”There was, and was not, a nakhudha named Amina al-Sirafi who sailed with a cunning crew all over the Indian Ocean, dashing after magical treasures an”There was, and was not, a nakhudha named Amina al-Sirafi who sailed with a cunning crew all over the Indian Ocean, dashing after magical treasures and talismans, outwitting cruel sorcerers and battling incomprehensibly powerful creatures from legend. This is her story.�
This is a fascinating historical fantasy, set in the maritime world of the Indian Ocean in the early twelfth century. Though festooned with fantasy elements, this setting is well researched, and creates an alluring picture of this rich, medieval world. The tale is told in the first person voice of Amina al-Sirafi herself, a long retired pirate/smuggler coaxed out of retirement to take on a final adventure.
This book is a light entertainment, as insubstantial as ocean foam, yet a fast and fun read. The narrator/hero portrays herself as extremely human and flawed, yet is able to competently rise to fantastical challenges, including sea monsters, evil, Frankish wizards, supernatural avian bureaucrats, legendary, enchanted chamber pots, and even an infuriating estranged demon husband. The book also introduces several interesting members of her crew, yet fails to develop any of them as fully as the narrator.
I really enjoyed this book � it is a solid 3.5 star effort. It appears to be setting up a continuing series, and if another book appears, I will certainly read it. Yet there are several reasons why I’ve rounded my rating down rather than up. The book’s premise � the old rogue coming out of retirement and putting the old crew back together for one, last, rich job —works here, but is still incredibly hackneyed. The primary villain is completely one dimensional, and is supernaturally unbeatable until it becomes necessary for him not to be. As previously mentioned, Amina al-Sirafi’s primary crew appear to be interesting characters, yet are underutilized in favor of developing the narrator protagonist. These things do not ruin the story, which remains fun and recommend, but they did keep me from rating it higher....more
Our Father, who art in the Forest Horned One is Thy name.
This collection is for those who have already walked the dark, labyrinthine paths of that bit Our Father, who art in the Forest Horned One is Thy name.
This collection is for those who have already walked the dark, labyrinthine paths of that bit of primeval forest known as Ryhope Wood. If you have not yet discovered that dark and eerie bit of Jungian, sentient real estate through reading the first book in this series, Mythago Wood, you may find yourself lost in these tales.
It’s primarily the title story (which is also the longest) that puts this short story collection into the Mythago Wood series. Several of the other tales seem to be set in or near the Wood far in the past, and fit thematically, expanding and deepening the mystery of Ryhope. The weakest stories in the collection are those with the least discernible connection to Ryhope or the Mythagos.
Bone Forest This novella, a direct prequel to Mythago Wood, follows George Huxley (the deceased father from the first book) as he pursues his dark obsession with Ryhope Wood. His terrifying and horrific encounter in the wood with a female mythago shaman puts his wife, his collaborator Wynne-Jones, and his young son Steven all in grave peril from his own ghostly doppelgänger, and threatens the fabric of his reality. This tale feels more like psychological horror than fantasy, and complicates the already labyrinthine story-line of the series. 4 ⭐️
Thorn A medieval mason has been recruited by the Green Man to carve his image in a secret place in the new church that’s being constructed in the village, thereby claiming the shrine as his own no matter what rites are publicly celebrated there. The mason works at night and in secret, fearing that, if discovered, he may end up in the gibbet that hangs just outside Thorn’s shadowy forest. But, to his great peril, the mason doesn’t understand the nature of the bargain he’s made, and has misjudged the attitudes of his friends and neighbors. 4 ⭐️
The Shapechanger This story emphasizes the time distortion of Ryhope Wood. Set in about the eighth century, an ancient shaman, known only as the Wolfhead, has been summoned to exorcise a demon who is haunting a Saxon village. Together with his ten year old apprentice, Inkmaker, he discovers that the demon-haunting has taken the form of a distressed child who is conjuring mythagos from a book of legends. Wolfhead recognizes a name he encountered centuries past � a Roman-Briton, yet the child is conjuring legends not yet written in Wolfhead’s time. The time inversion, the tormented future child, the mysterious Wolfhead and his excellently developed young apprentices, Inkmaker, all combine for a dark and eerie tale that deepens the lore of Ryhope Wood. 3 1/2 ⭐️
