Book Review: Practical Demonkeeping By Christopher Moore

By TheLeonard112 · Jul 22, 2013 ·
  1. Summery Of Book (By Author)
    In Christopher Moore's ingenious debut novel, we meet one of the most memorably mismatched pairs in the annals of literature. The good-looking one is one-hundred-year-old ex-seminarian and "roads" scholar Travis O'Hearn. The green one is Catch, a demon with a nasty habit of eating most of the people he meets. Behind the fake Tudor façade of Pine Cove, California, Catch sees a four-star buffet. Travis, on the other hand, thinks he sees a way of ridding himself of his toothy traveling companion. The winos, neo-pagans, and deadbeat Lotharios of Pine Cove, meanwhile, have other ideas. And none of them is quite prepared when all hell breaks loose.

    Review

    As a matter of fact, I did not purchase this book, though, I did happen to borrow it from a friend. I know this person very fell, a funny, smart and enjoyable person. Getting this book right after I order the Winter Witch off of Amazon, made me ignore it. And the not too exciting or detailed explanation did not help me become any more excited for this book. Though, after I had finished The Winter Witch, I decided to dedicate my reading time to that of Practical Demonkeeping, and it surely deserves the attention I gave it, and the praise I am going to give it .

    So, I did not let my perception of The Winter Witch change my opinion of one of Christopher Moore's first books. The book had many things I enjoyed and only few things that I found that I did not enjoy so much about the book. So, now I will begin the things I like about the book.

    Practical Demonkeeping has one aspect that is a recurring part of the book and something no one can miss, constant character switching. And I do not mean point of view, but what is happening with a certain character of Pine Cove. Now, what is so different about this is that each character's story intertwines with another. Know you may be asking exactly what I mean, but I am going to compare it with Pulp Fiction and Inglorious Basters, which are both movies made by the director Quentin Tarantino. In each these stories, there are multiple characters who have their own stories. In each story, one character may run into the other. This is fact add details to the story that are revealed over time and adds to the suspense of the story as a whole. It also makes it more enjoyable to see the characters who differ from each other to such an extent act together.. Seeing them in the same seen is enjoyable to say the least.

    Another thing the book is very good at is the story itself. The book gives each an every character their own story line, no matter how brief. Each and every story is either entertaining, hilarious, or suspenseful. This includes the backstories that are given about certain people. The story manages to keep you entertained the whole way through, and even works its way into mythology and religion just for the sake of making it believable, or just to make a joke out of it. Each part of the story kept me wanting more, or left me satisfied.
    And I can not stress this enough more than when we were given Travis's backstory.

    Each character in the story could be consider lovable in a sense, though I see it as each one being entertaining enough to care about. Each character is interesting in their own way, and each are considerably different. Yet, there was never a time where I found a character I would consider dull, or half assed. Each one was fleshed out and given their own personality traits. There were no clones, and no copycats.

    The comedy of the story of the story was immense. The characters, about each single one was given either a plot detail or even maybe a one liner that were just laugh out loud funny. Even one in particular had multiple instances of being hilarious. Also, certain situations in the story left me laughing out loud, something that most television shows fail to do. And the humor never let itself get too crude, sure there were those adult jokes every now and then, but not to the George Carlin bar.

    Finally the book managed to create a world you found believable. Even with all this supernatural stuff going on, you were never taken out of the world, and it allowed you to believe it could happen on Earth. Even with the owl.

    Now for the things I did not like about the book. One, I felt in this book Christopher Moore did not put enough detail into the situation. This allowed for some of the audience to get confused about certain events that are happening in the story. Sure, no one needs to be overly descriptive, I just believed a little more detail should have been put into his explanations. And also I think that his writing could be somewhat confusing at times, especially with the constant swapping of characters. To me it felt at times some things, besides the owl, went unexplained. Though, these were my only two complaints with the story.

    As for my final thoughts, I believe that Practical Demonkeeping is a good time for anyone who enjoys good humor and is open minded to a darker story. This book is truly a story about a demonic creator, it you can get past this and some of its dark humor, you can enjoy yourself. You will soon embrace the light humor, beautiful storytelling, and awesome storyline of the book. I would recommend this to anyone I know who wasn't a complete softy. Go pick up the book, read it, and enjoy yourself.

    9/10

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