One Messed Up Christmas

I decided to start of my Christmas reading this year with something a bit on the irreverent side...ok... a lot on the irreverent side.  I had been feeling a wee bit stressed and just wanted something that  required little thought and a bit of relief.  To this end I picked up The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror by Christopher Moore.  Did it give me the holiday break I needed?  Let's find out, but first, as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

First things first, this is not a family tale of magic and wonder, it is the complete opposite and has a fair amount of all the stuff that makes a book rated R so you have been warned.  Pine Cove, California is a picturesque town that is still small enough to be considered charming to outsiders.  The denizens of this town are varied and a bit...well...crazy.  The main players in our tale are Dale, an "evil" and developer, his ex-wife Lena, Tucker a free-lance helicopter pilot and his fruit bat Roberto with a thing for Lena, Mavis the old broad of a bar tender (with a penchant for spiking her fruitcake), Theo a pot-head constable and his certifiable wife Molly who when she off her meds morphs into Kendra Warrior Babe, complete with sword wielding prowess.  Lena and Dale get into it one night, resulting in Lena accidentally killing him with a shovel.  Little Josh see's this and as Dale is dressed as Santa, his little child mind thinks that Santa is now dead.  Meanwhile the angel Raziel (who must have whatever form of ADD angels can have) has been tasked with fulfilling the Christmas wish of one child.  In between consuming human treats Raziel wanders over to the chapel that is hosting the Lonesome Christmas party where most of the town has gathered.  Taking the wish literally, Raziel raises all the dead in the area so that "Santa" will be alive.  This results in the dead coming back as very interesting zombies and terrorizing the party.  All sorts of crazy hell breaks loose which I cannot even begin to describe.  Little Josh freaks out and tells the angel he just wants everything to go back to how it was.  Poof, the angel grants the Christmas wish and all is well.

The book itself is a completely twisted mish-mash of personal stories interwoven with the main one, making it impossible to really sum up, but that is part of its charm.  The book was fun, violent, weird, crude, vulgar, silly, insane, but fun.  It is the type of book one reads when they are in that weird sort of mood for a tale that makes your life seem normal in comparison.  This book will make even the most messed up of holiday's seem sane in comparison.  Besides all of the weirdness and un-PCness, the author still managed to keep the gist of the holiday spirit through out the book.  The entire time I was reading, I got the sense that the people of Pine Cove were trying their hardest to be good people and to ensure their friends and family were doing ok regardless of what was going on. The characters were the best part of the book. each one having their own quirky past and interesting present.  I will forever have a soft spot for my schizophrenic Molly/Warrior Babe and I will probably read more of this authors books just to read more of her.  There is really not much more I can say about it other then if you like this sort of book, it fits in wonderfully for a little bit of a saucy holiday read.  I give it 7 out of 10 lasagna's and recommend it to anybody who likes something a bit different and does not get offended even moderately easily.  Happy Reading Everybody!