The Boy Who Jumped the Rapids The young son of a village chieftain is an outcast and pariah because he is not effected by the powerful illusion magics of the forest like everyone else. And an outsider, a warrior from across the sea, is making the villagers uneasy as he builds a mysterious shrine outside the village. Their parallel stories both deepen the mystery and confusion of the inexplicable wood, without making much sense. 2 1/2 ⭐️
Time of the Tree Human landscape? Body as world? Man gone mad? You are not really intended to understand what is going on in this story. It is Holdstock taking his qualities of impenetrableness and inexplicably to the extreme. 1 1/2 ⭐️
Magic Man The old, one-eyed cave painter in a prehistoric hunting tribe serves as a kind of shaman, as his paintings in the sacred cave predict the next day’s hunt, drawing in the beast the hunters will slay. The chief hunter hates the old artist, denies his art has any power, and threatens his life. The painter/shaman uses his art to attempt to subvert his powerful opponent, but his plan is foiled by his enthusiastic, young apprentice. As is typical of Holdstock’s stories, this one doesn’t end well for anyone. 4 ⭐️
Scarrowfell Folk horror � as the village excitingly prepares for the celebration of Lord’s Eve, young Ginny has been disturbed by nightmares. But as the day itself arrives, Ginny seems to be caught in a living nightmare. Creepy and atmospheric. 3 ⭐️
The Time Beyond Age While this science fiction tale appears to have some tangential, thematic link to the rest of the collection, it still struck a harsh note for me after all the previous stories were variations of dark fantasy and folk horror. 2 ⭐️...more
The Moors spin on stories, and this is a classic one: the formerly dead maiden and the mad scientist’s beautiful daughter.�
The Moors, a place that resThe Moors spin on stories, and this is a classic one: the formerly dead maiden and the mad scientist’s beautiful daughter.�
The Moors, a place that resembles monochromatic 1930s horror movies, is the best realized and most interesting world in Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series. And Jack Walcott, fastidious, remote, apprentice to the Moor’s mad scientist, is among the series’s most compelling characters. This short story is another prequel that focuses on Jack (to the exclusion of her twin sister, Jill) from her first year in the Moors until her first love.
Most of the world’s stories are either about Love or Death, or Love and Death. This one is no exception, except that it reverses that predictable order....more
I started, then immediately stopped reading Lost in the Moment and Found last year when it first came out. Seanan McGuire created her Wayward ChildrenI started, then immediately stopped reading Lost in the Moment and Found last year when it first came out. Seanan McGuire created her Wayward Children series as brilliantly creative, fast paced YA fantasy adventure, but every volume also includes McGuire’s passionate social commentary on the endangerment, neglect, and abuse of children. In her best books, she wields this like a scalpel, and it synergizes perfectly with her tale. But in some books it feels more like she’s cutting with a hammer, and it can overwhelm her storytelling. That’s what this book felt like when I first attempted it.
The problem is the main character starts out as an endangered five year old girl. Though (as the author assures her readers in an opening note) the child escapes before her abuser can physically harm her, her sever gaslighting, grooming and endangerment in her own home dominates the first section of the book, and I found it overwhelmingly distressing to read. Even knowing that these books can be dark, it was more trauma than I was ready to deal with in a short, YA fantasy adventure.
But McGuire drew me back to this book through her next volume, Mislaid in Parts Half-Known., which I recently finished and enjoyed. The two books share the same protagonists, young Antsy, and both feature the same alternative world � a nexus world where lost things go and are organized in a magical junk shop. Antsy has come into her own in the later book, and was such a wonderful character (and her junk shop world so interesting) that I was compelled to return to this volume in order to know her full story.
I was still seriously distress by reading through the mental anguish and severe endangerment of such a young child in the book’s first section, but the reading became far more enjoyable once Antsy found her door to a truly remarkable magical land. Still, the trauma inflicted in the book’s beginning keeps me from rating this one more than three stars.
