This book is pure weird fun. It is also one of the scariest books I've ever read. (And it's not the gory scenes with the monsters that are scary. The thing that frightens me is that you can read this book, then look at the world around you and almost believe that it really is being shaped by the monstrous forces the book describes. I've never gotten that kind of feeling from a horror book before.) And even though it is scary, it's also one of the funniest books I've read. And even though my personal logic tells me that one of those opposing forces, the humor and the horror, ought to dull the other, they don't. Horrific things happen and it's still funny. Hilarious things happen and it's still scary.

"Horror-Comedy" doesn't describe everything this book is. It is an adventure story. It is a road trip. It is a small town ghost story. It is an epic fantasy. It's science fiction. It's a romance. It's a psychological thriller. It bleeds across genres, terribly, beautifully.

The mind that came up with this book is twisted, but brilliant. If you got H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, Douglas Adams, Robert Rankin, Grant Morrison (the comics writer), and Brian Lee O'Malley (the other comics writer) into a room, scooped out their brains with an ice cream scooper, blended them all together in a blender until you got a pink froth, then shaped it into one giant brain and re-animated it Frankenstein-style, you might have the brain that came up with this story. The entire book is shot through with high concepts and smart philosophical questioning. And there are some pretty serious moral critiques of society here, as well.

But it's so fun. If you like weird stories, video games, science fiction, fantasy, psychics, horror, buddy comedies, hallucinogenic drugs, morality, gore, action, penis jokes, demonology, romance, God, dogs, comic books, swearing, or time travel paradoxes, then you should read this book. And if you happen to like all of these things, then you are in for a real treat.

Final Grade: A