Djinnx'd by Nicola Rhodes (Dead Link)

The adventure follows along a number of familiar themes in an original and pleasing manner.  I found myself halfway through the book almost before I realized it.  There were a number of things that I expected and a number of things that took me for a pleasant loop.


The narration proceeds along at a casual sort of dinner table pace.  You can almost hear it voiced by someone like Stephen Fry or whoever it was that did the voiceover for the Hitchhiker's Guide movie.  While the narrator is consistently describing things in a calm, matter of fact manner, such that you can almost see the amused smirk as he describes the way the story proceeds, you still have a good sense of just how frantic the characters are in certain scenes.  A lot of times when an author tries for the dry, smirky narration, then the characters themselves seem to acquire the same sort of calm approach to things.  However, this story very thoroughly portrays Denny and Tamar's alternating frustrations with each other and the situation as they move from problem to problem.

There are a number of cliches and tropes, but they're handled very well, with a liberal amount of lampshade hanging.  Playing with the tropes is a central part of the books humor actually, and it could be said that Denny has weaponized his genre savvy even well past the point of being dangerously genre savvy.  And that dovetails in with other elements of the book's story and setting.

The story is rather reminiscent of Douglas Adams with the frequent asides and quirky humor, actually.  While they don't quite leave the Earth, except when maybe they do, it still remains a fun sort of romp through a fantastically farcical world.  Right down to the delightfully irreverent retelling of the Biblical creation that occurs within the first few pages.

All in all, a very wonderful piece of writing.

The adventure follows along a number of familiar themes in an original and pleasing manner.  I found myself halfway through the book almost before I realized it.  There were a number of things that I expected and a number of things that took me for a pleasant loop.

The narration proceeds along at a casual sort of dinner table pace.  You can almost hear it voiced by someone like Stephen Fry or whoever it was that did the voiceover for the Hitchhiker's Guide movie.  While the narrator is consistently describing things in a calm, matter of fact manner, such that you can almost see the amused smirk as he describes the way the story proceeds, you still have a good sense of just how frantic the characters are in certain scenes.  A lot of times when an author tries for the dry, smirky narration, then the characters themselves seem to acquire the same sort of calm approach to things.  However, this story very thoroughly portrays Denny and Tamar's alternating frustrations with each other and the situation as they move from problem to problem.

There are a number of cliches and tropes, but they're handled very well, with a liberal amount of lampshade hanging.  Playing with the tropes is a central part of the books humor actually, and it could be said that Denny has weaponized his genre savvy even well past the point of being dangerously genre savvy.  And that dovetails in with other elements of the book's story and setting.

The story is rather reminiscent of Douglas Adams with the frequent asides and quirky humor, actually.  While they don't quite leave the Earth, except when maybe they do, it still remains a fun sort of romp through a fantastically farcical world.  Right down to the delightfully irreverent retelling of the Biblical creation that occurs within the first few pages.

All in all, a very wonderful piece of writing.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/11463 (unfortunately, as of this writing, it is no longer apparently published at smashwords)