Rankin

Finished reading 'Knees Up Mother Earth' by Robert Rankin. Silly, silly, silly: I enjoyed it enormously. This is the 8th book in the Brentford Trilogy, and borrows heavily from all the previous books in the Rankin canon. All the usual running gags about old charters, traditions, or something, electric miniguns, Runeology, and some bizarre continuity are all in place. And yet again Pooley and Omally save the world from Armageddon. My only gripe really is that with all the mystical duelling that takes place between the white magickers and black magickers, things are only really settled by several pounds of Semtex. But it's a small gripe, and I look forward to the next Brentford book, 'The Brightonomicon'. (Rankin lives in Brighton now, not Brentford!) Rankin's Brentford reminds me of 'The League of Gentlemen' and Royce Vasey. There's the same kind of tweedy black humour and grotesque characters. Wonder if the writers of LoG have read Rankin, or whether it's just convergent evolution? Garn, I'm just showing off now, chucking out terms like covergent evolution, like I know what I'm talking about.