The Weirdness

Not sure how I got onto this book by Jeremy P. Bushnell, but it certainly lived up to its name. Billy Ridgeway is a bit of a space cadet, holding down a job making sandwiches while maintaining that his real vocation is as a writer. Unfortunately, nothing he has written has ever gotten wider approval, or even Billy's own. Fellow writer Anil, who also works at the sandwich shop has been Billy friend for a long time and puts up with his philosophical maunderings about things like where bananas come from. Waking one morning with a bad hangover, Billy finds a well-dressed man in his living room who claims to be Lucifer Morningstar, and he offers to make Billy a famous novelist if Billy will just retrieve his lucky Neko cat from a dangerous warlock. Billy IS smart enough to resist--at first. But Billy's life nevertheless begins to unwind in serious and dangerous fashion and it turns out that the devil may be the least of his problems. I was not sure I was going to finish this, but eventually I did get hooked. Billy is not exactly a character it's easy to empathize with or even feel sorry for--he just seems so aimless. But the cast of characters and the plots developments are unpredictable and entertaining, so I would give it a thumbs up.