This is a clever story collection, but falls well short of the “greatest collection� that many Ellison fans label it. In too many of these tales EllisThis is a clever story collection, but falls well short of the “greatest collection� that many Ellison fans label it. In too many of these tales Ellison tripped over his own cleverness, and they come across as more pretentious than profound. One of the collection’s most praised stories is built around an ugly lie that became an urban myth and Ellison’s nasty, cynical story helped to amplify and perpetuate the lie.
There are several excellent stories here, (though a couple of my favorites were already published in earlier collections) and the book’s concept of examining the passing of old gods and establishing of new ones is boldly creative and was a significant influence on other writers. I think I just came to this collection too late in my life. Many of the concepts examined here could well have been mind blowing, even life changing if I first read this book as a teen or a young man. Yet through the alchemy of living, ideas that would have been mind blowing forty years ago have become little more than truisms at this life stage.
Forward: Oblations at Alien Alters: The author presents some dramatic words on the collection’s theme � Gods. ”There is one rule, one Seal of Solomon that can confound a god, and to which all gods pay service to the letter. When belief in a god dies, the god dies.� 3 ⭐️
The Whimper of Whipped Dogs: I absolutely despise this story. It is an obscenely violent, ugly, nihilistic, and cynical take on life in the city, riffing off the infamous (and inaccurate) myth of the Kitty Genovese murder. The story is an aggressively brutal assault on the reader � horror delivered with a maniacal grudge. Sure it’s well written, but Ellison was a bloody bastard to write it. ”When the new god comes to the Big Apple, its Kyrie Eleison turns out to be a prayer Kitty Genovese simply couldn’t sing. But thirty-eight others knew the tune.� 1 ⭐️
Along the Scenic Route: Along freeways of the future, aggressive driving and road rage has been officially systematized into a legally controlled highway dueling protocol, and cars are equipped with lethal weapons and defense systems. A family man out for a scenic drive with his wife allows his bad temper to bait him into an official road duel with a hot shot young blood. Insecure egos and toxic masculinity collide in this lethal thrill ride of a story. ”In the world of the freeway there was no place for a walking man.� 4 1/2 ⭐️
On the Downhill Side: New Orleans! Ghosts! Unicorns? A story of the follies of love, and redemption beyond the grave. Unfortunately, it all comes out as a cold, tasteless gumbo, pretentiousness masquerading as profundity. ”There’s a little book they sell, a guide to manners and dining in New Orleans. I’ve looked � nowhere in the book do they indicate the proper responses to a ghost.� 2 ⭐️
O Ye of Little Faith: Cynical asshole protagonist with commitment issues fights with girlfriend after her abortion, punches an old, Mexican fortune teller, and then has to fight a Minotaur? Actually, the story leads with minotaur fight and fills the rest in later. Interesting fusing of realistic relationship story with trippy doom in the land of forgotten gods. ”In a land without a name, his name was Niven, but it was no more important a name than Apollo, or Vishnu, or Baal, for it was not a name that men believed in, only the name of a man who had not believed.� 3 ⭐️
Scartaris, June 28th (note: this story was not part of the original collection, and is included as an untitled stealth track with the story above.) We meet him first in Alabama being lynched for assassinating a KKK goon, and afterwards resurrecting. Next he’s in Beloit in a working man’s bar buying a drink for his little brother who has no big brother, and encouraging him in an unorthodox way. We meet him again on an international flight baiting a pompous minister about gods and what happens to them when their worshippers are gone, and bringing the peace of release to another family. He has encounters in Greece and Zurich, conversing and transforming. He is lonely, because his people and his home are long gone. Poets don’t even write of it, he says, but once he mentioned his home to Plato who penned a couple lines about it. This story unfolds slowly into something quietly magnificent. 4 1/2 ⭐️
Neon: A man in Times Square fears he is going mad because the signs are trying to communicate with him. Something is trying to woo and seduce him through neon signage. A strange tale that didn’t quite work for me. 2 1/2 ⭐️
