This was weird because it jumped around in time quite a bit and it was also somewhat preachy. The ecoterrorist guy was clearly created so that Palahnuik could have someone’s mouth in which to put all of his ecological beliefs and rants. As a character though, it made Oyster thoroughly unlikable.

The sub-plots were more entertaining than the main plot though. I liked the haunted house broker. What a scam! She could keep on turning over the couple dozen or so houses she had because no one could live in them for more than a few weeks. Excellent.

I also kind of liked it when Streator simply killed off the people who got him angry (mister mcgee, don’t make me angry, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry). Oh how wonderful a power like that would be sometimes. Although, I’m not sure I would have the necessary control to avoid becoming a mass killer!

Another sub-plot is Streator and a character named Sarge are tracking down all kinds of purported ‘miracles’. Like a talking cow that tells people not to eat meat. A roadside jesus who brings roadkill back to life. A flying holy Mary type woman. It turns out that Sarge is really Helen the real estate lady. She found some master book of spells and she took over the body of this old cop. She had to do this because Oyster also got a hold of one of the spells and took over her body and made her drink drain cleaner. So to escape death, she transported over. Now she and Streator are after Oyster and the Wiccan chick. Oyster wanted to make everyone his slaves and if he finds the culling song, they’re screwed. But I couldn’t tell that this was really the conclusion of the book interwoven with the rest of it. By the first person point of view it was obvious that Streator lived in the end, but I couldn’t figure out who Sarge was until near the end when Helen first took over his body in order to spring Streator from jail. He was brought in because of a string of killings (all his fault of course) and he really wanted to be locked up an stopped because he couldn’t control it anymore.

Helen, as it turns out, knew about the culling song all along. She lost a son to it and then killed her husband because he blamed her. Yeah, it was her fault but she didn’t knowingly kill her kid. So she begins to work as a killer for hire. She kills drug lords and evil dictators and assassins, all for different governments. She figures if you do something for money, a lot of money, you won’t do it for free. It almost works.

Chuck Palahnuik cannot seem to write a bad book. The 4th book of his that I've read, I'm continually impressed by each novel. The man really knows how to write an ending..this one does not fall short. ( )

How does one rate this book? It is not really a fantasy, though the premise is fantastic (as in "ridiculous", not as in "terrific"). If I had to pick one word to describe this story it would be "insane". The book is a spoof/satire of modern life and has very little grounding in reality so you really have to suspend your disbelief from the start or you'll never make it through the story.

There were several points I was about to give up because, well, the story is ridiculous, but then there are some parts that are absolutely hilarious. I don't recall any other book that caused me to waffle between laughing out loud (naked wiccan meeting anyone?) and throwing it out.

It is certainly a book you'll either like or really really REALLY dislike. The author goes off on long tirades of made up words (noiseoholics, silenceophobes, etc) which gets rather irritating after awhile.

This was the first I'd heard of Palahniuk and while I liked his writing enough to read Haunted, the long winded tirades were just too, well, long winded and the ridiculous a little too ridiculous. ( )

A bookclub choice - I think it will make for really good discussion about power, good vs. evil, loss . . . the pacing and characterizations were good. 'The details about X character are...' was clever. ( )

I love all books by Palahniuk, but this one was weirder than I had anticipated. With his main charecters, I can usually end up likeing them, just because I feel like I've gone through part of their lives with them, but with the anonomys main charecter (Carl Streator), he doesn't really have much of a personality to me at all through out the book. ( )