I honestly don’t know where to begin with this book. I had never read comedic horror before and so I had no context going into this book and, therefore, no idea what to expect. But I can say that in terms of being a horror comedy, it absolutely delivers. I laughed a ton. I cringed a lot. I gasped and guffawed and ultimately found myself going along for the ride, much like the main characters are forced to do.

The story follows a group of people who both are and also are not friends (it’s complicated to explain and I don’t want to ruin the dynamics between the characters by attempting to explain it, but when you read it, you’ll know what I mean) who are thrust into a world-ending Book of Revelations brand of apocalypse that centers around a lamb named Steve.

Steve represents the religious figure of Christ, but he also takes on other symbolism as well, oscillating between a symbol for religion as a whole, a symbol of humanity’s best traits, a symbol of the contradictory themes and messages from the evangelical Christian Bible, and at times he’s even just a lamb, albeit one that can talk and has demons chasing after it. Steve is the character that the others need to try and protect, although he also is the one who typically gets all of them out of the shitty situations in which they find themselves.

When I say that this book made me laugh at loud, I mean full on guttural belly laughs. There are some scenes that are really fucking funny. I don’t know if it’s because I was raised deeply evangelical and I don’t consider myself to be a Christian any longer, and so the sometimes heretical and blasphemous things that Steve says and does just landed really strongly and humored me, or if it’s that Harrington and Adams are just extremely fucking clever in their writing (hint: it’s both), but there were some chapters where I didn’t stop laughing.

I don’t really have any criticisms of this book aside from its treatment of the only prominent women character. She is haphazardly thrust into a lot of stereotypes that border on misogynistic (and before you get upset, this is intentional and purposefully done by the authors — remember, this is an extremely heavy satire), and while I understand that this is who her character is supposed to represent to satirically poke fun at the horrible ways women tend to be represented in both horror and comedy, I still found myself cringing a lot whenever her character became the center of a scene. She’s not treated well by any members of the group, including Steve who often seems to forget she exists at all, and I think this was the only part of the book that was a struggle for me.

And to be clear, I don’t think the authors were wrong to portray her this way. She has a purpose in the story and the story requires her to be who she is. But as a woman who has seen these very stereotypes play out in films and books since I was born, it was a bit difficult to gnaw through at times. I don’t really enjoy coming to hate women characters because their vapid and vain and clueless and two-dimensional and stagnant, regardless of why they’re written that way.

BUT, that being said, the rest of the book is absolutely hilarious as fuck. I know that it won’t be everyone’s jam or cup of tea, but if you can go into it with a mentality that it is heavily satiric and, even in the moments where it seems like everything hangs in the balance, isn’t mean to be taken seriously, you’ll get through it and — hopefully — will enjoy it as much as I did.

Please go check it out here and give the book and the author some love.