Once upon a time...not happy ever after!! (The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse - Robert Rankin)

Member Name: sparkymarky1973

Product:	The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse - Robert Rankin
Date:	17/01/07 (42 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Funny satirical look at the world of the nursery rhyme and childhood dreams

Disadvantages: Sometimes a little too dark- imagine Bladerunner's city occupied by toys

Having recently picked up a couple of Pratchetts in a bid to escape my usual genre of grisly, gruesome murder thrillers, I decided to give Robert Rankin a go having read the Armageddon The Musical trilogy some years ago.

The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse couldn't be farther away from this earlier set of novels. A dark pastiche of detective penny dreadfuls, nursery rhymes and cuddly stuffed toys, this novel works on many levels and, once you get past the first chapter, really draws you into it's world.

Jack leaves his village headed for the city to make his fortune. Unfortunately when he gets there, Jack discovers that the city is actually Toy City, formerly Toy Town- how times have changed.

Falling in with Eddie Bear, the teddy of a famous private detective, Jack finds himself helping to investigate Toy Town's first serial killer. Somebody is bumping off nursery rhyme characters, the Toy Town Police are less than cursory and things in the city are certainly less than Jack had expected. Whats more, at the scene of the crime the killer is leaving hollow chocolate bunnies as a taunt. What is the significance? How exactly are the toys able to walk about, speak and interact with each other? What the hell is going on? The answers to these questions and more will all be revealed before the novels conclusion and a lot of fun is had along the way.

A visit to a brothel hosted by Mother Goose and some very provocative dolls is just one of the things you can come to expect along with the highly eccentric wind-up barman, Tinto, a cracked Weeble named Wibbly and Little Miss Muppett as a Jerry Springer style T.V host- all of which combine to create an extremely humourous satire of all you knew and loved as a child. The death of Humptey is a paticular delight (and its not how you think!) whilst Boy Blue's murder is simply painful!!

Rankin is obviously a different writer to Pratchett and thus approaches his subject matter in an entirely diffrent way but nonetheless is every bit the master of the word as his Discworld counterpart. Fans of Pratchett will no doubt enjoy this as well but do not expect to laugh in the same way as this is a very much darker variety of humour. This novel is certainly enough to make me want to read more of Rankin's work.Less slapstick- more subtly serious humour that is the theme that runs through this novel and it works .....very well!

Summary: A serial killer runs around Toy City bumping off nursery rhymes