Brought to you by OBS reviewer Alina

Beware of possible Spoilers

Synopsis:

When God decides to quit and join the human race to see what all the fuss is about, all Hell breaks loose.

Sensing his abdication, the other defunct gods of Earth’s vanquished pantheons want a piece of the action He abandoned.

Meanwhile, the newly-humanised deity must discover the whereabouts and intentions of the similarly reincarnated Lucifer, and block the ascension of a murderous new God.
How is he ever going to make it as a stand-up comedian with all of this going on…? (Goodreads)

Review:

Reading this book was definitely an interesting experience. Not that I liked it much, it’s not really my cup of tea, but it did keep me wondering about what comes next. It was also cool to realize that Michael Boatman, the writer, is also Michael Boatman the actor, and to read about the style he writes in, which is called ‘splatterpunk horror’ (Wikipedia).

Well, I must say that it does sort of sound the way it feels when you read it. Even if, as far as I understand, his other works are much, much worse than this one (horror-wise, I mean) Last God Standing is a bit too violent for me and there were times when I just couldn’t understand what was going on. There were way too many characters involved, so it was difficult to keep track of all of them. 90 % of them are gods from all kinds of active or lost civilizations and I, as a student of literature, have known details about most of them from high school and university courses. I wonder how people who have never come across them can ever manage with it, because this is definitely not an easy read. It helps a lot if you know what terms such as: ‘stream of consciousness’ or the ‘collective unconscious’ mean.

Lando Cooper, our main character, is the average modern young man. I found him, surprisingly, a pretty convincing human. His life is a mess, he is always late for something, he hardly ever works, he always asks for money from his dad, he has no idea how to handle his girlfriends’ parents and he is easily manipulated, by basically everyone. On the other hand, he is the God of the Hebrews who has forsaken his immortality and descended to the human level together with his enemy, the Devil. And he has to deal with angry, crazy gods on a daily basis, so that kind of excuses his many faults, at least in my eyes.

There are many funny instances in the book. My favorite, by far, was a reply on God’s email (yes, he also has Facebook and Twitter, in case you want to get in touch), from Jesus Christ JR: “Still not speaking to you.” Another one, I have to say it, it’s really cute, from this little boy explaining the frictions between his parents: “My dad went to a lot of fairs with different women.” Some of the gods, who have also given up immortality, have been living for years under different guises, not surprisingly, in the United States. The most jolly of all is the former Buddha, who is enjoying his new life tremendously and has absolutely no regrets, because: “Sure, we had some limited power over the human soul, but nothing they couldn’t overcome with education and a little travel.’

My favorite part in the book is the description of Lando’s relationship with his son on Amon-Ra’s parallel world. There were some lovely pages there, that almost squeezed some tears out of my eyes.

If you are a someone who likes to read about gods, gods fighting, zombies, parallel worlds, voodoo and so forth, this is definitely a book for you.