Mercury Falls

If Kevin Smith's film Dogma and Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's novel Good Omens had a witty yet mature baby, it would be Robert Kroese's Mercury Falls. This novel about the Apocalypse is well-researched and amusing.

Christine Temetri is a journalist who has somehow ended up covering third-rate Apocalyptic cults for The Banner, a very prominent religious news magazine. After yet another eventless sunrise in the desert with a "prophet" and his followers, she has decided she is done with the work. When she gets back to Los Angeles, though, not only has her apartment been shoddily vandalized but her boss has a last-minute assignment for her in Israel. What she learns from her contact there and from her first near-death experience show more convinces her that the Apocalypse may actually be approaching. Meeting Mercury, a rogue angel, is just the icing on the cake. If she could only convince him to help, they might be on the way to saving the world.

This is a really funny book -- rarely laugh out loud funny in a Douglas Adams way but more like "snicker and snort" humor. For some reason it reminded me of late night group discussions at Denny's when my friends and I were twenty-somethings with nothing else to do. It has a really comfortable, easy tone through most of the book. It takes a few potshots at both religion and atheism but a light way. It also takes a mildly serious look at the various "signs" and "happenings" of the Apocalypse and imagines a possible way for it to all unfold. There are seraphim and cherubs, demons and The Devil, and even an overweight, loser Antichrist named Karl Grissom who won the title in a contest.

Mercury Falls is a self-published book but I didn't feel that there was any problem with the quality of the writing or the story. In fact, I hope that this novel finds its audience and a publisher because this is a bright first novel and I would love to see what the author creates next.

http://webereading.com/2009/11/new-release-mercury-falls.html show less

Please note: I read this in September 2010 from a copy provided by Amazon Vine. Once I finish my current book, I'll be reading the rest of the series.

Genre: Humorous literary fiction
Reading Level: Adults
Trigger warnings: some religious people might find this book offensive

My Reactions (and a quick compare & contrast to Dogma: Mercury Falls is a breath of fresh air blowing out the stagnant dogma of way too many churches and throws a few punches at bureaucracy in general while it's at it. It has been compared to Dogma, but honestly I don't think there is any way to compare them, except for the fact that they both take a few swipes at organized religion (in Dogma's case it is only Catholicism) and in both cases there is an angel with an show more attitude (in Dogma we have Alan Rickman as Metatron - in Mercury Falls we have Mercury himself ...), but they really aren't all that similar - Metatron is in good graces and feels no need to be rebellious, while Mercury is all about expressing himself and pointing out the endless levels of bureaucracy preventing any type of action as ridiculous.

My Synopsis: It all starts when Christine - bored with her rounds interviewing people about the end of the world, which of course hasn't yet shown up (for one reason or another - the latest is that apparently of the 10 Virgins provided, not all of them are ... well ... virginal) - decides to interview one last "prophet," named Mercury. When she arrives, she finds him playing Ping-Pong and thirsty for a beer. He then proceeds to show her a card trick that goes wrong - whereupon he quickly ushers her out of the house, just in time to avoid a bolt of fire from the heavens, destroying the house. From that point, Christine is on the run from one near miss to another, with Mercury on her like glue, and is told that this time, the end really is nigh ... I mean, check it out, there is an Antichrist and everything! Oh, yeah, and what an Antichrist ... *facepalm* Wow, check out this guy ... *shudders*

My Thoughts: The book reminds me of the best of Terry Pratchett mixed with the best of someone like ... I don't even know, maybe Douglas Adams? But he's funny. However, it goes beyond that - after you finish laughing, you see how clever he is, because behind the humor is biting social commentary, satire on modern spirituality and dogma, and the tendency of people to just do what they are told, no matter how inane it is, because "someone" must know what is going on ... no one ever questions, and if someone does, everyone panics and goes into "pin the blame on the questioner" mode as quickly as possible, just in case the hammer falls.

My Recommendations: This is definitely a book to check out, for all these reasons, and many more. If no other reason, check it out because it is just fun and enjoyable. show less

"The Apocalypse has a way of fouling up one's plans."

I loved this book. Hence the five stars. It's very much like the 1999 Damon-Affleck film "Dogma," where Heaven and Hell are not so much forces of Good and Evil as competing bureaucracies with their own myriad sets of rules and regulations, policies and procedures. It also reminded me of [book:Good Omens|12067] by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, which is a send-up of both Nostradamus and The Omen.

