Post a Comment On: A Nod to Nothing

[Image]I grabbed "Gil's All Fright Diner" by A. Lee Martinez at the library off the new book shelf solely because it had a rather amusing looking eyeball monster sprouting out of the center of a diner in the desert. Eryn's rather glad I checked it out as she likes to flip through the chapters and identify the eyeball monster at the beginning of each chapter. I'd rather not give too much about this book away as I have friends and a wife who might actually want to read it, but suffice to say, if you like Christopher Moore, you'll probably enjoy this book. While it's not as well written as Moore, and feels just a bit like a first book, the story is much more interesting than a few of Moore's books I've read, like The Stupidest Angel (it gives "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal" no competition, however). Rather than focusing on a small town dealing with a stupid angel, this book instead focuses on a small town dealing with a rogue teenager (the back of the book refers to her as a "jailbait sorceress") trying to call up the old gods. After that, it smells very much like Moore - strangers with unusual secrets who meet unusual love interests under unusual circumstances (and instead of an unusual fruit bat, an unusual ghost dog). There are some moments of inspired writing and even more inspired, well, inspiration that genuinely made me chuckle. It's probably a must read for Tall Brad and Klund, the later of whom will probably wedge it somewhere near the middle of his Christopher Moore hierarchy.

Publishers Weekly sums it up on Amazon:
"Earl (aka the Earl of Vampires) and Duke (aka the Duke of Werewolves), who are looking for a place to eat as they drive through Rockwood, a small desert community besieged by cosmically weird stuff. Soon after stopping at Gil's Diner, the pair help Loretta, the formidable owner-operator, fend off a zombie attack. Determined to do the right thing, the two supernatural misfits take on further challenges, such as trying to prevent Tammy (aka Mistress Lilith, Queen of the Night) and her loyal but dumb boyfriend, Chad, from ending the world."