Secondhand Souls
Secondhand Souls is the sequel to Christopher Moore's earlier book A Dirty Job. I really enjoyed the first book and I thought I had a decent conclusion. The sequel I enjoyed as well but it definitely felt weaker. Like many of Moore’s books, he’s great with the comedy, pretty good on the character development, and very weak on the plot and pacing. Minor spoilers follow.
In this sequel, we see Charlie now in his makeshift tiny body after dying in the previous novel’s climax. It’s been a year or so and no one has been collecting the souls, triggering a new cosmic threat (sorta). Charlie desperately misses his daughter who continues to grow up and become even more ridiculous and foul mouthed. Seeing a four-year-old swear is kind of funny, but it does get old after a bit. There are some interesting characters along the way, including the new villain who's connected to one of our old heroes Minty Fresh, along with some of favorite old characters coming back. I think Lily developed nicely. Unfortunately, there are lots of plot threads that seem to just get rushed or dropped.
It was frustrating that Moore developed this new villain with a great personality and interesting character traits but then doesn’t give him a real motivation.
The main villain is Lemon Fresh, long lost cousin of hero Minty Fresh. They clearly have a history but the book doesn’t dig into it much until, at the last minute it turns out the both of them are avatars for ancient egyptian gods. One chapter later the heroes dispatch the bad guy and it's all over. I kept thinking if this was the direction he was going all along, then why didn't he develop the motivation and back story earlier. It would give us something to care about.
The same rambling plot thread happened with the dogs. The goggies are great, I love every scene they're in, but they are barely in this book and show up as a eleventh hour deus ex machina. Literally. It's like Christopher Moore suddenly felt like he had to finish up the book and rushed the ending to meet a deadline. Or maybe he just ran out of interest. I remember Fluke having the same problem.
So should you read this book? Honestly no, even if you liked the previous one. It's a quick summer read if you have nothing else to do. You should read some of Christopher Moore’s better books instead.