Product Description

Hades is dead and the Agency needs a replacement, a new apprentice to carry on the good work, and fortunately for our zombie narrator, his number came up in the Unholy Tombola. Over the next seven days he will act as Death's apprentice, helping him to bring about seven deaths.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #654298 in Books
• Published on: 1999-07-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From the Back Cover
'We're offering you an opportunity. We're taking you on as an apprentice, and we're giving you a week to prove yourself. If you succeed you become a fully-qualified Agent with all the benefits that guarantees: immortality, steady employment, freedom from boredom, and so on and so forth.'

'What if I fail?'

'You won't. You can't lose. If things don't work out, we'll just put you back. And you get to choose the manner of your own death.'

Hades is dead and the Agency needs a replacement, a new apprentice to carry on the good work. An emergency meeting is held, a resolution passed - the traditional method for selecting a new recruit will once again be used. When the coloured balls fall in the Unholy Tombola, who will be the lucky one?

72 18 9 11 12 13 49, a Code Four male aged 28 - no name, no family, no friends - is resting not-so-peacefully by the old chestnut tree in a corner of St Giles cemetery when Death, brandishing the Agency's standard contract, raps a bony knuckle on his coffin. The deal is this: over the next seven days he will act as Death's apprentice, helping him to bring about seven different deaths. If he copes with this task, the job will be his; if not, he can choose the manner of his own death. It couldn't be simpler.

In the Agency's suburban office, the apprentice meets War, Famine and Pestilence, all of whom now drive cars and use modern technology. But Death is bored - things aren't what they used to be - and over the week the newcomer witnesses some imaginative, not to say convoluted deaths. At the same time, the circumstances that led to his own death gradually filter back into his brain. And as he tingles with the memories and sensations of what it was like to be human, he stumbles over a contrivance that could change his future as well as his past. But in the face of eternity, is a week long enough for a nameless dead guy to beat the apocalypse's four world-weary car-drivers at their own game?

A gothic meditation on human frailty, death and the after-life, The Apprentice is a black comedy with a surreal edge that gives new meaning to a near death experience.

Customer Reviews

A cult classic
I can't understand why this isn't more popular. I started it at 7 one night and couldn't put it down until I'd finished. It's destined to become a cult classic, which probably means nobody in the mainstream will bother with it...They're missing out on something special.

Brilliantly bringing life to death and death to life!
From this sombre beginning Gordon Houghton takes us on a trip through life, death by various means, and undeath.

In this very funny book we meet The Four Car Drivers of the Apocalypse who are pretty well fed up (excepting Famine of course) and bored with the whole thing. To make life (and death) more interesting, Pestilence (Pes) embarks on series of experiments which generally fail. Famine, who prefers to be known as Slim, works on emetic foods but nothing comes up.

War and his apprentice, Skirmish, resort to bar-room brawls and causing trouble in children's playgrounds.

Death himself would rather listen to classical music and play Chess with maybe clients - win and they live, lose and they lose everything.

Into this shambolic situation is thrown Death's new apprentice. A more inept, improbable and unwilling apprentice it is hard to imagine. Houghton leads us on a merry dance through an Oxford not known by the living and not cared about by the dead.

This is a book full of dark humour and darker deeds. So sharply observed one assumes it was written with a scythe rather than a pen.

With tongue firmly in cheek (or jawbone) Houghton brilliantly succeeds in bringing life to death and death to life.

Wistful Surreal Slapstick
SET IN OXFORD, this first-person account of a week in the (after)life of a zombie is by turns slapstick, surreal, and wistful. Corpse #72 18 9 11 12 13 49 is dragged out of his grave by Death (yes Death, he of the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse-only now they are the 4 Car Drivers of the Apocalypse), who is looking for a replacement for Hades. It seems Hades was recently ripped apart by Cerebus, but it's not really clear who masterminded the attack. The zombie has a week to prove himself a capable assistant, or else he gets re-offed and returned to the grave.

Most of the humor comes in the portrayal of Death, Disease, Famine, War, and underling Skirmish, as petty bureaucrats who bickerer and whine their way through the week. Pestilence is constantly experimenting with new plagues to unleash, if only he got approval from "The Chief." War and Skirmish revel in bar-room brawls and instigating playground fights. Death, on the other hand, is kind of bored and fed up with everything. It has more than a slight whiff of Monty Python about it all. The narrative alternates between recounting the day's activities (each day brings with it an "accidental" death to oversee), and ruminations on the zombie's life before his death at age 28. Although we know he died falling off a roof, he slowly unveils his life story leading up to that moment. Old relationships are rehashed, and he reflects on having squandered his life. Some moderate tension is built as we learn more and more about his final hours, and he realizes he desperately wants to give life a second chance-which of course means cheating Death...