Audiobook Review: Apocalypse Now Now by Charlie Human

now now "adv." a common South Africanism relating to the amount of time to elapse before an event occurs. In the near future; not happening presently but to happen shortly
Baxter Zevcenko s life is pretty sweet. He s making a name for himself as the kingpin of his smut-peddling high school syndicate, the other gangs are staying out of his business, and he s dating the girl of his dreams, Esme.
But when Esme gets kidnapped, things start to get seriously weird, and the only man drunk enough to help is a bearded, booze-soaked, supernatural bounty hunter who goes by the name of Jackson Jackie Ronin.
Plunged into the increasingly bizarre landscape of Cape Town s supernatural underworld, Baxter and Ronin team up to save Esme. On a journey that takes them through the realms of impossibility, they must face every conceivable nightmare to get her back, including an odd brush with the apocalypse.

This was a book that intertwined things I absolutely loved with elements that kind of pushed my tolerance limits for weirdness. It  created a dichotomy for me while reading. Dark humor. Yes, there were so many lines in this that had me laughing out loud and feeling like I absolutely loved the book. Then it would switch and I would focus on the strangeness in this story, and I would be less sure. Some of the weird worked well for me. Porn star named Rumpelforeskin? Yep, I’m good with that.But some other elements, I wasn’t quite as taken by, but in general still liked.

Baxter is our teenage protagonist, full of lust/love for his girlfriend, resentment and annoyance for his mentally handicapped brother, a complete lack of respect for, well, pretty much anyone. You know, the perfect kind of bad boy, just so wrong it is almost right type of character that you know you should not like in real life, but in fiction, you just can’t help but relish in his unfiltered, sardonic view of his life and those that surround him. Oh, and another thing about Baxter. He may be just sixteen, but he is quite the entrepreneur as he has established him self a sort of hard core porn king-pin at his high school.

The plot really starts when Baxter’s girlfriend, Esme, disappears. As he hunts for her, he is thrust into a supernatural world that exists alongs side our own. Meanwhile, his parents grow concerned about his mental health. His family does have a history of mental illness, and they are concerned that Baxter is starting to crack.

“The world is as I always intuited it to be: weird, fractured and full of monsters.”

This book was interesting in the way it was presented. We all know narrators can be unreliable. So, when a character interacts with the supernatural world others are oblivious to, and his family thinks he is going insane, who do you trust? The narrator (who may just be delusional)? The therapist he is seeing? Other characters that, for all you know, may or may not exist as you are getting them through Baxter?

Overall, this was a fascinating, absolutely hilarious, and bizarre book. It may have pushed my weirdness threshold at times, but the enjoyment I had from Baxter’s personality more than made up for it.

Audiobook Notes: David Atlas and Fiona Hardingham presented the readers with a wonderful listening experience. The sardonic tone that I felt made the book was delivered perfectly. Humor can go wrong for me when I feel it is over emphasized or exaggerated, but Atlas (who narrated for Baxter) was spot on with his tone, really capturing the full attitude of Baxter.