Mercury Falls [Format Kindle]

The end is nigh. The lawyers have reached an agreement, the paperwork is in order, the Antichrist has been named, and the Four Attache Cases of the Apocalypse have been unleashed. It's business as usual for the angels and demons involved, until things started to get just a little crazy.

The stakes are obviously very high in Robert Kroese's debut novel Mercury Falls. It's Apocalypse time, baby. At least it's supposed to be. The arrangements for the final battle between good and evil have been made, but various rebels and conspirators on both sides are doing their best to make the end of the world work for their own ends. The only real "free agents" are Christine, a human reporter assigned to the apocalyptic cult beat, and Mercury, a happy go lucky angel who'd rather be perfecting his ping-pong serve than keeping the end of the world at bay. Can this unlikely duo manage to thwart everyone's apocalyptic designs and keep them from, you know, annihilating the human race?

Not since Kevin Smith's Dogma has such a heavy theological concept been portrayed so hysterically. Actually, Mercury Falls reads a bit like Dogma if it were scripted by Christopher Moore or maybe Chuck Klosterman. Kroese balances his apocalyptic subject matter with razor sharp dialogue and abundant pop culture references that had me glued to the book with a big grin on my face the whole time...when I wasn't laughing out loud, of course. How many books can accomplish that? Whether holding forth on intraplanar mass transit and the heavenly bureaucracy or the best way to get red wine out of a cashmere sweater, Kroese's words flow in an absolutely compelling manner. Each sentence seems like an effortlessly constructed work of satirical genius that without a doubt requires additional reading(s).

Mercury Falls is self-published*, but don't let that deter you. The fact that a major publisher hasn't wised up to this book is a crime. This book was an absolute blast from start to finish, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good story and has a sense of humor.

*Update - Mercury Falls has since been picked up by Amazon as part of its Amazon Encore line. They obviously recognize a good book when they see it.

*Update 2 - The sequel to this book, titled Mercury Rises, is now available, and is well worth reading if you enjoyed this one.

For a hilarious book! My brother is hospitalized with lymphoma and undergroing chemotherapy. To keep up his cognitive skills I read to him. Well he took over reading to me on most of this book and it had him laughing so hard he couldn't speak straight. It also brought his blood pressure down. Laughter IS the best medicine! Please keep writing!

Recalling Christopher Moore at his drollest, and Eric Dezenhall at his most irreverent, Robert Kroese hits the nail squarely on the head. Some of the dialogue is so witty, so Wildean, that you think you must have read those jokes before, but you haven't. It's all original.

The first chapter does indeed recall Douglas Adams, but here Kroese falls down a bit. I can't help feel that he was edited into this voice for the first few pages, which is unfortunate because by the second and third chapters he starts rolling like a madman in a stolen tank.

Any concern that the narrative takes a backseat to pithy one-liners is quickly forgotten by the third or fourth chapter. The man can tell a story and will have you flipping pages well past "lights out."

The final chapter is quite upbeat, which is a tonal break with the rest of the story. Again, I felt an editor's hand at work and I hope that in Kroese's next effort he'll feel free to bookend his spectacular prose with intros and outros that are more fitting.

Highly recommend. We need more books like this.