I just finished Tom Holt's latest, The Management Style of the Supreme Beings, and laughed pretty hard. If you're into satire, particularly that of religiosity and capitalism, this is some fun. Included along with my review of that book are three readalikes that may also leave you chortling, or at least with a nice smile.
In The Management Style of the Supreme Beings, God and His first Son, Jay, decide to sell the family business to the Venturi Corporation. The Venturi brothers set up sin on a capitalist model in exchange for certainty of their existence, and no mortal is particularly happy any more. It's going to take an Indiana-Jones type, his love interest, a succubus, Satan's office manager, God's other son, and a certain right jolly old elf to make things right.
Max Barry takes aim at capitalism in Jennifer Government. In the future, the United States has overtaken Australia, though the government is largely vestigial compared to the corporations that run the world and give people their surnames. Jennifer is a government agent with a past and a witty riposte for every occasion who wades into a nasty marketing war that draws actual blood. Fast and cutting, this book has even more prescience now than when it was first written.
Salman Rushdie satirizes both our modern times and others in Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-eight Nights. The title, by the way, is a another way to say 1,001 nights, and Rushdie does honor to Scheherazade here. A jinn falls in love with the philosopher Ibn Rashd and produces children with magical powers and no earlobes. this has repercussions in our present day and beyond. Rushdie turns a gimlet eye on society and asks what if our woes were actually caused by malevolent beings.
In Robert Olen Butler's Hell, Hatcher McCord is, as he was in life, a news anchor. When he realizes that Satan can't read his mind and that there may be another harrowing in the offing, Hatcher sets out to right the things he didn't in his time on earth. Along with his sweetie, Ann Boleyn, Hatcher takes us on a romp through Hades with plenty of celebrity cameos.
Got more satires of the powers that be? Share them in the comments.
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