Apocalypso

Amazon editorial review Robert Rankin's comic fantasies have a laddish good humour which rely heavily, if not excessively, on teasing, class and beer. His protagonists are always forced to compete in a world in which someone else has a silver spoon in their mouth; they muddle their way through his amiably Heath-Robinsonish plots by a mixture of chutzpah, bluster and endurance. Porrig, hero of Apocalypso has a bad attitude that makes even his parents dislike him, but he inherits a shop from a conjuror uncle--a shop which serves as a gateway to other worlds. Not only has he to redeem his uncle from damnation, he also has to save the world from an unpleasant alien vegetable with the power to cloud human minds. Amid all this, we find out what Nelson's Column is for, why railway ticket clerks take so long to sell tickets and the secret that lurks under Mornington Crescent Underground Station. Rankin's humour is a scatter-shot that misses targets as often as it hits, but his unabashed preparedness to use old jokes and the crudest of slapstick is part of a shaggy-dog enthusiasm that is more endearing than otherwise. --Roz Kaveney

also by Robert Rankin in our collection:

• The Antipope
• Armageddon: The Musical
• The Book of Ultimate Truths
• The Brentford Chain-store Massacre
• The Brentford Triangle
• The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag
• A Dog Called Demolition
• East of Ealing
• The Garden of Unearthly Delights
• The Greatest Show Off Earth
• The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived
• Nostradamus Ate My Hamster
• Raiders of the Lost Car Park
• Snuff Fiction
• Sprout Mask Replica
• The Sprouts of Wrath
• The Suburban Book of the Dead: Armageddon 3 - The Remake
• They Came and Ate Us - Armageddon II: The B-movie