorts of obscure trivia, admiring the author’s tastes in music, and wondering how in the world he’s going to wrap all the plot threads up.

    The Brentford Chainstore Massacre is my twelfth Robert Rankin book, and I have yet to be bored or disappointed by any of his works.

    9 Stars.  If you happen to be a Facebook member, you might consider following Robert Rankin.  Besides keeping you updated on the latest book he's working on, he also recounts all the bizarre events in his life.  And he seems to have a lot of them.