Blood River Down

A Customer has generously given us a plot summary. However, I think that there are a few key details missing. Gideon Sunday, an ex-semi-professional American Football player, goes to his pantry to retrieve an awful bottle of his (dead) sister's fruit preserves. When he gets there, he discovers a meadow in his pantry. He closes the door, takes a few breaths, and begins to investigate with as much sanity and candor as Sherlock Holmes. Upon discovering that A) no one is playing a trick on him, B) there really IS a meadow in his cupboard, and C) there is something three-quarters of ugly coming out of it, he decides to beat a monster to death with a bat. Upon his conquest, he meets the lovely, and helpless, and possibly stupid, Glorian, who tells him that she has come to get him so that he can bring her a duck. A white duck, which is described in a laughable exchange. Gideon, you see, must find a white duck and bring it to a certain river and put its down on the river to keep the land from being flooded. No one has really seen the duck, no one knows what is so special about the duck, no one knows where the duck is (supposedly). Glorian just knows that Gideon has to get it. Why Gideon? Because that is where her magic portal took her. Along with a bellicose young man, a retired weapons trader and master, a dashing and dangerous young lady, and a large, peaceful goat (and a band of singing thieves, like Robin Hood, except with song), Gideon has to break in to the most heavily guarded fortress in the world to rescue Glorian, steal a duck, and save the world. Yes. It's that awesome. Along the way, you will laugh, out loud, many times. It is hilarious. The only other book that is not marketed as humor that made me laugh this hard was the Gone Away World by Nick Harkaway. A Harkius

The back wall of Gideon Sunday's pantry was missing that night -- and in its place was a doorway into another world. Not the sort of thing an unemployed ex-football player expects to find when he's looking for a jar of jam! Worse, the magical forces of this other world have determined that he, Gideon, is the mythic hero destined to combat and destroy the dreaded Tide of Blood that threatens to engulf the land of Chey. But when Gideon Sunday is handed a ball, he takes it and runs... And so, with the lovely lady Glorian, her long-lost and long suffering brother Tag, a magical weapons maker and the great telepathic lorra, Red, Gideon sets off on a most improbable quest: first, to locate and recover an enchanted duck who holds the key to Gideon's power, and then to turn back the tides of horrific destruction.