Review: GodBomb! by Kit Power

I bought this book at Bristol Horror Con; partly because I’ve been bombarded by people going on about it on my Facebook stream, and partly because it’s set in Devon (my home county). Both equally good reasons.

Here’s my Goodreads review:

★★★★★
I bought this book because so many of my friends had been raving about it. I’ve always maintained that the best way to find a great book is to listen to recommendations from other readers. It’s not let me down yet.

It’s a long time since I’ve read a book in a matter of days. It’s even longer since I’ve binge-read the second half in just one afternoon. I’ve been a bad mother today, just buried in my book. And it’s all the fault of Kit Power.

GodBomb!, the telling of what happened when a suicide bomber came along to a born-again revival meeting, is so erratically paced, it’s pretty much impossible to tear yourself away from. With the entire book spanning just a few hours in the story, by the end, you feel like you’ve lived every minute with the characters; both the ones that flew by, and the ones that dragged. Kit Power is surely able to bend time somehow.

GodBomb! is like when you spot someone picking their nose and eating it in public. You really, really don’t want to watch, but you just cannot look away.

It’s not pretty. It’s not even overly satisfying in the end. But the way it reduces the human condition to its base, animal composition is so visceral, so voyeuristic, that you can’t step away. You have to watch. Count every drop of blood, sweat, urine, and… yes, it does get worse.

Read it. Read it.