With Olson at the keyboard and Millionaire and Singh at the drawing board, it's hard to single out who is the brashest iconoclast in this Unholy Trinity.
This book is not for the faint of heart, weak of mind or thin of skin. Everybody is offended in this book.
Everybody.
Just when you think you are the last cool guy standing, gloating alongside Olson and his vivisection of Humanity's hypocrisy and dogma, he will sucker punch you right where you live.
Don't worry about how this classified Demonic document supposedly landed in Olson's hands. Just go along for the ride. There's a lot of stuff going on here. It is, as promised, an alphabetized encyclopaedia of human repulsiveness, gloriously detailed with hilarious disdain. I think the fact that they use the 'paedia' spelling is clue enough as to how creepy this is going to be.
It's also a book within a book. Or, rather, it's a book within a book about the book that's getting composed as we read it.
It seems the half-dozen Demons assigned to creating this manual fall prey to their own vanities, interpersonal relationships and the disgusting habits of humans. Along with desperate communiques to the publisher, they grumble and snipe at each other through a whole second layer of footnotes on each page.
This leads us to the artwork and design of Encyclopaedia of Hell. Just as the sound guy and the lighting guy are the unsung heroes of any bar band, Tony Millionaire and Mahendra Singh are indeed the fifth and sixth Beatles in this 3D assault on your senses. Every page is a madhouse, like a type case composed of columns, side bars, footnotes and wonderfully perverse illustrations.
I have been told that the immense amount of design does not do well when sent through the meat grinder of an eReader, so I suggest only the physical paperback book.
The torch of 'What's It All About' and The Cosmic Joke has been passed, once again, from Kurt Vonnegut to Douglas Adams to Martin Olson.
Encyclopaedia of Hell: An Invasion Manual for Demons Concerning the Planet Earth and the Human Race Which Infests It by Martin Olson, Tony Millionaire, Mahendra Singh - Feral House (2011) Paperback 240 pages ISBN 1936239043
