Saturday, January 2, 2010

Book Review: Mercury Falls by Robert Kroese


Mercury Falls, by Rob Kroese, is a comic novel about the approach of the Apocalypse and how preparations for it by the managements of heaven and hell become compromised by over-complicated bureaucracy and underhand deals.

This amusing story tells how a reporter, an indolent angel and a nerd end up having pivotal roles in the approaching Apocalypse, a world-ending deal that has been forged by heaven and hell after many thousands of years of legal wrangling. The writing here is extremely imaginative, with angels and demons resembling employees of large corporations and heaven and hell appearing like competing companies. Whilst the author creates humour from turning the divine into the banal and poking fun alternately at creationism and modern science, at times the humour is rather esoteric and this may prevent this novel from appealing to a wide range of readers.

Whilst the story of Mercury Falls is quite compelling, with an amusing and recurring parody of people's obsession with a very well-known series of children's books featuring an adolescent wizard, at times it becomes quite complicated and begins to resemble the bureaucracy it draws its humour from. However, a fine ending draws the reader in and made me laugh right up the conclusion where the main characters make a deal with the devil and come out on top.

This novel is very well-written, with a wonderful vocabulary and is clearly written by a mind that sees deeply into all sorts of situations and creates a book as surreal as a painting by Dali.


This is a very clever book with a good story and a lot of humour. However, it is way off the main stream and requires a similar imagination to the one that the author uses in order to appreciate it. I would recommend this book to readers who like the surreal, anything anti-establishment and irreverent. I would not recommend this book to deeply religious Christians who would probably take great offence to the almost certain delight of the author.

Score: 8.5/10

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for the great review, Nick. I thought the appeal of the book would be rather narrow too because of all of the obscure references, but that doesn't seem to have prevented a lot of people from enjoying it. The book is selling really well. :)

Sunday Smith said...

I reviewed this book as well. I see we are in agreement about it. I was surprised to see so many low reviews at Amazon but all books are not for everyone. Loved your review.

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