general

This is the second Christopher Moore book I've read. I have to admit I was expecting something funnier than I got. Travis O'Hearn is a reluctant demon keeper and his "last hope" of getting rid of the demon is in the little seaside town on Pine Cove.

You are presented with a range of eccentric local characters in the town, whose main industry is to fleece tourists. However, desipte the potentially interesting people they lack a spark to bring the story to life. At the end I found this book a little "flat" for a better word to describe it. It was ok to read, but it hasn't left any lasting positive impression.

I read an interview where Christopher Moore said that, with this novel, he wanted "to do for horror what Douglas Adams did for science-fiction." He hasn't come far off the mark, although the Hitchhiker series was palpably science-fiction whereas this is hardly horror. It has all of the trappings but never produces a real scare. That is my only complaint.

The other author I kept thinking of while reading this was Terry Pratchett, whose work I prefer over Adams'. In Adams' work, you could always see the joke coming, where Pratchett often sneaks up on you. Moore's humor is similarly situational. I especially like the description of the contents of Jenny's bathwater and its comparison to the contents of a lab experiment going on across town.

It's a light, quick read, but well worth it. This is my first Moore book, and I will definitely be searching out the others.

I love the clever idea underlying Practical Demonkeeping: a nice guy accidentally conjures up a wise-cracking (and people-eating) demon and the two are each trying to find ways to break the spell that binds them together. There's great comic potential in the idea, and there's a few very clever insights in Chris Moore's book. Unfortunately, there's also way too much stilted dialogue, a plot that feels forced and clumsy, and caricatures instead of characters. I'm all for a fun summer read, but an idea this good deserves better writing. I'd chalk it up to this being Moore's first book, but I found the same problems with Bloodsucking Fiends. From the short plot descriptions, Moore has brilliant ideas for his books. I would love to love them as some other reviewers here clearly do, but based on the two I've read, I won't be reading any more (no pun intended) and can't recommend these.