So for the past couple weeks I have been completely swamped with work and with home schooling children in the midst of a massive pandemic.  Thus, my writing has pretty much ground to a halt.  All the same, I’ve been devouring a really fun Lovecraft-adjacent series by Heide Goody and Iain Grant: Oddjobs

The concept is simple.  The world is fucked.  Cosmic horrors have arrived, and when they get around to it, they will plunge humanity into hell.  There is no stopping it or fighting it, and the best that can be hoped for is palliative care. Keep the pain down.  Reduce the suffering. 

After all, we are just ants marching along a table, discovering a hand and thinking “shit that is really big and could toats wipe us all out,”  But having the limited perception  of ants we can’t really fathom that the hand is only a fragment of a much bigger whole.

Oh, and it is funny.  There is a bit of Terry Pratchett’s rhythm to the whole thing, but there is also a solid dose of bureaucratic absurdism reminiscent of Stross’s Laundry Files.  

Indeed the writing feels so familiar that I almost dismissed the whole thing as derivative after the first 20 pages.  But Oddjobs quickly finds its feet and introduces some amazing characters and very satisfying rye comedy.