The Stupidest Angel

Keeping with the Zombie Wednesday theme and considering the time of year, I thought I’d throw out an old style review (no rating) of a book I read before I started reviewing books on the site: The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore.

If you have read other books by Christopher Moore, you’ll see lots of familiar faces here. In fact, I think characters from every book up to the release of this one are in it. But that’s beside the point, if you don’t know the characters you can still enjoy the book, there just may be a sentence or two that doesn’t make as much sense to you as it would to someone who has read all the books.

The story here is about an angel named Raziel. If you’ve read Lamb, you’ll know he’s the one who showed up late, by a few years, to explain to Joshua that he was the son of God and what he was supposed to do. Anyway, the angel comes to town to grant one Christmas wish. The child he picks happens to have witnessed a murder earlier, and the victim, a power hungry developer, was dressed as Santa Claus. So the child’s wish is to have Santa brought back to life. Since “Santa” was unceremoniously dumped into a grave in the graveyard, the angel goes and brings him, and because he’s not careful the other corpses, back to life. The zombies then decide to eat the entire town of Melancholy Cove.

Zombies, Christmas and comedy. You just can’t go wrong.

Anyway, the book is a delight to read and totally worth the money to pick up a copy. I only regret not reviewing it sooner, and not getting to it before Christmas so people might get one and enjoy it snuggled up in their beds on Christmas Eve. There’s always next year…

5 October 1999

So tonight was the season premiere of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the series premiere of Angel.
I am not disappointed. I still love Buffy, in my mind one of the best shows ever put on television. Nothing else can handle real issues that affect people (like loneliness, heartbreak, failure, fear, and everything else) in such an absurd setting and still get the point across. Plus its funny and fun to watch. And Angel looks like it will be the same, only a little more ‘adult’.
Seriously, even with the violence and ‘scariness’ of these shows, unlike trashy shows like Melrose Place and other such garbage, the good guys always win, people overcome their fears, they feel good about themselves, and they always have their friends. What isn’t to like? This is the kind of stuff that I hope is on when I have kids so they can watch it.
Well damn. Watching these shows just puts me in such a good mood… but not really in a writing mood, so I’ll write more later.