After the poetry of Billy Childish last week I needed some light relief and fortunately Robert Rankin’s latest book arrived in the post to provide it, there is nothing like the far fetched fantasy of Rankin to brighten the mood. The dust wrapper is unusual in that neither the title or the author are mentioned, indeed it is simply a wrap around of a lovely photograph of his wife out in the countryside with no text at all. That really wouldn’t work if he still had a contract with a major publishing house and sold books in bookshops, but those days are long gone and he nowadays self-publishes in limited editions of usually a thousand copies and that clearly works for him as this book sold out in about a week. I’ve been buying and reading his books since the 1980’s when he was published by Macmillan and later Doubleday and the obvious disadvantage of his self publishing is that he cannot easily attract new readers as only those people who already appreciate his fantastical style and follow him have a chance to buy the books or even come across him by chance as they don’t get reprinted after the original thousand are sold out. They do however eventually appear as Kindle editions but I for one don’t like reading a book on a screen.

So what of the plot of this newest tome? Well like a lot of Rankin’s books that is difficult to describe, most are set in the present day in fairly bland locations, there are twelve books in the Brentford trilogy for example which are as the name implies based in that otherwise nondescript suburb of West London. But this book moves location and time period, being set around Brighton on England’s south east coast and at the time of the Prince Regent, roughly 1820 as the Royal Pavilion is built and features heavily in the tale. The Rankin’s now live in Brighton so it’s an area he knows well although he does somewhat exaggerate the propensity for rain in that part of the country, it is repeatedly raining heavily in this novel.

The story concerns Edward, son of William, grandson of Robert and great grandson of the late lamented Lord Amesbury (he is regularly referred to by this whole genealogy) who at the start has just been thrown out of the family home by his father for selling most of the household library to cover his personal debts. Trudging along the road he meets Caradoc, a wizard, who tricks him into going on a quest to capture a knucker, or Sussex dragon, for the reward for doing so on behalf of the Prince Regent’s private zoo. In theory that is the plot, the finding and capture of a knucker but there is as usual for Rankin a huge amount going on around that bare concept including the mysterious Priestess of Penge seeking her Poly-Moo-Zuke, which I have no intention of trying to explain see later, and even the devil makes a significant appearance. Perhaps a quote will give you some idea of the ridiculous concepts so let’s have Edward meeting his companion on the quest, Rocinante.

Edward stared and stared again, for surely luck was truly on his side today. A hat lay unattended in the muddy thoroughfare. A tricorn hat, which would be just the thing for a ‘gentleman of the highway’. The fates were certainly smiling down upon him from their dry and golden palaces up high.
Edward sloshed through the mud, took up the tricorn and prepared to set it upon his head, muddy though its bottom was, at an angle known as rakish.
And then he saw what lay beneath the hat. For it was a head. And the face on the front of this head cried out to him saying “please would you help me out of this mud?”
Edward glanced at the head, and once more at the hat.
“Save my life”, called the mouth on the face of the head. “And you can keep the hat”
A fine tricorn in return for a simple good deed.There was a balance to this and Edward liked the balance.He strained and struggled and tugged with a will and slowly a bedraggled figure was hauled from the murderous mire.
“Thank you very very much” said the mud covered wreck of a man. “Now if you just be so kind as to assist me in pulling out the horse I was sitting on. I would be very grateful indeed.”

The book is illustrated as usual for Rankin’s self published works by his own distinctive drawings, in this case at the start of chapter ten the Poly-Moo-Zuke is seen pulling the caravan of The Wunderkind who is yet another outlandish character in a book full of outlandish characters but all somehow believable within their fantasy world. It was exactly what I needed to recover from the somewhat bleak poetry of Billy Childish.