This book can be summarised in a single word: funny.
It was written to be funny (and not much else) and it is funny (and not much else). I mean that in a good way: it is outrageously, hilariously funny and made me laugh out loud, and I enjoyed reading it. How can you not enjoy a book that counts among its characters a transvestite Filipino canoe navigator, a talking fruit bat called Roberto, a cannibal, ninjas, and a whole tribe of shark-hunting ex-cannibals? Where the story includes a cargo cult, plane crashes, and shady doctors on a tropical island?
(Well, you could not enjoy it if it was badly written, but it isn’t.)
Where does a writer get ideas like that? How do you come up with a title like “Island of the Sequined Love Nun”? Christopher Moore must be a seriously disturbed person.
Thanks for commenting! I’ll keep Moore on my reading list for dull rainy evenings and times when I need cheering up. (Come to think of it, I might need that now… good idea!)
Glad you liked the book. Christopher Moore is one of my all-time favorite authors, he makes me laugh to the point of being afraid of reading his books in public. I’ve read all of his novels (with the exception of Santa and Pete, which doesn’t appear to be funny), and thus far the only one I haven’t cared for was Coyote Blue, though it bears reading simply because one of the characters reappears in a later book. His other books are just as funny as this, if not better.
If you want to revisit Tucker and Roberto at some point, they make a significant reappearance in The Stupidest Angel. However, this book is bascially full of reappearances of characters from his previous books, and before you read TSA (if you choose to read it) you’ll want to at least read Practical Demonkeeping and The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove first.
Sorry, got carried away. Aaaanyhow, just thought I should thank you for the review and vouch for his other books. Moore really is one of the most reliably funny authors I’ve found.