Carpet Diem by Justin Lee Anderson is the story of Simon Debovar, a rich shut-in with an allergy to human contact (other than his drunk, lecherous Great Aunt Harriet) who gets drawn into a celestial competition between God and Satan that stands to usher in the end-times. He owns a very important rug, you see, and an angel and a demon show up at his house demanding that he choose which side gets it. The rug is stolen by a third party, and things spiral from there. The book uses a lot of elements you’d expect from the thriller genre, with many competing factions with murky and secret motives that are slowly revealed. As one character says, “Those who help you are not always your friends; those who oppose you are not always your enemies.”

This is an urban fantasy drawing from Christianity, but I wouldn’t call this a religious book, nor is religion used as the butt of jokes. Rather, it treats Christian elements as mythology and makes them its own with a little sass and parody to go around. I bring it up because using a real-world religion as the basis of a book’s mythos can be a touchy subject and it’s important to note that “Carpet Diem” takes a pretty neutral approach to the religion. It’s kind of like the movie Dogma in that respect, but with even less attention paid to the actual religion.

Anyway, the book takes a fairly low-brow approach to humor. This is a book about drunk, horny people blundering their way through a world-saving adventure. Simon’s aversion to humanity and social awkwardness is a major source of humor, as is his instinct to assume that implausible worst about everyone he meets (such as jumping to the conclusion that the angel and demon who visit him at the beginning are planning to capture him and sell him into slavery based on absolutely no evidence). Aunt Harriet is a sexual wrecking ball. The ancient feud between pirates and ninjas even makes an appearance.

Normally, I like to post a few choice quotes in these reviews to better demonstrate the style of humor. I failed you this time, and here’s why: The prose and humor in this book are incredibly smooth. The book just flows and builds on itself in a way that you can’t just pick out a funny sentence or paragraph. I was about 8% through the book before I even remembered I was supposed to be highlighting things, but everything is just so dependent on context that it’s hard to just throw some quotes at you. My advice is to read the first two chapters and see for yourself.

If you want to see what happens when you cross “Dogma” with “The Big Lebowski,” or just need some comic urban fantasy in your life, give this one a read.

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I received a review copy of this book from the publisher. Panic in the Old Country by Sam Hooker will be released on June 5, 2018.

I’ve read that a good way to set up a story is to establish what a character is good at and make him do something else. Peril In the Old Country by Sam Hooker uses that method with malicious glee. Sloot Peril’s chief skills are accounting and flying under the radar are of a capricious and murderous government ruled by the tyrannical Domnitor, long may he reign. Sloot is a nervous, cowardly man adept in navigating a Kafkaesque dystopia that reads like a combination of 1984, Papers Please, and Paranoia. He’s stricken by learned anxiety and alternates between resigned fatalism and undignified panic. The humor is almost entirely driven by Hooker’s knack for describing how impossibly bleak and abusive the setting is, along with Sloot’s complete inability to cope.

In the early chapters, Sloot recieves an unfortunate promotion that places him in a new job as the financier of Lord Wilhelm “Willie” Hapsgalt, a foppish man-child of a noble who has been six years old for the past 36 years (He has a birthday coming up. He’s going to turn six.). This sparks a long series of fresh tortures for Sloot, from having to stand up to his own employees to visiting the Old Country’s hated neighbor Carpathia, a land of astoundingly violent and dangerous savages (if you believe the Ministry of Propaganda, and it’s inadvisable not to). He doesn’t even allow himself the space to question the insanity and injustice of his world, and it’s strangely endearing to watch him struggle along in a world where even wearing the wrong shoes to stand in line can earn you a roughing up and swear words summon goblins.

It’s also a spy story. Early on, Sloot is recruited, much to his chagrin, by a spymaster named Roman and is caught in a criss-crossed web of conspiracies, which brings him no end of stress. This is comedic fantasy starring a craven protagonist, so the comparisons to Discworld’s Rincewind are inevitable, but I would argue that this book reads more like a parody of Robin Hobb’s Assassin’s Apprentice. Like Fitz, Sloot is just a man trying to get by in a crapsack world and find a little happiness while suffering through an endless parade of torment. Roman is a smarmier, more secretive Chade who delights in Sloot’s ignorance. Lord Wilhelm is as foppish and hedonistic Prince Regal, minus the villainy. There’s even a painfully awkward romance that Sloot can’t help but undermine with his cowardice and awkwardness. If you’re a fan of books that treat their protagonists like chew toys at a doggie daycare, “Panic in the Old Country” is the parody for you.

I had two major complaints about this book. First, Hooker describes a culture of kilt-wearing, red-bearded barbarians known for their love of **whiskey** (He spelled whisky with an [e]! Get him!). Second, I found the ending abrupt and unsatisfying. I don’t want to say more for fear of spoilers.