Christine is a reporter assigned to cover the end of the world, wherever and whenever it's predicted. Of course it never happens and with each "last" sunset she witnesses, she becomes more jaded. So it's a shock for her when real angels, demons, cherubim and seraphim start showing up in her show more life, all bent on bringing about the Apocalypse. It's up to her and a rogue angel named Mercury Falls to somehow stop the bureaucratic machinery of both realms as they grind slowly and surely towards Armageddon.

There's a lot of wonderful quotes and commentary in this book, such as

"You find, after a few thousand years of corrupting mortals, that people with the most rigid religious viewpoints are the most predictable and therefore easiest to manipulate."

"The illusion of free will is straining under the weight of determinism."

And my favorite:

"You know what happened to the last guy to make a pact with Lucifer, right?--"I thought he was still hosting American Idol." "Exactly." show less

I always knew linoleum was evil, that's why I insisted hardwood flooring be installed in my breakfast nook. A pleasing pattern can be a sign for a portal to the otherworld, or at least it is in Mercury Falls. I highly recommend this philosophically humorous absurdist story that questions all that is organized religion and pokes much fun at bureaucracy. The complexity is intelligent and is delivered with comedic timing that rivals the best humorists in the hood. Serious stuff is going on here, but satirical relief is abundant, refreshing and oh so amusing. I could give some examples, but it'd be like giving away the punchline to a clever political joke. What can I say, I think most of my friends will like it!

Mercury Falls is a well-written, fun, but thoughtful satire. The satire focuses primarily on those who endorse strict adherence to dogma at the expense of actual reasoned thought. Although the setting for the satire involves those who obsess on the end times and the apocolypse, that setting simply provides the foundation for focusing on unthinking adherence to any dogma. The satire is not limited to religious dogma; "scientific" dogma is the subject of more than a few satirical barbs as well. (It bears note that the author appears to endorse, or at least have been educated in, a school of Christian thought that does not take the Book of Revelation literally and, therefore, does not subscribe to more well-known end times theology.)

A fan show more of Douglas Adams, I enjoyed not only the overarching themes but the humor of this novel as well. Unfortunately, the problem (to the extent that there is a "problem") may be that the book has a narrow audience. Strict adherents to a particular theology or dogma will undoubtedly be offput by the satire at their expense, perhaps even viewing the books as blasphemous. Conversely, for those untrained in any religious thought, the punch lines of much of the humor and wit may miss the mark.

Ironically, this is a very timely book, given the growing trend of sacrificing thought for the tenets of one's particular cause or religion. To Christians in particular, I would urge that judgment be reserved to the end. This book is not anti-religious, or particular anti-anything (except, perhaps, bureaucracy), but is a call for every person to truly think and evaluate their beliefs and assumptions. show less

When I was younger, I would now and again stumble upon a great book in a bookstore, something I'd never heard of but which caught my eye. Maybe the story sounded intriguing, or the cover design was catchy. Maybe it was strategically placed at eye level and recommended as a "staff pick" by some big chain bookstore that had been paid by a big publisher to pass off expensive marketing at personal opinions of real, everyday sort of people. However it happened, it was always a joy to read something and find it wonderful without having been told by obvious mass marketing or serious critical acclaim to expect it to be wonderful.

Mercury Falls was just such a discovery for me. I bought it as an ebook for next to nothing after having stumbled show more across references to it on a discussion board for self-published books. The customer reviews were plentiful and positive - an achievement in itself for a self-published book - and for 99 cents I figured I couldn't go wrong.

This book blew me away. Kroese's prose is lean, his narrative style direct and unpretentious, his plotting unpredictable (in the good sense) and his sense of humor at once intelligent and outrageous. There are plenty of reviews here to describe the plot, so I won't dwell on it. But this is the kind of book that not only makes you laugh out loud, but gets you scrambling for a pencil to underline sentences you want to be able to come back to and quote to others. My favorite line, one I hope to use on someone one day, was "You overestimate my capacity for introspection." But there are many, many more that got me laughing. Mercury Falls, is a brilliant page turner of a book in a style somewhere between that of Kurt Vonnegut and Douglas Adams. If you have a sense of humor, read this book. show less

This is a whimsical story about the events leading up to the Apocalypse. The writing is very reminiscent of Douglas Adams and Christopher Fluke. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who wants a fun read.