Seems I’ve gotten myself into a bit of a rut. I tried reading Nick Offerman’s Where the Deer and the Antelope Play, but had to abandon it due to sheer boredom. Then I thought returning to Christopher Moore would be a fun palette cleanser after that, only to wind up with a bit of a brain fog that kept me from being able to focus on the book. So it was a good while before I finally managed to plug my way through the whole thing, and even when I did I felt like I didn’t gleam as much from it as I otherwise would have.
Like Moore’s other work, there’s plenty of funny sounding turns of phrase and silly hijinks. And, in the case of this book, there’s also an abundance of twists and turns to the plot. Whodunit? You won’t find out the truth about that until the closing pages of the book, but Moore will make you think pretty often that somebody has cracked the case, or that the twisted web these characters all have spun together is starting to be unraveled in some shape or form.
Probably because of my inability to give myself over completely to the book, I just found myself wanting the whodunit to be solved already so we could move on. And, while this is also probably due to the state I was in while reading it, I was a bit over the sheer number of characters and relationships to try to keep track of. For a reader more intently focused, it probably wasn’t overwhelming, but for me it was, and I can only speak to my own experience.
So while it was certainly a romp, it was for me a drawn out, confusing one with not quite as much fun as I’d come to expect from Moore. But, again, don’t read too far into my review, because I truly don’t believe I was in the headspace to properly appreciate it.
