In a desperate attempt to read the most acclaimed new SFF books of the year, I decided to finally cave in and give “The Book of Joby” a chance. I had all but decided to not do that with this one, because I had sneaky feeling that it wasn’t my thing (whatever that is…). In the end it turns out that I probably should lend more trust to own brain - it would have served me well in this instance.

“The Book of Joby” is a retelling of what poor old Job went through in the bible. Only this time the story doesn’t take place such a long way back in the past. God and Lucifer decides that a new wager is warranted, and six year old “Joby” gets to play the role of the persecuted candidate. The wager is thus that Lucifer is allowed to do anything short of killing Joby to “turn him to the dark side” until the time that the candidate reaches the age of 40. God may under no circumstance do anything to help Joby in his trial, and his minions are commanded not to help Joby unless he specifically asks them to.

But what did God and the devil bet on? Well, if Joby failed, Lucifer would get end all creation and start things anew in his own picture of perfection, meaning that every stinking ape-descendant like ourselves gets to say bye-bye. So yeah, no pressure for poor unknowing Joby, really….

“The Book of Joby” is 639 pages long in hardcover and has the rare selling argument of being a “one volume epic fantasy story”. It’s been getting all sorts of rave reviews on the web, and I can certainly see why so many liked this book. It’s at times funny, always warm and it carries with it an inherent message that we all can approve of. However, no matter how much I wanted to like this book, it was too flawed an experience for me really enjoy.

The thing I’d value more than anything in such a book would undoubtedly be the characterization. But to my dismay I couldn’t find a single real character in the entire book! The closest thing would naturally be Joby himself, due to the fact that he gets the most screentime, but even he suffers terribly from the black/white, evil/good contrast that popped up when your entire cast is either servants of God or Lucifer. It was like reading a fairy tale, and not even an especially good one at that, because sometimes in fairy tales even the bad, bad troll has a good heart. In this book you couldn’t find a single flawed character on either sides (Ok, I guess that evil characters are nothing but flawed, but you get my point), and it really bugged the living daylights out of me. When you get to write a characters like “Lucifer” and “God”, who probably have the most potential for mind-numbing awesomeness in the world, and all you get is two generic, quite boring stereotypes, you pretty much fail at being a writer.

And I think you can really tell that this is Mark J. Ferrari’s first effort as an author. The plotting was transparent and anybody paying attention will have no problem guessing at his “little twirls of brilliance” towards the end. He had a really cool idea, albeit not an original one, and he managed to write something fairly decent of it, yet I couldn’t help but wonder what this book would be like if Scott Lynch or Neil Gaiman could have had a go at it. That book, my dear readers, would have been nothing short of an instant classic.

To be fair though, Mark J. Ferrari writes nice dialog and prose, so I wasn’t every really bored. I’ve read far worse books this year, and if the characterization had been existent I would have no problem recommending this book. I did feel for Joby through all his misery and joy, but even those became to one-sided downcast or cheery for my taste.

I imagine that younger readers than myself, who don’t care much for the problems I’ve described above, would probably adore this book, especially since it’s quite reminiscent of the Harry Potter series. But this one wasn’t for me. Not recommended.

6.5 /10 (weak)