Book Review: Iznogoud; The Caliph's Vacation by Godcinny & Tabary

Iznogoud; The Caliph's Vacation is a collection of short, animated stories which follow the attempts of the evil Iznogoud to depose the Caliph of Baghdad by taking him on a series of potentially fatal vacations and days out.

The stories and dialogue are written by Goscinny who is most famous for the Asterix series and the illustrations are excellent, provided by Tabary. Each of the stories revolves around the evil Grand Vizier trying to kill the Caliph in various, typically comic-strip style, vacation strategies, each of which goes totally wrong and end up leaving Iznogoud in various states of disarray including being turned into a louse, turned into a shell and stranded in a desert.

These stories are quite amusing and there are a number of good puns and visual jokes in each one, but it is the characteristics of the Caliph and Iznogoud that amuse me most and after being out of print for many years, I was very pleased to see this book recently republished, having lost my copy at least 20 years ago.

This book is recommended for any fans of Asterix and similar cartoon books, and makes surprisingly amusing reading for children and adults alike.

Score: 8/10

Books to be Reviewed: Tracks by Mike Gordon

Many thanks to David Gordon for sending me a copy of Tracks by Mike Gordon for reviewing; Tracks is a self-published book and is Mike Gordon's first novel.

"The future of the surveillance society… In Boston, Global HealthCare Corporation is hoping to recover its fortunes with a new micro-chip technology which can eradicate disease - until Peter Miller, the brilliant but troubled architect of the program, quits his job and goes to work at a psychiatric hospital in London, helping develop a system to track dangerous patients. When a deadly threat to the US emerges, a covert Federal agency becomes involved, and Miller is caught up in a web of lies, love, insanity and murder - and finds he's opened the door to a frightening future."

Currently I am about halfway through the book and I have to say that I like it - the story is gripping, there are some interesting characters and it is well-written: a review will appear here when I have finished the book.

Anyone wishing to support a new, self-publishing author can buy Tracks from the book's website: Tracks by Mike Gordon.

Get Your Book Reviewed

Authors, publishers, distributors or anyone else connected to the publishing industry are now welcome to contact me in order to have books reviewed on this website.

Regardless of genre, I am happy to write a constructive and honest review of any book that I am sent.

Those who would like to send me a book to be reviewed should contact me on this e-mail address nickupton@thaibirding.com to let me know which book they would like me to review and to get my mailing address.

Any book I receive will get a blog post about the book when I recieve it and a review after I have read it.

Please specify any links to websites desired in the blog post when contacting me.

Thank you

Nick