Hooker never misses a beat when it comes to describing the terrors and abuses of his world. For my comedy reviews, I like to pick a few particularly funny quotes from the early chapters to give an impression of the sense of humor while avoiding spoilers. In “Peril in the Old Country,” however, Hooker was on fire from the start and I had trouble deciding on which quotes to pick just from Chapter 1. The first chapter really sets the tone and establishes Sloot, the setting, and the sense of humor nicely.
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"It looked into another apartment within arm’s reach, which was occupied by a man who looked remarkably like Sloot. Curtains might have provided them both some amount of privacy, though they’d also have robbed them both of any natural light that managed to elbow its way between the two buildings on occasion, and into their respective apartments.            
Their unspoken compromise was just to ignore each other, hence no name is available to give for this neighbor, who will probably never be mentioned again."
                                   ***
"While he was still in school, when the class had finished the recitation, the teachers had the children turn and slap each other across the face so they wouldn’t forget. Sloot had never been sure what he was supposed to do about it now that he did his recitation on his own, so he slapped himself just to be on the safe side. He reasoned that he was far too old not to know, and didn’t want to slip up if anyone were watching.       
Sloot had spent his life up to that point nurturing an utter dearth of “self-confidence,” a term he believed had been invented by guidance counselors who truly enjoyed lying to people. In any case, the slapping seemed to be working. He was nearly forty, and heresy had yet to creep into his mind."
                                   ​***
Vasily’s work was consistently abysmal, so it was reported to his father—a very affluent shareholder in the Three Bells—that his son’s work was nothing if not consistent.

Trench: A Fantasy Novel of Epic Inconsequence by Ethan Childress is a series of vignettes about a group of soldiers trying to get by in the fringes of the Thoussand Years War. The origins of the war are hilariously explored in the prologue--basically, humans, dwarves, and elves teamed up against the trolls, goblins, and orcs and please let’s not dwell on who ate who first. The war has been going on for a thousand years and shows no signs of ever ending, which leaves our band of soldiers living in the trenches well outside any sort of civilization. They have no hope of ever going home, so they just try to take care of each other and make it until the next regularly-scheduled sneak attack. One day they’re trying to sneak a hungover goblin across The Grinder (think No Man’s Land) without breaking a holiday ceasefire. One day they’re trying to impress dignitaries from an inbred, stupid, bigoted and more importantly wealthy and generous family in order to keep the shipments of mutton coming. Of course, it’s still a war story so expect some loss and tragedy along the way. It’s basically M*A*S*H set in a fantasy-themed World War One.

Childress has a lot of fun with the setting and black humor flows out of it. Miller and his best friend Doug Treesinger gamble over which new recruit will foolishly get himself killed first. Fairies on the front turn feral because they’ve been trapped in a place bereft of beauty. Animals evolved to survive life on the trenches, such as crows who evolved to become evil and try to goad soldiers into the Grinder for a feast. Even the sentient races are affected.

It was no great secret that the first people to rush onto the Grinder were going to die horribly, torn to pieces by the magical wards given dragon form. The real trick was deciding who would be the one to do it. Originally, it had been presented as a brave and noble sacrifice, a great honor of personal sacrifice given to only the most selfless and noble of soldiers. But, after the centuries of brave, noble, selfless soldiers being ripped limb from limb for no real gain, the traits had, by in large, been selectively bred out of the common soldier.

But the real draw is the characters and their friendships.

This is an ensemble cast and most characters have their moment to shine, but the protagonist is Sergeant Jeremy Miller, who is smarmy, jaded, lazy, irreverent, and drunk if he can help it. He is in charge of integrating a band of new recruits including the spunky tinker Brenda Kettleblack, Moregrave the famous arch-mage who got bored with civilian life, and Caleb Witchslayer, whose name matches his job title, a hyper-zealous religious fanatic who has no shortage of trouble fitting in with a more relaxed, pragmatic army--for instance, the witches who run the healing tent.

"These are the symbols of my religions," Witchslayer answered defensively. 
"Plural?" asked the elf. 
"Well, yes," the young man said. "Each has important messages to give to us about the world we live in." 
"Such as?" pressed Miller. 
"Well, this one," Witchslayer indicated a small bent line in a circle, "tells us that we are to kill witches with fire. And this one," holding up something that looked like a star crossed with a heart, "tells us how to find witches using salt and holy earth. And this one…"

It’s the character relationships that really sell this book and a great deal of the humor comes from good-natured pranks and banter. For example, Miller is locked in a will they or won’t they flirtation with his commanding officer, who never misses an opportunity to hit on him with a double entendre. Good thing his best friend Doug Treesinger has implemented what he calls The Great Prank to cockblock him.

First, the elf had explained his "Great Prank." Brenda had zoned in and out of the explanation favoring to watch the elf's delicate lips moving deftly with the words and allowing her mind to drift as to what else they would be good at. But she got the general drift. The elf told them that their captain, Bozeman, had been making advances to their sergeant, Miller, for the better part of a year, and that every time she did Treesinger talked Miller out of it by explaining away the advance as nothing more than military double-speak. This had bothered her a little, but it seemed to make the elf happy, so if Miller couldn't figure "The Great Prank" out, that was on him.

All in all, this book hit a lot of the right notes for me: a serious setting taken to comical extremes, character banter, and a lot of heart. 

Unfortunately, there was one major negative: This book needed another round of proofreading. All too often I caught questionable punctuation and use of the wrong homonyms, such as “gate” instead of “gait.” I highlighted about a dozen myself and I wasn’t exactly on the hunt. They were a distraction and don’t stop this book from being excellent.