Vancouver-based writer Christopher Meades follows up his 2010 debut, The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark, with a sophomore effort that is both more ambitious and more accomplished. The earlier novel introduced Meades’ penchant for quirky, dark comedy and elaborately orchestrated plotting. The Last Hiccup offers more of the same, but with greater depth and finesse.

An odyssey of adventure and intrigue set during the early decades of the Soviet Union, the book focuses on the most eventful years in the short life of Vladimir, who at the age of eight becomes incurably afflicted with hiccups, a condition that persists into adulthood. From his beginnings in a tiny village, we follow Vladimir to Moscow, then to Mongolia, and back to Russia. Along the way, he becomes embroiled in a feud between two high-ranking medical rivals with disparate diagnoses of his unprecedented condition. This leads to a harrowing climax in a dungeon-like mental asylum where Vladimir was briefly confined as a boy.

Curiously, Vladimir’s adolescence is glossed over in a few pages. Between the ages of eight and 20, he spends 11 years entrusted to the guardianship of a mysterious meditating guru known as the Great Gog. After being banished from the monastery, Vladimir spends a year fending for himself in the Mongolian jungle. He emerges from seclusion and embarks on a return to his homeland, now in the midst of the Second World War.

We get just enough detail about the novel’s continent-spanning settings to inhabit them on the surface level that Vladimir’s story requires. As with Henrik Nordmark, most of the characters are cartoonish in their attributes and excesses, though The Last Hiccup shows noticeably greater nuance in the author’s treatment of his protagonist and the novel’s existential themes. Despite the horrific experiences to which he’s subjected and the dark impulses that occasionally overtake him, Vladimir maintains a moral centre that anchors the sillier aspects of his story.

Meades is clearly enjoying himself; readers who prize quick pacing and an eventful story will no doubt share in his enjoyment.