About book The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies Of The Apocalypse (2003)
The key thing that I have taken away from reading this book is that Titles cannot be trusted. Certainly the title of this book is brilliant; I even love the little chocolate bunnies on the cover, glaring at me as they plot. The concept presented on the back of the book is intriguing and will force those of you with unusual senses of humor to consider the purchase. This is the point that you need to stop yourself, because for all of the pretty packaging, this book does not deliver. I am a huge fan of Pratchett, Gaimen and Adams... Rankin does not belong anywhere near their ranks. The premise of the story is simple, a young naïve boy travels to "The City" to find his fortune. What he finds is that he is now in "Toy City" and teamed up with a raggedy bear trying to solve a string of homicides. Seems interesting enough... the problem is that where this book should have been brilliant, it is not even mediocre. The dialogue is beyond irritating, pages and pages of dialogue where no one actually says anything. It's like listening to two pre-teens having a conversation... all of the key nouns are left out, the point is left out, and you have pages and pages of them babbling about things that don't have any meaning. The characters are flat, which I am sure many will argue "But they are toys, they shouldn't have huge personalities" What I am saying is that I shouldn't be able to interchange all of the characters names and get the same effect. Everyone talks the same, reacts the same, functions the same, they are all interchangeable. Now they bill this book as having sex, violence and debauchery. Hmmm... okay they visit a brothel, and we're told that sex did happen... as far as violence, we get to see the aftermath sometimes, otherwise our main characters are just told by another bland character "such and such was killed" and that's the end of it. Debauchery, well we're told they drink a lot, but then when they are supposedly drunk, they proceed to act exactly the same as they did before other than we have to read a paragraph or nine about how the floor looked when they woke up. The writing style may seem "cutesy" at first... as if you are being told this story by a 10 year old. Well let me enlighten all of you who don't have the pleasure of a 10 year old at home... they suck at telling stories. They go on and on and on and never actually get anywhere. The good thing is that you can tell your 10 year old "Okay get to the point" but you can't do that with a book. You have page after page of description about the moon or the floor, or a house... but have no idea what most of the characters actually look like. Was Eddie a fuzzy teddy bear or a sleek velveteen bear? Who knows? What kind of toy was TinTo actually supposed to have been? Was Humpty Dumpty actually an egg? Or a real person? At some points in the story they imply he was an egg, and then in others he was a regular human. Then we get to the end... I won't spoil it other than to say... huh? Where did that come from and why? I honestly wouldn't recommend this book to anyone I thought was of sound mind or menial intelligence. It's no page turner. 1 out of 5 stars.
Okay, unlike a lot of the other reviewers of this book, I didn't pick this up because somebody suggested it might remind me of Terry Pratchett or Neil Gaiman. (In which case I might very well have been disappointed.) I got this book because I was perusing the stacks of my local library and the title caught my eye. I checked the book out without ever looking at the blurb or the inside cover and I had no earthly idea whatsoever what it was about until I opened it. Note that I do like Pratchett and Gaiman very much and that the reason I was in Robert Rankin's section of the library to start with was that I was looking for Ian Rankin, who writes Scots police procedural mystery novels ("tartan noir"), so by happy coincidence I am probably part of the target market for a surreal and humorous mystery novel of the British and pseudo-noir variety. Which is what this is. Coming to this book with no expectations whatsoever, not knowing the author or anything else about him or about the book: I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought it was clever and funny as all get-out. Probably not great literature, no, but then what is? I will be looking for Robert Rankin books in future.
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This is the third Rankin book that I have read, and I still don't know if I like him.Rankin's ideas and titles are great, brillant, wonderful, yet there is something off about the books, something that doesn't quite fit, something that doesn't work. Perhaps it is the length, maybe if the book was shorter there wouldn't be a problem. Perhaps it because it feels as if Rankin is trying too hard to be funny and uses running gags that run too far.This book makes good use of nursey rhymes and toys. At times it is almost as good as Terry Pratchett, but only almost and then only for a couple pages. The age of Jack, 13, doesn't make sense unless, Rankin is trying to shock people or make use feel icky. It doesn't work. If a character is going to have underage sex, and if you are going to use underage sex as a selling point, than make the character act underage, not 25.There are some good parts, like how the some people are killed, Jack's reaction to the city, the use of plot and what should happen. The book is a somewhat amusing read, but not great.
—Chris
Because Easter is coming up, I thought that I would try one of the many "chocolate cozies" listed by other members. This one, The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse, reminded me of chocolate loving Erma Bombeck's confession from one of her books, that went something like this..."My children were eighteen before they learned that chocolate Easter Bunnies had ears."This book will be well liked, by those who like things well; and the use of simile is as artful as.If these two assessments make you want to read more, then this silly book is for you. I’ll be waiting at Tinto’s Bar, reading Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession.
—Almeta
That is such a good book. I read it back when it first came out. I'm going to be reading the sequel in the next week or so (I checked it out from the library, and it is due soon). Also, BEST TITLE EVER!
—Elspeth