Basilisk: A soldier is horribly wounded and captured in Vietnam. His captors torture him forcing him to reveal all the information he has. But he is touched by the god of war, who transforms the broken soldier into a weapon � a weapon that not only destroys his sadistic captors, but continues to work on the mindless patriots who see him as a traitor and torment him when he is sent home. Mars is an awesomely wicked god. 3 1/2 ⭐️
The Face of Helene Bournouw: She could make or break the men who desired her with a smile,or a word. She crushed and controlled millionaire industry titans, brilliant artists, highly connected priests by granting or withholding her charms. But who controls Helene Bournouw? (I feel that this story owes a large debt to Fritz Leiber’s tale The Girl with the Hungry Eyes.) Richard Strike the only one of the Broadway columnist with a valid claim to literacy once referred to her as “The most memorable succubus he had ever encountered.� 3 1/2 ⭐️
Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitide 38*54� N, Longitude 78* 00� W: Larry Talbot cannot gain the release of death until he finds his lost soul. His best friend Victor, a brilliant scientist, agrees to assist. With Victor’s expertise and a map obtained from a man named Demeter, Larry seeks for his soul on a (blessedly) moonless inner journey. This story is sadly hypnotic, with fine writing and low-key, clever inclusions of MGM classic monsters. ”That’s not cosmic irony, Larry. That’s slapstick.� 3 1/2 ⭐️
Rock God: This tale was originally published as a comic book story. It begins with a ritual at Stonehenge by the ancient Wessex people to raise the god of rock, Dis, for his once a century manifestation. It tells how the god announced his long sleep, as he created seven rock manifestations of himself around the world, including the Blarney Stone, the Stone of Scone, and the Kaaba, holy Black Stone of Mecca, that contained his essence. The great Soul Mote Dis created finally came to rest in the corner stone of a boondoggle of a NYC skyscraper. And there, Dis stirred. ”Dis was not a god of promise.� ”Above the city the bulk of Dis rose, enormous.� 4 ⭐️
Bleeding Stones: Activated by smog, the gargoyles of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral come to horrifying life and reek vengeful, chaotic slaughter. Ellison was able to present raw and obscene violence as humorous slapstick. ”Come to life after a hundred years is the race that will inherit the Earth...The gargoyle throws back its head and the stone fangs catch the sunlight...The inheritors rise from their crouched position, their shapes black and firm edged against the gray and deadly sky. Then, like the fighting kites of Brazil, they dive into the crowd and begin the ritual slaughter.� 4 ⭐️
Ernest and the Machine God: We start with the manipulative woman who always wins, always gets her way. Then on to a murder, an accident, a weird service station staffed by useless slack jaws, an idiot savant youth with mechanical magic, and a seduction that angers the gods. A bunch of elements clanging about in this story, and it feels like some of them are just extra parts that don’t fit. It reads as a better story than it actually is. ”God is mad. The god of music is mad. The time god is punctual, but he is mad. And the machine god is mad. He has made the bomb and the pill, and the missile, and the acid, and the electric chair and the laser and embalming fluid in his own image.� 3 ⭐️
Delusions for a Dragon Slayer: A kind of Walter Mitty afterlife tale. A nonentity drudge of a man is killed in a ridiculous urban freak accident, and immediately wakens as a bronzed warrior hero in an afterlife something like a John Norman Gor novel, the afterlife created by his dreams. But can he prove himself worthy of those dreams? ”This was reality, and only reality for a man whose existence had been, not quite bad, merely insufficient, tenable, but hardly enriching. For a man who had lived a life of not quite enough this was all there ever could be of goodness and brilliance and light.� 3 ⭐️
Corpse: A second rate professor, a mediocrity, a bore, a religious man (as he mentions repeatedly)as a goof at an intolerable dinner party devised a theory of automobiles with sentience, society, and a grudge. He comes to find his fickle fancy more potent than he could imagine. 3 ⭐️
Shattered Like a Glass Goblin: Lovecraftian horror story or a screed against the excesses of the youth drug culture, this is a horrific tale. Rudy was discharged from the army and came to reclaim his former fiancée from the Hill � a house full of druggie, free love, freeloading kids. But the Hill claimed Rudy. When the full horror show is revealed, Ellison played on the ambiguity of whether what Rudy is experiencing is traditional horror or the hallucinations of a really bad trip, with the uncertainty amplifying the horror. 4 ⭐️
Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes: A Vegas looser at the end of his rope puts his last silver dollar in an antique slot machine. The machine is possessed by a dead prostitute, and pays off for him, beyond all possible odds, over, and over. But the uncanny blue eyes that he keeps seeing come up trouble him, and she haunts his dreams. And he forgot to ask, what’s in it for her? ”If there’s a buck in it there’s rhythm and the onomatopoeia is Maggie Maggie Maggie.� 4 ⭐️
Paingod: The god of pain throughout all the worlds becomes curious about his work, and he incarnates to learn what pain does to creatures. The story reads as if it’s trying to impart a profound truth, yet it’s message is commonplace to anyone who managed to survive to midlife. It struck me as more maudlin than profound. 3 ⭐️
At the Mouse Circus: A clever tale, loaded with cultural references, of a man enticed from childhood to chase the American Dream and finding only a surreal Nightmare. 3 1/2 ⭐️
The Place With No Name: So, there’s this junky pimp who commits a murder, then makes a deal with some floating gnome man to escape, and finds his consciousness merged with Harry Timmons, an obsessed and feverish jungle explorer searching for the forbidden Place with No Name. And, oh yeah, there’s Prometheus, chained there. Ellison questions the nature of identity. And justice. And mercy. He really makes you work for it. Is it worth it? 2 1/2 ⭐️
Deathbird: A story predicated on the Gnostic idea of God as Demiurge, malevolent and mad. Our hero is tasked with releasing the beloved from the misery of existence � first a loved dog companion, later his dying mother, and finally the Earth itself. There are also tests administered throughout. Clever. Poignant. Powerful. The snake was the good guy, and since God wrote the PR release, old Snake simply got a lot of bad press. ”I know,� he said. And she died. And he cried. And that was the extent of the poetry in it. 5 ⭐️
The Doom That Came to Sarnath is the companion volume to The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Together these volumes collect Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle talThe Doom That Came to Sarnath is the companion volume to The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Together these volumes collect Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle tales. These are older stories, prose poems, many actually inspired by Lovecraft’s dreams, and several bearing the stamp of Lord Dunsany’s influence. Some of Lovecraft’s significant, recurring characters first appear in these stories, including Nyarlathotep and Abdul Alhazred, the Mad Arab.
Filling out the Dream Cycle tales are some Lovecraft curiosities including a SciFi story set on the planet Venus and a tale Lovecraft ghostwrote for Harry Houdini.
The Other Gods: In his pride, Barzai the Wise scaled the mountain Hatheg-Kla to gaze upon the long absent gods of earth, believing himself their equal. He did not count on finding the Other Gods. ”The Other Gods! The Other Gods! The gods of the outer hells that guard the evil gods of Earth! Look away! Go back! Do not see! Do not see! The vengeance of the infinite abysses!� 4 ⭐️
The Tree: An atmospheric period piece of Ancient Greece, short and slight. An unnatural olive tree, growing from the tomb of a dead sculptor, becomes the doom of another sculptor, his old friend. ”Amidst such stupendous ruin only chaos dwelt.� 2 1/2 ⭐️
The Doom That Came To Sarnath: A story obviously influenced by Lord Dunsany. An interesting, personal observation about this tale � Lovecraft writes that Doom was proclaimed on Sarnath after it destroyed Ib and made off with their idol of Bakrag, and indeed, it seems that doom was terrifyingly performed on the thousandth anniversary of Ib’s destruction. But in between Sarnath prospered and ruled for a thousand years, which certainly seems to take the edge off of Bakrag’s long delayed revenge. ”Thus of the very ancient city of Ib was nothing spared save the sea-green stone idol chiseled in the likeness of Bokrug, the water lizard. This the young warriors took back with them to Sarnath as a symbol of conquest over the Old Gods and beings of Ib. But on the night after it was set up in the temple a terrible thing must have happened. For weird lights were seen over the lake, and in the morning the people found the idol gone, and the high priest, Taran-Ish, lying dead as from some fear unspeakable. And before he died, Taran-Ish had scrolled upon the alter of chrysolite with coarse, shaky strokes the sign of Doom.� ”And a thousand years of riches and delight passed over Sarnath, the wonder of the world, and pride of all mankind.� 2 1/2 ⭐️
