Review: Fluke, Or I Know Why The Winged Whale Sings

by Christopher Moore

Author of "Practical Demon-Keeping," "Bloodsucking Fiends," and "Lamb - The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal," Moore has a knack for addressing otherworldly, bizarre, or supernatural phenomenon with unparalleled wit. This is certainly the case in "Fluke," in which Moore transports the reader into an outlandishly delightful undersea universe filled with freakish characters that only could be borne from Moore's own divergently-bent mind. While Tom Robbins-esque in his humor, Christopher Moore accomplishes the same task with a subtler and more economical hand than Robbins:

"They were gathered around Clay's giant monitor, which, for all the good it was doing them, could have been a giant monitor lizard. A spectrogram of whale song from Quinn's computer was splashed across the screen, and for the information they were getting from it, it might have been the aftermath of a paint-ball war, which is what it looked like."

Did you know that dolphins don't really smile? That all killer whales are named Kevin? Few could package such a vital message like marine mammal conservation as playfully as Christopher Moore has done here. Fluke will leave you grinning like Shamu in a school of disoriented pilot-fish. And if it doesn't, then perhaps you need to consider laying off the Botox injections for a while.