The Book of Joby by Mark J. Ferrari

This is not just another blockbuster fantasy about the conflict between good and evil.  ”The Book of Joby” goes right to the heart of that conflict and takes a stab at updating the ancient Biblical story of the book of Job, in which God and the Devil enter into a wager with Job as the unwitting pawn.  In this contemporary version, the young victim Joby is a golden child who loves Arthurian legends and starts his own Roundtable with his school friends.  While chronicling the thirty-year battle for his soul and the fate of the whole world, the author is also ambitious enough to pull in the ancient Arthurian love triangle, the search for the Grail, and an explanation of why magic exists in the world.  Amazingly, he is able to bring it off in a highly readable and quite coherent tale that never loses its momentum.  This is the author’s first novel, and at times he reminded me of Charles DeLint in writing style and his easy references to contemporary culture.  His skateboard vocabulary in particular is quite impressive.  A great read for lovers of big books that take you into a world that is both familiar and utterly strange. 

Posted by Elaine Julian, Comox Branch Library Manager

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