This book is a lot of fun and silly. It's probably geared to someone who thinks South Park rocks - which it does.

You can't take book too seriously because the author took a lot of liberties with the stories. But stories starring Gilgamesh, Mordred, Minos and Medea ... I'm pretty sure people have embellished their stories over the years.

I applaud the author picking some not as well-known subjects like ... Baba Yaga, Oya, and Bradamant of Clairmont. Who? I thought the same thing but we read books to learn something. Just don't quote this guy if you are planning to write a essay that determines your GPA. ( )

Fun and silly read about a broad swathe of heroes and villains across a range of mythology, religions, and modern pop culture.

Any book that can equally discuss Darth Vader, Dirty Harry, and Gilgamesh with a healthy dose of scatalogical humor is definitely a perfect book for bathroom reads, in my opinion. ( )

This picks up where Thompson's earlier foray into badassness ends; with people beating the absolute whatsits out of each other. This time Thompson moves from real live badasses from throughout history to mythology badasses.

As with the first book, Thompson's full-on prose can get wearying at times but just when you think there could be no more possible ways to describe how awesome someone or something was, Thompson is able to ratchet up the balls out attitude some more.

My only disappointment is that Australian Aboriginal folk figures are missed here; surely there's at least one beast born from the nightmares of Aboriginal people throughout history that could have found a place here. ( )

Behold! Herein is contained a collection of history and pop culture's most notorious badasses. These guys and gals kick ass, take names, never give a crap, and spend their days punching humanity in the nutsack just because they can. They believe that, if you're looking for sympathy, it's in the dictionary between shit and syphilis. There's no challenge they won't accept, no life they will spare, no vengeance they won't seek, no maiden they won't at least fondle! Why? They all suffer from the totally sweet fever known as badassitude. And, as we all know, there's no cure for badassitude and, even if there were, who would want it?

Yeah, was all that a little too much for you? Well, it was for me, too. I will readily admit that I am indeed juvenile enough to have found this cover amusing, as well as sentences like this one describing the Egyptian gods, "As an added triple-shot of one hundred-proof badassitude, almost all of these bitchin' all-powerful smite-masters were represented by human bodies with insane animal heads grafted on top, making them so King Kong mega-weird-looking that it's like riding a surfboard of insanity down the Uncanny Valley." However, 300+ pages of this became fairly tedious; so much so that I had to reduce my reading to a chapter or two between other books.

It wasn't long before every chapter began to sound as though a potty-mouthed version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' Michelangelo was "Cowabunga"-ing his way through the narrative.

However, there were some seriously bright spots:

1) The variety of cultures and time periods represented is impressive. We have everything from Viking, Aztec, Greek, Egyptian, Vodoun, Anglo-Saxon, to African mythologies represented, as well as more modern cultural icons. (Any book where Skeletor and Darth Vader are rubbing shoulders is automatically worth 3 stars.)

2) Hell, yes for the women represented in the book! Kali, Oya, Atalanta, Bradamant of Clairmont, Skuld, The White Tights (it's worth reading this chapter alone), The Furies, Baba Yaga, and, my personal favorite, Medea, are all here, proving you don't have to have *ahem* a sword *ahem* to be a badass.

3) This is the type of book that I could definitely see turning around a boy who is a struggling reader. It's fun, opens up a variety of mythologies for further research, and uses a language all teenage boys understand. Sure, you could get your panties in a twist because words like balls, douche, badass, scrotum, and several juvenile sexual references are made, but if you think teenage boys aren't already using that language then you are not a badass. You're a dumbass. And I'm of the opinion that if it takes pandering to the lowest common denominator to hook a kid on reading, it's well worth it.

Despite the fact that the "badass" conceit wears pretty thin, this is a moderately entertaining and very well-researched read. I can honestly say that I learned a few things from it, added a few books for further research to my "to read" list, and now have the line "He gets more ass than a public toilet seat" in my arsenal. It was well worth the read. ( )