Jesse, a fallen preacher and his girlfriend Tulip are traveling to the Grail to save their vampire friend Cassidy. More or less. Preacher draws on western mythology mixing it with religious critique and vulgar comedy. It’s brilliant. We follow the trio, sometimes duo, into various deadly situations and out – and in this sense book two is a straight line from book one.
We get introduced to lots of new characters in this book as well; Herr Starr who works for “The Grail” under the Allfather a monstrously overweight bulimic responsible for the care of The Messiah; an Inbred who is supposedly a direct descendant from Jesus. Further more we get a deeper backstory to Cassidy – he gets a girlfriend (until she winds up dead) and we get to meet Jesse’s father and figure out where he actually got that “fuck communism” lighter from.
While there are plenty of sections with action, gunfighting, blood and violence the book is not always fast paced. Even though book one starts with a bunch of Arch Angels losing “Genesis” the result of a coupling between an Angel and a Demon that accidently takes Jesse as a host, long stretches of Book Two ignore this. The Genesis in Jesse means that he can tell people to do anything and they will literally do it, e.g. “eat your gun”. But the same morals that drive Jesse to search for God (who abandoned heaven the minute Genesis was born) are the same that drive him in Book Two; to save his friend and to learn more about the Grail.
The Grail captures Cassidy in order to lure Jesse to France – Herr Starr is couping the Grail in order to make Jesse the new Messiah as the current one is…defective.
The book is offensive in so many ways. It is for mature readers only – but for them it’s a hella fun ride!
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