A Christopher Moore Double-Feature Ramble

I finished Christopher Moore's A Dirty Job before finally closing my eyes for my pre-work nap tonight. I realized that I never gave the book before, Bloodsucking Fiends, a proper ramble ... so I'm doing a double feature.

Like a drive-in, but books.

And no concession stand.

And no mosquitoes flying in through the window (unless, of course, you live somewhere that has mosquitoes in October and you're reading this with the window open ... in which case, you're just silly).


Technically the books are part of two different series according to Moore's website and Goodreads and the like. Moore is tricky, though, and does a lot of crossovers with characters. I'm guessing a lot of people could quite happily read one without the other but I'm not a lot of people. I couldn't make it far into A Dirty Job without backtracking to Bloodsucking Fiends because, as it turns out, there are certain itty bitty bits that make oh-so-much-more sense having read them in order.

Both stories take place in San Francisco and deal heavily in matters of death -- one of the main characters of BF being a vampire, and the main character of ADJ being a "Death Merchant" who collects souls and helps relocate them to new vessels. The two even cross paths, though you wouldn't necessarily know it unless you had read BF first .... or this ramble. There are actually three other characters from BF who appear in ADJ to some degree (well, 5 if you include the dogs) ... and one character mentioned in ADJ that will come in to serious play in the sequel to BF. Heck, one of the characters from both of these books made his first appearance all the way back in Moore's first novel, Practical Demonkeeping, waaaaaay back in 1992. Another character from ADJ debuted in a bit role in 1994's Coyote Blue.

I know, that last paragraph was kind of spoilery and I typically hate spoilery stuff (unless it's for a show I only kind of sort of care about ... and then I only read the spoilery stuff, I don't shove it in the face of others) .... but it's minor and no real spoilery specifics were give and it all only really matters anyway in that it helps to highlight the overlappiness.

(It's a word. Don't look it up. Just trust me.)

You know, screw the ramble.

Just read the books. All of them. In order of publication. Don't pay attention to what anyone (including Moore) claims to be a "standalone" or a "series" or any of that nonsense ... because Moore's world is just one big jumbled ball of delightfully heinous fuc......

Oh.

That reminds me.

Do NOT read these books (or, probably, anything written by Christopher Moore) if you:
* get offended easily
* have no sense of humor
* don't understand sarcasm
* abhor profanity

Now I have to figure out what to read next. I was going to do more Moore ... but then NetGalley ... and the guilt from all of the other books I swore I would get to this year .... and ..... and ..... and ......