Jo was dropped on the doorstep of Lily Larouche when she was just a baby with a note asking that she be taken care of, but warning that she is a "DANGEROUS" baby. Since then, Jo has lived in the desert of California with Aunt Lily, and now she's thirteen years old and trying to deal with her aunt's eccentricities, most often displayed at her parties and manifested as throwing rats at actresses, jumping into the pool wearing her cocktail dress, smashing records against her guests, and more. The paper loves her, of course, but it can be quite troublesome to be loved by the paper, or to be related to someone loved by the paper. At one particularly unusual Christmas costume party, a Russian colonel named Anatoly Korsakov dressed as a daffodil (his costume consists of a sad little fake flower on a hat) turns up, not quite sure what's going on, just that he must protect Jo. The evening grows more and more wild as Lily once again gets out of hand and a mysterious package containing a black box falls from the sky onto the head of an insolent, gun-toting boy dressed as a hedgehog. The Colonel's best friend, a glamorous, three-foot-tall talking cockroach named Sefino (who for some reason I image with Dan Stevens' voice; don't ask me why) arrives in a flurry of indignation at a questionable newspaper called the Eldritch Snitch, which has been printing nasty stories about him, and a slightly lame self-proclaimed Chinese villain named Ken Kiang burns the house down and tries to kill Jo, Lily, Korsakov, and Sefino. Eventually, the four find themselves in Eldritch City, a strange place of ruins, multiple cultures, and orders of knights. One such order is the Order of Odd-Fish, a group of people who research useless information (the more pointless, the better). Jo, Lily, the Colonel, and Sefino begin to figure out their connection to Eldritch City, but for Jo, there's a lot more than most people suspect. Eldritch City has entered a period of unease--at least for those who watch Teenage Ichthala and believe in its power to predict the future. Jo has many questions. Who is the Ichthala? Why are some people so worried? And what does a certain unpleasant TV trickster have to do with anything?
The Order's mission was pretty much what sold me on this book (and also reading page 206, which I'll get to later). A group of people who research useless information for an intentionally erroneous encyclopedia? YES. I WILL READ ABOUT THAT. The knights of the Odd-Fish research anything from the usually unusual (absurd animals, strange plants) to the moderately surprising (useless weapons, unusual smells) to the really and truly distressingly pointless (dithering, lost causes). There was once even a knight whose project was the philosophy of napkins. This level of absurdity is hard to find and incredibly enjoyable.
Have I mentioned the humor yet? TOoOF is a very, very funny book. To give you an idea, here is the page that it happened to fall open to when I took it off the shelf at the store. I read the page, and duly decided that I had to buy it. This is page 206 in its entirety.
"'...let Dugan do this,' said Ian as they rode the subway to her house.
The butler showed Jo and Ian into the parlor where Lady Agnes waited. She was a withered noodle of a woman, her ancient skin gray and wrinkled, her face hidden by thick dark veils. For a long time she didn't speak. Then she suddenly rasped, in tones of incredulous disdain:
'You are Ian Barrows and Jo Larouche? I expected squires to look more impressive!'
'We are squires of the Odd-Fish,' snapped Ian, 'and that should be enough for you. We expected something better than to be ignored for two months.'
'Do you use a napkin when you eat?' Lady Agnes peered closer at Ian. 'It seems you left bits of your breakfast on your lip.'
There was an icy silence.
'That,' said Ian, with tightly controlled rage, 'is a mustache.'
Lady Agnes lost it. She hooted, gurgled, and shrieked, her bony body shaking as though it might break into bits. 'Hoo nelly, that's rich! A mustache! Oh, you can't make this stuff up!' she whooped. 'Butler, get in here with some cake! Oh, the poor dear thinks he has a mustache! Too much!'
Ian silently seethed as the butler served cold tea and moldy cake. Lady Agnes fumbled with her fork, straining to lift a bit; finally she gave up, panting, 'This cake is too heavy.'
After a moment Jo said, 'Do you need help?'
'Ooo-hoo-hoo! Oh, I wouldn't say no.'
Lady Agnes's gray chin poked out from the veil, and her shriveled lips parted with relish. Jo guided a forkful of cake into the ancient mouth, and the lips closed with an effort, disappearing back into the shadows of the veil, smacking dryly.
Ian exhaled. 'Lady Agnes, we've been waiting for weeks. What's our--'
'Someone is trying to murder me!' croaked Lady Agnes with sudden energy, and Jo and Ian were startled into silence. Lady Agnes snickered, drawing from her robes a jeweled key on a..."
And thus ends page 206, one of the best moments in the book. I'm sure that the other people in the bookstore were wondering what was with the hysterical laughing somewhere among the shelves.
In addition to incredible setting description and a spot-on sense of absurd humor, TOoOF has great characters and a fantastic plot. The storyline isn't quite mind-blowing, but it's certainly original, suspenseful, and creative. It doesn't need to be utterly revolutionizing, because it's much more than good enough. Supporting the plot is a completely unforgettable character list. Besides loveable heroes and heroines, there are the (sometimes painfully) colorful knights and squires of the Odd-Fish, creepy villains, laughably feeble villains, a belligerent squire of the Wormbeards (another Eldritch City order, this one of artists) named Fiona Fuorlini (who shares my first name), and many supporting characters like the above Lady Agnes, or various not-entirely-human characters like the gurgling, rag-clad eelmen, the cockroach butlers of every Eldritch City order, and the centipedes who run the newspaper. Everything is a surprise, and everything either makes you laugh or causes you to stare fixedly at the page and frantically read to the end of the scene (especially at the end of the book, where I literally could not stop reading, something that doesn't happen all that often to me).
I don't have anything about this book to complain about. I can tell that this is Kennedy's first novel, but it's not at all a bad thing. There's a certain difference in tone between a brilliant beginner and a brilliant veteran, but it doesn't affect the quality of the writing at all (they're both brilliant, remember?). TOoOF is a very complete book.
I would recommend this book to anyone looking for something unusual and funny, and to fans of Harry Potter (especially those who particularly enjoy its absurd side), Lemony Snicket, and Monty Python. I love The Order of the Odd-Fish, and I hope that someday James Kennedy returns to Eldritch City and writes a new adventure among the vines, lurid flowers, ruins, and festivals.