The Tomb: Jervas Dudley, the original goth kid, develops an unhealthy obsession with the Hyde family tomb and nearby abandoned, burned mansion � an obsession leading to madness or worse. ”I had sworn to the hundred gods of the grove that at any cost I would someday force an entrance to the black, chilly depths that seemed calling out to me.� ”Henceforward, I haunted the tomb each night, seeing, hearing, and doing things I must never reveal.� 4 ⭐️
Polaris: In this short, early work (1918) the narrator can’t distinguish his dreams from reality, as he dreams of a city under siege and his failure to protect it. ”But still the pole star leers down from the same place in the black vault, winking hideously like an insane, watching eye, which strives to convey some strange message, yet recalls nothing, save that it once had a message to convey.� 2 1/2 ⭐️
Beyond the Walls of Sleep: A fascinating story idea, but the execution of that idea failed to capture me. An unnamed intern in a mental hospital secretly experiments with a criminally insane patient, a mad, hillbilly murderer, to prove that his dreams exists in a wholly separate realm where he is a being of light. ”From my experience I cannot doubt but that man, when lost to terrestrial consciousness, is indeed sojourning in another and incorporeal life, a far different nature from the life we know, and of which only the slightest and most indistinct memories linger after waking.� 3 ⭐️
Memory: Asked the genie to the daemon, beside the River Than, “who raised the stones of this ruin?� Said the daemon (called Memory) to the genie, “Only because it rhymes with the river do I remember � it was man.� A short short, really just a quick word landscape. ”Rank is the herbage on each slope where evil vines and creeping plants crawl amidst the stones of ruined palaces, twining tightly about broken columns and strange monoliths, and heaving up marble pavements laid by forgotten hands.� 2 1/2 ⭐️
What the Moon Brings: A prose poem fragment, taken from a dream. Disturbingly creepy. ”I hate the moon, I am afraid of it. For when it shines on certain scenes familiar and loved it sometimes makes them unfamiliar and hideous.� ”The waters had ebbed very low showing much of the vast reef whose rim I had seen before. And when I saw that the reef was but the black, basalt crown of a shocking icon whose monstrous forehead now shown in the dim moonlight, and whose vile hooves must paw the hellish ooze miles below, I shrieked and shrieked, lest the hidden face rise above the waters, and lest the hidden eyes look at me after the slinking away of that learning and treacherous yellow moon.� 4 ⭐️
Nyarlathotep: In this prose poem Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, is a kind of avatar of the alien Other Gods, a harbinger of doom that is fast approaching mankind and all their works. He holds the masses fascinated with his dark power as he travels from city to city, despite, or perhaps because of the terror and confusion which his unholy presence spreads. ”He…gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude. Men advised one another to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered, and where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished.� 5 ⭐️
Ex Oblivione: A prose poem perhaps inspired by Lovecraft’s reading of Arthur Schopenhauer, expressing a longing for oblivion as superior to existence. ”As the gate swung wider and the sorcery of the drug and dream pushed me through I knew that all sights and glories were at an end. For in that new realm was neither land nor sea, but only the white void of unpeopled and inlimitable space. So happier than I had ever dared hoped to be, I dissolved again into that native infinity of crystal oblivion from which the demon life had called me for one brief and desolate hour.� 3 ⭐️
The Cats of Ulthar: The dark and mysterious tale of how it came that Ulthar passed its law that no one may kill a cat. ”For the cat is cryptic, and close to strange things which men cannot see. He is the soul of antique Egypt, and the bearer of tale from forgotten cities. He is the kin of the jungles lords, and heir to the secrets of hoary and sinister Africa. The Sphinx is his cousin, and he speaks her language, but he is more ancient than the Sphinx, and remembers that which she has forgotten.� 4 ⭐️
Hypnos: A sculptor, dedicated to “art, philosophy, and madness,� explores, together with his mysterious friend, indescribable worlds and unutterable knowledge through strange drugs and dreams travel, with grandiose ideas of total domination. They penetrate too deeply into these realms to their peril, and come to shun sleep and dream as something deadly. But sleep will come, and with it dissolution. 4 ⭐️
Nathicana: Lovecraft, referring to this prose poem in a letter to a friend, saying it was “a parody on those stylistic excesses which really have no basic meaning.� ”But vortex on vortex of madness beclouded my laboring vision, my damnable, reddening vision that built a new world for my seeing, a new world of redness and darkness, a horrible coma called living.� 2 ⭐️
