Patrick Canning
Working as a janitor St. Militrude’s Home for the Insane and Elderly, Jim considers his existence to be meaningless, so decides to commit a clean, quiet and respectful suicide. Just before he swallows his pills, an elderly resident whisks him off down a previously non-existent staircase, and a few minutes later Jim is falls from the sky into a featureless blue ocean.
Jim has been conscripted to play Cryptofauna, a game he’s never heard of and doesn’t know the rules for. All he has is a bag of dust, a faithful dog, and socks that his elderly mentor has deemed to be inadequate.
With a tagline of “If Alice in Wonderland & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy had a love child, it’d be Cryptofauna”, this book was begging to be read. I’m not a fan of Alice, but Douglas Adams was a genius, so I had to see if this lived up to hype. I’m happy to say that it did – it’s funny, inventive, and just downright weird, and somehow all fits together in one fantastic package.
I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.