The Serpent of Venice

I read my first Christopher Moore novel in the 90s when I picked up a remaindered copy of Coyote Blue for cheap. I loved it, but for some reason or another it was more than a decade until I picked up another one of his novels. Lately I've been slowly reading his other books, including his most recent work,  The Serpent of Venice, which I was lucky enough to get a review copy of.

Serpent of Venice is a sequel to the novel Fool.  Fool was a parody of King Lear, starring Pocket, Lear's fool. This book also stars Pocket, and as the title suggests is (partly) a parody of The Merchant of Venice. It's also a parody of Othello with a dash of Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" thrown in.

Being a Shakespearean parody, the book is fairly bawdy and uses a good bit of  archaic language. Being a Christopher Moore novel, there is a lot of humor. There is also some fool on dragon sex, for the sort of people who get turned on by that sort of thing.

I don't think this is Moore's best book, but it's good, and it's funny enough that I laughed out loud at several points. It's well worth reading.

Savage Harvest

Michael Rockefeller disappeared, and was presumable killed, in  New Guinea in 1961. The official cause of death was drowning (or possibly being consumed by sharks or crocodiles). Unofficially, many people have speculated that he was actually killed and eaten by a  cannibalistic headhunting people called the Asmat. In Savage Harvest, Carl Hoffman travels to New Guinea to investigate the matter.

As this was an event that happened over 50 years ago in what is essentially a swamp among close-mouthed and (in the 60s) fairly primitive people, it should come as little surprise that Hoffman didn't manage to find any definitive proof. He does however dig up some fairly substantial circumstantial evidence. This includes documents from the Dutch government (who ruled the area at the time of the disappearance)  and a fair amount of information on the culture and religion of the Asmat.

For readers who are interested in odd history, the grotesque, and foreign people, this is a book that's well worth reading.

The Simon Iff Stories & Other Works

Since I'm trying to do reviews more often, it's time for another one. This time, it's Simon Iff Stories and Other Works by Aleister Crowley. I found it surprisingly enjoyable.

The Simon Iff stories are mysteries, which to be honest reminded me of nothing so much as G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories.Don't get me wrong, Iff and Brown are to very different characters with very different worldviews. However, both of their methods of deduction revolve around am understanding of the darkness of the human soul more than any clue hunting.

There are some problems with the stories. "An Old Head on Young Shoulders" just left me confused. "Not Good Enough" was one of the most racist stories I've ever read. Despite this, I found the collection interesting.

The "and Other Works" from the title is a collection of stories called Golden Twigs based off of Frazer's Golden Bough. I probably would have enjoyed them more if I'd actually read Frazer's book. They aren't bad, but I didn't like them as much as the Iff stories. Still the book is worth getting just for the Simon Iff stories.