Eddie Ragowski

Short review: I'm picking up whatever the sequel is. This book is an insane ride and I'm on board. Long review: This is a hard book to categorize for a lot of reasons. It's the first volume of what (I hope) is a larger series, it tackles a lot of themes both serious and whimsical, and it seems to have no fear about where it'll go in terms of subject matter. It's weird and wild and funny and sad and serious and I genuinely don't think I've been jerked around quite as much in 300 pages by any book in any genre in a long time. As far as genre, it takes place in modern times, but there's an awful lot of fantasy elements like magic and gods that are used to give the (somewhat intimidating in it's size) cast their color. I'll just start with what it is, as spoiler free as possible: it's a book about a reality TV show. If you ignore all the supernatural elements of the story-and there's a lot of that to go through, to be fair-then the central conceit is that this TV show (the titular "The Next Great Deity") can't possible deliver on it's grand prize. The main characters are wrapped up in the mystery to figure out what the show /really/ is, since it can’t possibly be what it claims to be. Knowing all this, it's probably not a surprise that the main character is a human atheist, and his foil is a human christian struggling with her faith. Considering the premise of the book, I don't think I have to guess what the religious beliefs of the author are. What really makes this book work isn't any sort of antagonism between the two, or even any antagonism towards religion. These two characters-Theodore and Robin, respectively-instead poke and prod the show in their own unique ways in an attempt to learn more about it. The biggest emotional hook, by far, has nothing to do with religion at all, but rather, honesty. These two characters--and a third character that works for the show, the shark guy drinking wine on the back of the book-- drive the interest and conflict and it's amazing that I reached the end of the book in love with all three of them when they all struggle so much with each other. Also, Jesus-who is a bearded lady and hosts the show in a sort of Tyra Banks-esque role-is yelling at the contestants to make a new sentient species. That's the "challenge" of the show, to make a species to rule over. Once this gauntlet gets thrown down the book just kind of blasts off into the atmosphere of strange and never looks back. I will say that there's some EXTREMELY heavy subject matter in here, so even though I think the tone of this book is mostly "dark comedy", you should still know that you're gonna get hit with some painful situations. There's a slur thrown towards the main character fairly early in the book, there's difficult wrestling with religion, sexuality, substance abuse, etc., but it's all handled in a way that's at once realistic and empowering. Probably my only real complaints with this book is that it's part of what I'm guessing is going to be a long series. The author indicated a title for the next book already, but I don't know how long the wait is going to be. I only just finished reading and I'm already tired of waiting. Get this if you want something to love or hate. I don't know if it's possible to read this book and have an opinion somewhere in-between. Also, FYI: Mark Sharkman is the best character, forever. That character hits way harder then a flippin’ tie-wearing shark should be allowed to, and he alone made me glad I plunked money down on this.