When Dorothy Parker said “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force”, she wasn’t talking about Atlas Shrugged, she was talking about Over a God’s Dead Body.
Not only were there multiple grammatical errors, not only was the writing piss poor, but the plot, to put it bluntly, sucked. This read like the author and a bunch of the dudebros in his frat house/high school/ middle school playground/pick whichever group has the lowest maturity level, got drunk/stoned/impressed with their own wonderfulness and had a contest over who could think up the most asinine, crude, and nonsensical story…and then realize the author was a mid-thirties married father of three when he wrote it.
Loki, Jotnar of fame, is indentured to Seth, the Egyptian God of Chaos to pay back Seth saving him from being chained under a venomous snake. In return, Loki is to track down the remains of Seth’s nephew Horus and remove his….Sausage and Brussels sprouts, so Isis can’t have yet another child to try and thwart Seth’s rule. While on the lookout for Horus’ remains, Loki comes across Esmeralda (call her Esmy; who shortens that name to Esmy?) and Jake, two students who work at the local college, and just happen to be Loki’s great-grandchildren. Can this newfound happy family thwart Seth’s plans? Will the school and it’s paranormal classes survive? Will Dolores the Vodoo priestess get revenge on Kyle the Canadian with the inappropriately spray-painted van for his destruction of her daughter’s Girl Scout Cookie Booth (located between “The Elf’s Quiver” RPG store and “Lady V’s Strip Club)? Does anyone actually care about these questions? Because I sure don’t.
I knew I was going to be in trouble when the first chapter consisted of the College’s PE Coach getting caught in an intimate situation with his underage Sasquatch boyfriend on the 50-yard line of the football field. and the Sasquatch’s reaction was to offer the slowest moving spectator a chance at a spot of tea (not loose leaf of course, if you know what I mean). Of course other than some stupid questions over anatomy, this event is never mentioned again. This is on par with the charming clapping rhyme Dolores’ daughter and her friend have over Mamma Mia’s Pizzeria, which Spriggs claims he got from his own 6-year olds. If this is true, these kids either need therapy, to grow up, or to get slapped like their mother has apparently never slapped them.
Esmy and Jake accept Loki as their great-grandfather at varying speeds; Esmy immediately, Jake after six hours when he discovers this means he has magic and may be able to create zombie ducks. Kyle is just too “quirky”, and is written like a bad meshing of Trent Lane from Daria, a stereotypical Canadian, and Shaggy from Scooby-Doo. No one was likable, times and the order of events made no sense, and characters appeared and disappeared according to their importance to the plot. You’ll thrill to the mocking of veganism, safe spaces and trigger warnings; you’ll chill to the mockery of Russians, Caribbeans, and people with dwarfism. You’ll roll in the aisles over the scene containing a woman turned into a giant Barney the Purple Dinosaur, a metal jug of rat poison, and proctology.
He wrote this book seven years ago and said he’d write a sequel when he had the time; in the interim he’s written nine other books, including and I can not make this up The Headless Floridaman (and doesn’t that just tell you everything you need to know?), and I just can not give a flying fig if he never writes again.
I feel like I read this book so that maybe some poor soul who had a passing interest will read this review and save themselves the death of brain cells reading this will cause. The only, only three reasons I’d give for actually reading it?
1: So you can see what a truly terrible book is like
2: To prove that even self-publishing (which this is) should have some standards.
3: Because if you’ve ever wanted to write a book but think your idea is too bad/you can’t write well enough, this will help you realize that if this dreck can get published, surely the idea you have (which must be better) will have a chance.