Mercury Rises by Robert Kroese

Mercury Rises
Robert Kroese
Mercury #2
Published October 18, 2011 by AmazonEncore

Bite-sized Review
While not quite as fun as Mercury Falls, Mercury Rises still provided an interesting story with a sense of humor.

King-sized Review
I was really excited when I learned there was going to be a sequel to Mercury Falls, an incredibly hilarious and brilliant book about the Apocalypse. (Seriously, go check it out. It is completely worth it.) I mean, sure, the plot had seemed pretty nicely wrapped up at the end of the first book, but for more of Mercury and Christine and general ridiculousness, I was more than willing for this series to continue.

The problem was, there wasn't really much Mercury and Christine or general ridiculousness. I'm not saying it was a bad book, but it wasn't nearly as fun and light-hearted as the first one. What I loved best about Mercury Falls was its ability to point out the silliness of certain religious and philosophical standards without seeming angry or preachy. In Mercury Rises, there's less of that whimsy, and it feels more like the book is trying to make a point. Also the footnotes are much less fun.

This book is also about the Apocalypse. But since we already did the Revelations version in Mercury Falls, this one had to be different, with the result that the story, particularly the Ancient Babylon scenes, didn't really seem to have a point until the end (although I still wasn't entirely certain the Ancient Babylon scenes were necessary). And it is lucky I find theoretical physics interesting, because there is quite a bit of it in this book. The examples and analogies were actually pretty good, but if hearing about quarks and relativity makes your eyes glaze over, this may not be your thing. It's certainly not the entire book – you could easily skim over those parts without really missing much – but fair warning, there is plenty of it.

Even though Mercury Rises had a lot of Mercury and a lot of Christine, there wasn't very much Mercury-and-Christine, which as it turns out may have been key to the last book. When they finally did meet again, I think the book improved. Still not to the level of the previous one, but I did enjoy it more.

So. First, Mercury Falls is awesome and you should read it. Second, even though this book wasn't as good, it wasn't bad either. It had an interesting plot and was still pretty funny. It just sounds bad because I'm comparing it to the first one. And third, I will most definitely read book three when it comes out.

Quality: Acceptable
Enjoyability: Acceptable