From Beyond: An ominous mad scientist story. When the protagonist’s friend makes a machine that eliminates the barriers between worlds, the consequences are catastrophic. ”Remember, we’re dealing with a hideous world in which we are practically helpless. Keep still!� ”Indescribable shapes, both alive and otherwise, were mixed in disgusting disarray, and close to every known thing were whole worlds of alien, unknown entities.� ”You see them! You see them! You see the things that float and flop about you and through you every moment of your life!� ”My pets are not pretty, for they come out of places where aesthetic standards are very different.� 3 ⭐️
The Festival: An atmospheric tale of an ancient unclean and unholy festival secretly observed in underground vaults in quaint New England. ”It was the Yuletide that men call Christmas, though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind.� 3 1/2 ⭐️
The Nameless City: In this early tale (1921) the nameless narrator discovers an ancient buried city in the Arabian Peninsula, a city older than mankind, built by a reptile race. This is considered the first of Lovecraft’s mythos stories, and contains the first mention of Abdul Alhazred, the Mad Arab. ”Afar I saw it, protruding uncannily above the sands as parts of a corpse may protrude from an ill-made grave. Fear spoke from the age-worn stones of this hoary survivor of the deluge, this great grandmother of the eldest pyramid, and a viewless aura repelled me and bade me retreat from antique and sinister secrets that no man should see, and no man else had dared to see.� ”There is no legend so old as to give it a name, or to recall that it was ever alive, but it is told of in whispers around campfires and muttered about by granddams in the tents of sheiks so that all the tribes shun it without wholly knowing why.� ”That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange eons even Death may die.� 3 1/2 ⭐️
The Quest of Iranon: Iranon sings and dances in the dire city of Teloth (which values only toil and scoffs at song), singing of his lost city of Aira, a beautiful place where he had been Prince. Driven out of harsh Teloth, he quests in vain for Aira, remaining ever young as his companions age and die. Then one day his wandering brings him to startling knowledge of himself and his lost city. ”That night something of youth and beauty died in the elder world.� 4 ⭐️
The Crawling Chaos: A collaboration with Winifred V. Jackson (Lovecraft wrote the story but the idea originated in her dream) this tale describes an opium induced dream/nightmare that swings wildly between ethereal bliss and apocalyptic destruction. 4 ⭐️
The Walls of Eryx: (written with Kenneth J. Sterling) A SciFi story of Earth prospectors who mine the planet Venus for crystals that produce electrical power. A native race of lizard men revere the crystals and hinder the mining effort. 2 1/2 ⭐️
Imprisoned with the Pharaohs: This was a commissioned story, ghostwritten for Harry Houdini. A stage magician’s travels to Africa and is kidnapped by an Arab tour guide after a midnight fist fight on top of a pyramid, is bound and imprisoned, and effects a unique escape from an unholy nightmare. ”Then the dream faces took on human resemblances, and I saw my guide in the robes of a king with the sneer of the sphinx on his features…It was of these, of Khafre and his consort and his strange armies of the hybrid dead that I dreamed.� 2 ⭐️...more
Night’s Black Agents was Fritz Leiber’s first published book (1947), and it was an impressive debut. Its original publisher was Arkham House, appropriNight’s Black Agents was Fritz Leiber’s first published book (1947), and it was an impressive debut. Its original publisher was Arkham House, appropriate, as several of these tales show a distinctive Lovecraftian influence (though in service to Leiber’s own clear style). Leiber excelled at bringing weird, Cosmic Horror into the gritty urban landscapes of mid century, post war America. Most of the tales in this collection are of that ilk, but also included are two early sword and sorcery tales of Leiber’s heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.
I’ve posted this review under the 1977 Sphere Books edition, the edition I read my first two times through it. The cover art (monster tentacles emerging from a street grate) nicely illustrates the tone of the majority of these tales. But this time through I read the 1978 Berkley Books edition (with Fafhrd and Gray Mouser cover art). It contains two additional tales not in any of the earlier editions, and you definitely want these extra stories, so be cognizant of which edition you pick up.
