"We hear the world will end on a Saturday. Next, Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner. Unfortunately, Sister Mary Locquacious of the Chattering Order has misplaced the Antichrist. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride motorcylces. And the representatives from Heaven and Hell have decided finally they actually like the human race..."

MY RATING: i'll give it 5/5.

AN EXCERPT: "My name is Nikki but my friends all call me Coco after Coco Chanel, a french lady who lived to be almost ninety. She's my idol, after Henry Miller. Every morning when I open my eyes I wonder what i can do to make myself famous. It's become my ambition, almost my raison d'etre, to burst upon the city like fireworks."

The novel is split up into seven sections: the first six contain multiple chapters of varying length and differing focus. The novel's origins in short fiction are still visible though no segment or chapter is wholly independent of the others.

Each character narrates differently, in a fashion comparable to stream-of-consciousness or representative of psychological realism, for example, Spud will refer to people internally as 'cats' (Begbie is a jungle cat, while he himself is a house cat), and Sick Boy will occasionally entertain an inner-dialogue between himself and Sean Connery. Chapters narrated by Renton are written phonetically, conveying a thick Scottish accent, while Davie's chapters (Bad Blood, Traditional Sunday Breakfast) are narrated in Standard English with dialogue appearing phonetically. Other chapters are written from a 3rd person omniscient stance (in Standard English) to cover the actions and thoughts of different characters simultaneously. For example, The First Shag in Ages covers Spud and Renton's outing to a pub where they meet Dianne and her pal, followed by Renton's return to Dianne's and the awkward breakfast that ensues, all the while revealing what each character thinks of the other.

(taken from wikipedia) 

Paul Carpenter would prefer to ignore the really weird aspects of his job, but that proves impossible in pest control at J. W. Wells, because pest control is a matter of dragon slaying, and Beowulf is a useful procedural manual. Better this than taking deposits to the Bank of the Dead, though, and it keeps Paul's mind off being dumped by Sophie, the love of his life. Judy di Castel Blanco, partner in charge of entertainment (and queen of the Fay), sends Paul--the only qualified Hero available--to rescue cashier Shumway and the partner in charge of pest control, who have apparently been kidnapped. Paul fails but starts uncovering the truth about his role at Wells and the war among the Fay, in which he is the Chosen One, whatever that means. Judy isn't on the human-friendly side of the conflict, and her plans for Paul and Sophie are diabolical. Paul's sometimes effective but never expected methods of Hero-ing make for a good read, one that Holt's bizarre humor and sense of detail render terrifically funny. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association.

Back to feudal Japan, which now enters the modern world, from the master of the three-decker behemoth (Shogun, Tai-pan, Noble House, etc.). Once you're into it, you forgive Clavell his galloping grammar and anachronisms and are swept along by spirited storytelling. Although Clavell clearly takes this hackwork as weighty and worthy entertainment, the heart quails at a serious weighing of a novel peopled with larger-than-life comic-strip characters caught up in clich‚s of Japanese exotica and international business deals as well as of internecine warfare--all of which Clavell writes at full throttle as if infused by the soul of Alexandre Dumas. A sequel to Tai-pan (1966), this is the sixth novel in Clavell's Asian saga and takes place in 1862. The gai-jin (foreigners) have arrived, intent on doing business with the Japanese. With laws against the use of the wheel in carriages or carts, the Japanese, their tradition- bound Emperor and competing warlords detest the foreigners, who have ruined the Chinese with the Opium Wars. The mighty Struan shipping empire, Noble House, has built a base in Yokohama, but with the illness (fatal) of Culum Struan, tai-pan (head) of the business empire, 20-year-old Malcolm Struan stands ready to become tai-pan. In the first chapter, however, he's attacked by samurai assassins on the Tokaido road and lies either bedridden or hobbles about for the rest of the novel. Young Angelique Richaud, 18, Parisienne daughter of a gambler who has lost what money the family had, sets her eye on Malcolm. Angelique is raped by a rogue samurai and now secretly carries his child, unbeknownst to the love- besotted Malcolm. Angelique's syphilis-stricken fellow Frenchman Andre Poncin wends his way through the plot toward a glorious love- death with his Japanese mistress while Japanese warlords fight each other, samurai endlessly behead samurai, earthquakes shiver, and Yokohama burns. You get your money's worth if you want to spend it here. (Literary Guild Dual Selection for Summer) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.