false 28881 0380813815 9780380813810 16009 3306 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1167957757m/28881.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28881.Lamb_The_Gospel_According_to_Biff_Christ_s_Childhood_Pal 16218 Christopher Moore 71129 10347 1 0 false Sun Oct 05 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Sep 25 08:10:08 -0700 2008 Sun Oct 05 22:42:50 -0700 2008 1
Except no. Dr. RSB/JM blends religions and philosophy into a whole with a great deal of wit and humor and imagination, bringing up everything from Buddhist pirates (they're not very good Buddhists) to a girl named Ink Catherly (because it was written, she'll tell you, and maybe it's the truth). Christopher Moore manages to take the same fantastic material and turn out a story so boring that I couldn't even finish it, much less laugh at it. I gave up less than a hundred pages from the end, which was the point where it became abundantly obvious that the author wasn't going to discover a sense of humor or fun.

To make matters worse still, it treads the same conceptual territory as Small Gods, a book that is infinitely superior in pretty much every respect.

How someone can take something so rife with potential for comedy and fun and produce something so lifeless puzzles me. Perhaps he was going for shock value, or too caught up in his own cleverness? Perhaps I simply don't know enough about Christian dogma and mythology to pick up all the in-jokes? Either way, I'm not reading another of his books any time soon!]]>