secondhand souls

I get a kick out of Christopher Moore. I've read a bunch of his books since my little sister gave me a copy of Lamb a number of years ago. But I haven't read everything. And that fact just bit me in the ass while reading his latest: Secondhand Souls. Why? Because it's a sequel to an earlier novel that predates my interest in Moore's work, namely A Dirty Job.

So do you have to have read A Dirty Job in order to enjoy this one? No, would it be more enjoyable if you did? I don't know. see above Would I recommend reading the first one first? you're really not paying attention here, are you? listen, I can't do this by myself

Christopher Moore is delight to read. You can read me gush about him in my previous book reviews, which you'll find links to in the body of this review if you're interested, but I'll spare you that pleasure now. As far as this story goes, it's a little creepy--macabre even--but in a funny way.* Moore has taken an interesting view of death and its machinations, it's very workings, which he has absurdly assigned to men, as if the whole enterprise was outsourced to private contractors, to save tax money or something. Almost as if God said, hey I gave you the Garden of Eden and you screwed it up, now we got this whole death thing, why don't you just take care of that yourself.

Who comes up with stuff like that? Okay, there are probably plenty of crazed lunatics and under-medicated conspiracy-theorists that come up with crap like that every day, but what kind of maniac turns it into a novel?

That's right. My hero.

Oh, and before we go, does the book jacket with the creepy skeleton-faced girl glow-in-the-dark and creep you out even more when you shut off your bedside lamp the first night you read this? Of course it does.

Read this book.

Yes, yes, read the other one first. I thought we covered that
 


* Funny 'ha-ha' or funny 'strange?' Yeah, both.