Book Reviews #5

Practical Demonkeeping - Christopher Moore

A book 'forced upon' me by the husband of a friend, he's an avid reader but poo poo's most of the books we read in bookgroup (fair enough - everyone's entitled to their own opinions and judgements) He knows I'm a fan of Terry Pratchett (I've read every discworld novel and I think all of his other stuff too, and yes, even the books that are meant for kids) and so suggested I should try one of his favourite authors, who Sam reckons is better than Pratchett*.

I can quite understand this author's appeal to Sam, short chapters, less than 300 pages per novel and there's sex (although not graphic - this is no Jilly Cooper or Jackie Collins) and constant humour...so far, so good.

The book is set in the U.S, somewhere called Pine Cove which is supposedly on the coast somewhere, although for the life of me I can't remember where (or even if that geographical fact was mentioned) nothing much seems to happen in Pine Cove until a demon called Catch turns up with Travis his demonkeeper in tow, being persued by a Djin (a genie) who was tasked back in the time of Solomon (so a long, loooooooong time ago) with returning Catch to Jerusalem for his punishment.

It's an entertaining read, funny of course, but surprising too, there is much detail about most of the characters you meet and yet you can never be sure who will survive their meeting with the demon - he has to eat at least every couple of days (and we're not talking caesar salad with a side of tuna here) and since Travis became his keeper he's been on a short leash of pimps and other dubious people, but in Pine Cove Travis loses control of Catch, oops.
On Amazon many, many of the reviews call the book 'zany', but I wont, it's amusing yes and certainly bizarre, but zany? You try it, see what you think.

All in all not bad, if I stumbled across another book by this author, if I was staying somewhere and lying on a bookshelf was a Christopher Moore book I hadn't read and I needed something to read then I would more than likely pick it up (unless there was something else also on offer - like a Pratchett or a McCaffrey** that I'd never read) but I wouldn't go out of my way to buy one, borrow maybe, but buy? Maybe I need to read the other book by him that Sam's lent me (clearly very eager to convert me), maybe I'll be swayed...we'll see.


* shock, horror, gasp - is that even thinkable, let alone remotely possible?
** Anne McCaffrey, dragon/Pern series, love them to bits, and I know that I have read every single last one of them - many times.