
Twenty Major’s first book, based on the characters from his blog, pulls no punches from the first page. A twisted story about brainwashing the Irish populace into becoming acoustic loving drips, it’s up to Twenty, Jimmy the Bollix, Stinking Pete, Dirty Dave, Lucky Luciano and Ron the barman to save everyone - will they be able to?
The writing style is easy to read, although the multiple tangents can make it hard to follow at times - and anyone offended by swearing should stay well clear. That said, for those that know Dublin and it’s inhabitants, the raw language and local settings will make the book come to life as it accurately reflects daily life there.
A strong storyline twists through the book and keeps the reader interested. Surprisingly, for a first novel set over a short period of time, very little of the dialogue seems drawn out, except for when the author drops in his long-winded 80’s song title puns. While I feel that they work very well on his blog, in the book they seemed a little contrived and stole attention from the main storyline.
Overall, a great read and a fantastic first novel - I can’t wait for the next one to come along. In the next few years we might just realise that Twenty could be Ireland’s answer to Terry Pratchett!


