Apocalypse Now Now by Charlie Human

Neil Gaiman meets Tarantino in this madcap, wildly entertaining journey into Cape Town's supernatural underworld.

I LOVE THE SMELL OF PARALLEL DIMENSIONS IN THE MORNING
Baxter Zevcenko’s life is pretty sweet. As the 16-year-old kingpin of the Spider, his smut-peddling schoolyard syndicate, he’s making a name for himself as an up-and-coming entrepreneur. Profits are on the rise, the other gangs are staying out of his business, and he’s going out with Esme, the girl of his dreams.

But when Esme gets kidnapped, and all the clues point towards strange forces at work, things start to get seriously weird. The only man drunk enough to help is a bearded, booze-soaked, supernatural bounty hunter that goes by the name of Jackson ‘Jackie’ Ronin.

Plunged into the increasingly bizarre landscape of Cape Town’s supernatural underworld, Baxter and Ronin team up to save Esme. On a journey that takes them through the realms of impossibility, they must face every conceivable nightmare to get her back, including the odd brush with the Apocalypse. 

 Publisher's description

Okay, let's get something out of the way. This book is not magic realism, but hey it's great fun. The book starts very realistically, but once it enters the alternative world it stays there. I can see why the comparison has been made between the author and Neil Gaiman. Gaiman's books are at the far edge of magic realism, where magic realism and fantasy overlap. Both authors have a strain of humour which runs through their books. Charlie Human has some wonderful one-liners: Magic is S&M without a safe-word  and  His face has the texture of an old loofah.  Like Gaiman and Tarantino, Charlie Human plays with different genres and their cliches: you will find zombies, South African mythic creatures, kung-fu dwarfs, hard-bitten detectives, and giant mechanical beasts in this novel.

This book will appeal to teenage boys who don't read books and adults who do. It is fast-paced, laugh-out-loud funny and the hero and narrator is himself a teenage schoolboy, one who runs a school gang which operates a porn business. He sees himself as a logical, clinical, businessman... that creates plans, devises schemes and shifts pawns around like Kasparov. This me would drink neat vodka while stealing candy from babies and life savings from old people.  But during the course of the book he discovers that he has feelings: This is a me that feels. Gross, I know. This dual nature is explained later in the book.

Baxter's voice is brilliant. It rings true as that of a very bright teenage boy, whilst at the same time referencing literary influences. Baxter's commentary, with its irony and awareness, also helps keep the book from being overwhelmed by weirdness.

I gather that Charlie Human is one of a new generation of speculative fiction writers coming out of South Africa. This is his debut novel and a very impressive one at that.

This book was given to me by the publisher via Netgalley in return for a fair review. 

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Fat Charlie Nancy is not actually fat. He was fat once but he is definitely not fat now. No, right now Fat Charlie Nancy is angry, confused and more than a little scared right now his life is spinning out of control, and it is all his dads fault.

If his rotter of an estranged father hadn't dropped dead at a karaoke night, Charlie would still be blissfully unaware that his dad was Anansi the spider god. He would have no idea that he has a brother called Spider, who is also a god. And there would be no chance that said brother would be trying to take over his life, flat and fiancee, or, to make matters worse, be doing a much better job of it than him. Desperate to reclaim his life, Charlie enlists the help of four more-than-slightly eccentric old ladies and their unique brand of voodoo and between them they unleash a bitter and twisted force to get rid of Spider. But as darkness descends and badness begins is Fat Charlie Nancy going to get his life back in one piece or is he about to enter a whole netherworld of pain?

Goodreads description

I have been a fan of Neil Gaiman's writing ever since I found Neverwhere on a bookshelf in a flat I was staying in for a city break. Instead of visiting the sights I spent a whole day in the nearest cafe reading the book. I just loved the dark edge to his writing. American Gods followed, which was even darker and which I enjoyed even more. I also enjoyed Good Omens, the book that Neil Gaiman wrote with Terry Pratchett.

Gaiman's books to my mind stand on the fantasy edge of magic realism. In American Gods the settlers to the New World brought with them the gods of their homelands. These gods exist unrecognised alongside mortals but they retain much of their power. Anansi Boys picks up on this theme, but focuses on one god - Anansi, the trickster spider god brought from Africa to America and the Caribbean. Fat Charlie Nancy is a typical Gaiman central character - an ordinary sort of guy who discovers that he has hidden reserves and talents. There is nothing groundbreaking in this book therefore; Gaiman is following a successful formula. 

The main difference is the tone. Gone is the darkness of his earlier works and instead the treatment is often humourous and the characters are more predictable, even on occasion somewhat two-dimensional. That is not to say that I didn't enjoy reading this book - I did. It was just a less demanding and inspiring read and whereas I still have memories of scenes in Neverwhere and American Gods (even though I haven't read them for years) I know it won't be the same with this book. 

This a great book to take on holiday. Preferably take it on holiday to a small Caribbean island, such as the one on which the book ends. This is a mellow story suited to the Caribbean god, which slips down like a cocktail. There are some great lines to have you chuckling over your drink: It was not that he was feckless, more that he had simply not been around the day they handed out feck.  

The book is less about the interaction between the gods and men, as was the case with American Gods, as it is about storytelling and the power of song. Anansi's power lies in his ability to tell stories and this is transferred to his son.

Stories are like spiders, with all they long legs, and stories are like spiderwebs, which man gets himself all tangled up in but which look so pretty when you see them under a leaf in the morning dew, and in the elegant way that they connect to one another, each to each.

What’s that? You want to know if Anansi looked like a spider? Sure he did, except when he looked like a man.

No, he never changed his shape. It’s just a matter of how you tell the story. That’s all. 

by Zoe Brooks