Review: Remember, it's an unholy COW
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 4, 2012
So, this is the book to test your early reader's awareness of and appreciation for totally deadpan humor. It's not wink, wink; it's not elbow-in-the-ribs. It's certainly not farts and boogers, or scary-gross. It is totally straight-faced deadpan treatment of an evil COW.When I found this and saw that it was free I figured it was either going to be precious or desperately over-written. Well, this is overall better written than just about any other Kindle freebies I've found. The dialogue is snappy. The cow, scarecrow and raven have more individual personality than most of the fantasy/horror characters I've encountered. Some of the throw-away lines are just spot-on. The conversations among the characters are enough to make the tale worthwhile.The whole thing is a goof; but it is tightly drawn, with no wasted effort. In a postscript note, Carroll allows that he is giving away this and a few other short stories in order to drum up interest in his short story collection and in his other sci-fi/quest trilogies. I'd never encountered John H. Carroll before, but the giveaway worked on me, since I'm now keen to sample his more sophisticated work.Judging from other reviews here it seems that Carroll has very different degrees of appeal for different readers, which is just fine, because as a free download this is a swell experiment no matter what. (Did I mention it's an evil COW?)