Saturday 28 May 2011

URBAN FANTASY REVIEW: The Damned Busters - Matthew Hughes

Release Date: 05/05/11

SYNOPSIS:

A hilariously demonic romp through Hell and Back. When mild-mannered actuary Chesney Artstruther accidentally summons a demon and refuses to sell his soul, Hell goes on strike - but with no demons to tempt mankind, the world slows down. No temptation means no ambition, and no drive - the world's manufacturing and agriculture suffers, and something must be done! Chesney agrees to help, but in return he wants to be a superhero with a demonic sidekick!


REVIEW:

On reading the book blurb for this title I really wasn’t sure what I was going to get. Yes I knew that there was going to be superhero antics, yes I knew that heaven and hell were involved and yes I was aware that humour was to take all these concepts and blend them together in one unholy amalgam.

The trouble with humour though is that its subjective to the reader, especially when you think that the whole Heaven and Hell angle has only really been tackled in two humour titles previously in recent years, Lamb by Christopher Moore and of course the now lauded Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Why just these two? Well it’s a tricky blend to achieve and to be honest very few do it well enough to get away.

What Matt achieves in this title is not only chock full of humour but a title that has an unlikely hero, a devilishly intriguing sidekick and above all else a plot that moves along at its own pace keeping the humour very much in the fore. It makes no bones about what it is, it has some novel solutions and it was a title that gave me a lot of fun with my reading time, so much so that I really couldn’t wait to get back to it. All in the prose is decent, the characters outstanding and the overall arc very pleasing to the reader. Great stuff.

1 comment:

Angela Addams said...

This sounds funny - it's not often you find paranormal type stuff in the humor category.