06.14.07
Book Review: Toyminator by Robert Rankin
You may not have read the little gem my loving wife discovered in an issue of Entertainment Weekly last year oddly titled The Hollowed Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse. The book follows a human named Jack who finds himself in a city of living toys/nursery rhyme characters, there he befriends a bear named Eddie whose owner has mysteriously been murdered along with a string of nursery rhyme characters. They join forces and form a detective agency to bring the serial killer to justice. The book was something of a sleeper hit enough of one for Mr. Rankin to return to toy city once more to give us another humorous and exciting adventure starring these two charismatic and hilariously mismatched heroes.
When we last left Jack and Eddie they had saved toy city from certain doom and have earned the good life. They become elite citizens and Eddie managed to become mayor of toy city. Jack had supposedly returned to the human world but nothing really worked out for them, as it should have. Eddie tried to better toy city and in return he was over thrown and robbed of his title. Jack ended up working in a diner as a chef and has grown a fetish for hot-bodied dolls. When more of toy cities citizens start disappearing its up to them to once again solve the case and save the day.
This may all sound like something you’d find in the kids section of your local bookstore but Rankin is slick in his presentation and manages to infuse his work with a lot of subtle sexual innuendo and other humorous adult gags that are likely to leave anyone under 14 scratching their heads. It’s even more obvious when both Jack and Eddie spend most of the book inside their favorite bar drinking countless mugs of beers. Rankin’s strongest element is his ability to create a lot of truly genuine laughs exploiting the absurdity of the situation and holding nothing back to excrete every ounce of entertainment from the book’s mysteries and cast of uniquely drawn characters. This time around the only flaw is that focus is shifted away from toy city but thankfully Jack and Eddie maintain the calculated back-and-forth that makes them fly off the page. Rankin dresses the mystery with perhaps too much paranoia and intricately constructed evil schemes. When all is revealed you may just raise your hands in the air and just give up because it literally takes the story far out to places beyond the simple joys of toy city.
I can only recommend the book to those who have read the first one not only because the first one is superior but because its that initial attachment to Jack and Eddie that will carry you through a few of Toyminator’s dragging moments until its action packed conclusion. Unfortunately a few loose ends are never tied up and Rankin goes through a lot of trouble to introduce a new location in the toy world only to quickly change the subject to an even less interesting locale. Toyminator survives on its never-ending wit and it never dries up on its sly humor. It’s that determination to keep you grinning that makes it worth picking up for fans of the first book.
3.5/5
