This is the first novel by Toby Smith and very good it is too.

Set in an alternative future where the sun has never set on the British Empire Captain Isambard Smith is sent on a mission to transport a very special person back to the empire before she can fall into the clutches of the evil insect Ghast Empire. The only problem is that Smith's crew are a psychopathic head collecting alien and a pilot who is really a sex droid on the run from her owner.

Along the way Smith encounters a hippy space station, a planet who's inhabitants seem to have based their lives on the Matrix, the Ghast's fundamentalist Christian allies and aliens who talk perfect English to humans while conversing as surfer dudes to each other, there are thrills, escapes and battles a plenty.

Despite a bit of a slow start it is very funny, packed with amusing parody and sparkling dialogue, it left me wanting to read more.

Yet another holiday read and a bloody good one.

Shadow is coming to the end of his jail term for beating up the guys who cheated him out of his share of a bank robbery when he gets called to the warden's office. There's been a terrible car accident and his wife is dead mind you on the plus side they are letting him out early because of it. On the plane home he meets the mysterious Mr Wednesday who offers him a job as his assistant. Turns out Mr Wednesday is one of the forgotten gods of America, one of the beings immigrants brought with them and mostly forgot about as time went by and Mr Wednesday is organising a fight back agianst the new gods of media, internet etc.

So with Shadow in tow Mr Wednesday takes off on a road trip accross the USA to round up the surviving remanants of various religeons for the final showdown. Against this Shadow has to deal with an aggresive drunken leprechaun, the reanimated corpse of his wife, Men in Black, a hunt for a missing child, a romantic encounter with Bastet and a tempory job in a funeral parlour run by Thoth and Anubis.

This is a surprising book written with great imagination and an amazing amount of knowledge of mythology. Gaimon's source material ranges from the mythical beings of old Russia and Scandanavia to Voodoo and Jewish lore. To get the best out of bone up on the old Norse tales of Odin (Mr Wednesday - Wotan's Day - Wotan being the olde English variation of Odin geddit) and Ragnarok and Egyptian Gods in particular, and have a dictionery of world mythology handy before you start on it.

There are also a few laugh out loud moments especially with Shadow's dead wife, Odin's ravens and a road kill eating Horus along the way.

I hadn't read Gaiman before but this book left me wanting to read more.