2008-08-02 Have you all lost your sense of humour?!

As much as I admire Campbell's novels and stories, my enthusiasm isn't unconditional. For instance, despite being hailed as his best novel in recent years I found The Darkest Part of the Woods (2002) to be heavy - though admittedly excellent - on atmosphere, but considerably light on substance. There was nothing there for me to cling onto, to linger. It was like trying to grasp smoke.

I've not read many novels this year, finding few periods of extended free time in order to get into them. But last week I did and decided to give Campbell's latest a try, though not without trepidation: I ordered here from Amazon where I saw that, out of nearly 70 reviews, many readers found it to be slow, dull, boring, snooze... zzzzzz.

Ah. Um. Oh well, I ordered it anyway as I planned on buying all of the Virgin Books horror titles.

And all I can say is DID I READ THE SAME BOOK?! Slow and dull, you say? Boring? I'm not a fast reader (one of the reasons I read so few novels) but I zipped through this in less than a week, a relatively short period of time for me. It is, quite easily, the funniest book Campbell has ever written! The dialogue zings, full of bards and slights, and some of the situations our main character finds himself in are nothing short of high comedy. Superb. Simply can't believe no one found this book funny...