Godsquad

Clovenhoof, Book 3

By: Heide Goody, Iain Grant

Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies

Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's Summary

The team: Joan of Arc, the armor-plated teen saint of Orleans. Francis of Assisi, friend to all the animals whether they like it or not. St Christopher, the patron saint of travel who by papal decree has never existed - no matter how much he argues otherwise.

The mission: An impossible prayer has been received by heaven, and it’s a prayer that only Mary, mother of God, can answer. Unfortunately, Mary hasn’t been seen in decades and is off wandering the Earth somewhere. This elite team of heavenly saints are sent down to Earth to find Mary before Armageddon is unleashed on an unsuspecting world.

©2014 Heide Goody, Iain Grant (P)2019 Heide Goody, Iain Grant

Disappointing

This was a disappointment. Sadly, none of the characters from the first two books appear in this book. Much of what happens is predictable and was not funny. Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, and St Christopher are sent to Amsterdam to find the holy mother Mary. Of course nothing is straight forward and they do a lot of traveling, getting lost, and making friends and enemies. They participate in a gay pride parade, save animals and have a host of other adventures. There are a few funny parts but nothing like the first two books.

Funny and Silly

Different characters—Joan of Arc, Saints Francis and Christopher and a Virgin Mary sure to offend true believers— but even more wonderfully, or should I say miraculously, ambitious.

Not Clovenhoof, but "Clovenhoof world"

Outstanding departure from the norm, from the masters of departure from the norm.

It's not a Clovenhoof story, but a story about some bit-players in Clovenhoof's down(?)fall. It gives more depth and context to the internal reality of that world.
SPOILERS
... It also gives us Joan of Arc playing tag with a dishy British cop, a chain-smoking atheistic Virgin Mary, my favorite saint struggling with an existence disorder, and the Wolf of Gubio shamelessly manipulating the nearest human in any situation and contributing miraculously to the overpopulation of dogs.

It's enormously fun and wickedly clever. ... Apart from a girl-fight with a depth of confusion about gender, sex, and assigned roles straight out of the 1880s. The one dim scene in an otherwise scintillating story. As long as they rewrite this from the more interesting subtext of professional jealousy *when* they make the film, I'm perfectly happy with it.

Not much about the previous characters

But it is still fun. I was concerned reading the reviews about the number of characters but never fear! The characters are easy to keep up with and they are all interesting.

I love the understanding of the saints and their history albeit in a warped way. I also enjoyed the understanding of EU politics.

All around a good book. Although not an adjunct to Clovenhoof.

Read it, don't listen to it

This felt like a mish-mash of useless characters made even more complicated by meaningless chatter. The narrator made this very hard to follow with all of the different accents he had to do. It would be a lot easier to follow if you read it. It tried a bit too hard and missed the mark.

Just Brilliant!

Was disappointed when I realised we we’rent going to hear more about Clovenhoof / Michael etc but quickly became irrelevant. Laugh out loud funny, touching in places and just a fantastic listen from start to end. The inclusion of some characters from Pigeonwings was utter genius!

Good God

OK, not quite as good as the previous two books but has its moments. I'm sure the narrator was channelling Chris Packham with his Saint Francis.

A good spinoff

While Clovenhoof and Michael are not involved in the story it still makes for a good spinoff, humorous and engrossing with real character brought by the narrator.

A lot of fun

This book has a different feel to the first two in the Clovenhoof series but is a lot of fun and completely ridiculous.

Magnificently blasphemous

This certainly isn't a book for people who easily get offended when Christianity is mocked. The previous two books in the series do a pretty good hatchet-job on mainstream Christian traditions, but this one goes to a whole new level. The Virgin Mary, for example, is a coarse, Woodbine-smoking, sex-crazed terrorist. I get a real sense that, by this stage in the series, the authors are really off their meds. In terms of plot -- well, it hardly matters; the plot is too daft to spend much time on. What does matter is the satire, which is first-rate. To be fair, this isn't as funny a book as Pigeonwings, perhaps because it tries to have a plot. Clovenhoof and Pigeonwings are both, really, sit-coms involving supernatural characters trying to integrate on Earth. God Squad is more of a narrative but, as I said, the plot doesn't stand up to any serious scrutiny.

It's funny, though, because it's so outrageous.

Incidentally, this isn't a sequel to Pigeonwings. Some characters from the earlier stories do make cameo appearances, but this book stands on its own.

most enjoyable thing I've listened to this year

this book was just alot of fun and the strands of several stories beautifully woven together

Very very funny audio book

I’ve read all the books and now enjoying the audio versions, this ones very different from the first two but still hugely enjoyable.
I’m enjoying this one much more as an audiobook as the voices are excellent, it really adds to the humour.
The three main characters are a great comedy trio.
I struggled with the narration of the first two books due to Clovenhoofs voice being wildly different in my head to the audio version, but I soon adjusted as they’re so well written..and the other voices were spot on though and in this one they’re fabulous.