Christopher Moore's Lamb

I'm glad that I took my first swing at the pinata del writing before reading this book. Even I would call myself a hack after seeing the irreverent portrayal and humor regarding Christianity in both books. We both use dialogue  in an over the top manner to flesh out the characters' personalities rather than spending words, paragraphs, and pages trying to describe them. Moore's existence also somewhat justifies that I'm not the only one who would actually write this way. The biggest and most apparent difference between him an I is that this man knows what the hell he's doing, where as I, sadly, do not.

The casual reader or pious theologian might glance at the cover and description of the book and be completely offput and offended. While the book is certainly rife with obscenities and occasional sexual situation, it takes the life of Christ pretty damn seriously. I was actually surprised at how serious the tone of the book actually is, despite the fact that the son of God can be quoted as calling people "dumbfucks."

At no point in the book does Mr. Moore even begin to slide in the notion of spiritual debate. He doesn't try to make religion look stupid or try to undermine the principles of faith. He doesn't try to convince you to believe in the existence of God either, if that happens to be your issue. It's simply an entertaining story about Jesus Christ and what he and his buddy might have been going through during the missing years of his life as he prepared to be the Messiah. Certainly, some creative liberties were taken, but it's a really good read and I'd recommend it to anyone who knows even a little bit about Christianity and has a generous sense of humor. I can't imagine you'd be reading anything I've had to say thus far without some humor in ya anyway.  

Scratch that, you don't even have to know anything about religion. With some religious background you just might catch more of the more subtle nuances of the story is all. It's worth your time. Do you like reading and think maybe you think like I think? Then you'll enjoy this book.