Evil Goods - Marcus Bone ***

By Brian Clegg

Writing a humorous novel is difficult enough – combine it with fantasy and you are taking on a challenge that seems near-impossible. Leaving aside the genius that was Terry Pratchett and the bonkers randomness of Robert Rankin’s Brentford Trilogy (he has, of course, written many more, but nothing else comes close), I have rarely come across a humorous fantasy novel that I enjoyed.

Initially, I struggled with Marcus Bone’s writing style. He was trying too hard to be funny – Pratchett, for instance, knew that you didn’t have to make every line hilarious (in fact, the essence of good humour is to sprinkle it in otherwise straight writing: I’d recommend any would-be humour writer to check out P. G. Wodehouse in this regard). One of many examples early on is when our reluctant hero Richard Parry mentions attending a trendy opera which is about ‘the evils and cruelty of factory-farming mushrooms for capitalist supermarkets’.

It’s also important that the ‘real world’ aspects are believable. Parry reaches the magical alternate London when he goes to visit an old decaying warehouse. Wanting to inspect the roof (he’s an architect), despite the building’s interior being in a dire state, wet and dank, he gets into a rickety old cage lift, which promptly traps him for several hours. Really?

On the whole, the book settles down to storytelling with rather less heavy handed humour once Parry is embroiled in a military operation (via airship) into the depths of the evil empire, via a magic forest. It’s a touch episodic, and Parry’s companions (various military/spy type individuals) have very little character development so it’s hard really to have an engagement with them. But we’re taken on a passable adventure.

Bone’s writing is fairly basic and sometimes clunky. Take the chapter opener ‘Dying sunlight punched its way through the canopy with the force of a boxer having done fifteen rounds and having had three knockdowns.’ But if you just go with the flow, it can be quite entertaining.

You can buy Evil Goods from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com or Bookshop.org

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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.