The Antipope

The Antipope was the first Robert Rankin book I'd read. It's the first instalment in his Brentford trilogy. I can see why some people have suggested that his work is a little like Marmite. You'll either love it or hate it. And the less “English” your humour is the less you'll like it.

The meandering plot itself is pure madness. In fact, this genre hopping story is so crazy it's hardly worth describing. It revolves around a couple of layabouts, a pub, magic beans, Pope Alexander VI and a plan to conquer the world. Before you know it the characters wrap themselves up in series of wacky misadventures and find themselves in any number of improbable situations.

Rankin weaves in lots of references to pop culture, daftness, horror, fantasy, sci-fi, slapstick and general strangeness. Of course, in the end they defeat the baddie. This means the protagonists can retreat back into The Swan and continue drinking massive quantities of alcohol once again.

Rankin's writing style, humour and weirdness was as though Terry Pratchett was trying to write like Douglas Adams, with his brilliantly constructed sentences. One scene in particular was worth the price of the book: this was the build-up and execution of the cowboy party in The Swan. It was both inspired and insane.

But the book is a little hit or miss. Some parts work well, others seem to be too “out there”. As this was Rankin's first novel he can be forgiven. It's not a bad book and it's good enough to make me want to read more of his work. I suspect they'll get better.

So in summary, The Antipope is complete lunacy grounded in a version of the real world called Brentford. If you can bend your mind around the bizarre universe Rankin presents then you'll enjoy it. I'm already looking forward to reading the next few books in the series.