The Sunken Lands: An excellent Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser tale. As the hero companions sail a sloop across sea, Fafhrd is drawn into a chain of mysterious events that find him with a ship of Northmen, then delving into the towers of ancient Simorgya, a sunken land mysteriously re-emerged from the depths. Good exciting adventure with a decidedly creepy, Lovecraftian edge. 5 ⭐️
Adept’s Gambit: In this novella length tale, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are cursed —when they try to be intimate, their paramours turn into either a huge sow or a slimy snail. Their complex quest to lift the curse leads them first to the Gossiper of the Gods, Ningauble, then through many lands to collect necessary items, and finally to an accursed lost city and a mist wreathed castle to battle a strange, hermaphrodite-like adept. Humor, adventure, and eldritch magic mingle in this tale but it is much too long. ”Material related to them has, on the whole, been scanted by annalists, since they were heroes too disreputable for classic myth, too cryptically independent ever to let themselves be tied to a folk, too shifty and improbable in their adventuring to please the historians, too often involved with a riff-raft of dubious demons, unfrocked sorcerers, and discredited deities � a veritable underworld of the supernatural.� 3 1/2 ⭐️
The Man Who Never Grew Young: A truly odd tale about time running backwards. It presents an uncanny, disconcerting description of the life cycle running backwards, beginning with disinterment from the grave, then aging backwards from sickly old age to youth. Civilizations role backwards and disappear in their beginnings. Eventually the pyramids come down, block by block, and mankind retreats completely from civilization. The story hints that a final, catastrophic war may have set the reverse time in motion. This one is haunting. 3 1/2 ⭐️
Smoke Ghost: A brilliant, terrifying capturing of the grimy ghost of the benighted 20th century. ”Unconsciously it came to symbolize� certain disagreeable aspects of the frustrated, frightened century in which he lived, the jangled century of hate and heavy industry and total war.� ”Have you ever thought what a ghost of our times would look like?…A smoky composite face with the hungry anxiety of the unemployed, the jerky tension of the high-pressured metropolitan worker, the uneasy resentment of the striker, the callous opportunism of the scab, the aggressive whine of the panhandler, the inhibited terror of the bombed civilian, and a thousand other twisted emotional patterns.� 5 ⭐️
The Automatic Pistol: A chilling little tale about small time gin runners (Inky, Glasses, No Nose), obsession, murder, revenge, and a haunted gun. 4 ⭐️
The Inheritance: A claustrophobic urban tale of a man alone and lonely in a strange city, staying in the rented room of his recently deceased uncle, a retired policeman he had never met. After discover some clippings about some gruesome, unsolved murders, he has an uneasy sleep full of ominous nightmares triggered by what he found in his uncle’s room. 3 ⭐️
The Hill and the Hole: A surveyor finds a troubling anomaly when his instruments indicate a pit where his eyes show him a hill. He’s determined that there’s a problem with his instrument, despite being warned against danger at that spot, and discovering that a previous surveyor had mysteriously died there. Classic tale of a man of science rejecting alternative possibilities to his detriment. Shades of M.R. James. 3 ⭐️
The Dreams of Albert Moreland: This is the story that sticks with me from my first reading of this book over thirty years ago. It has elements of Leiber’s alienated in the city motif, combined with distinct Lovecraftian elements. On the eve of World War II, an unambitious chess genius who ekes out a living playing chess in an arcade spends his nights in disturbing dreams of playing a far more complex game with disturbing, alien pieces, in a vast and distant place, and with Cosmos shattering stakes. The game continues in his dreams, night after night, and he is beginning to fear he is losing. 5 ⭐️
The Hound: Leiber’s cityscapes are bleak, grimy, and alienating. His mid twentieth century urban werewolf is a unique, terrifying beast that personifies his unforgiving urban environment. ”The supernatural beings of a modern city? Sure, they’d be different from the ghosts of yesterday. Each culture creates its own ghosts. The Middle Ages built cathedrals and pretty soon there were little gray shapes gliding around at night to talk with the gargoyles. Same thing ought to happen to us, with our skyscrapers and factories…Our culture suddenly spawns a horde of demons…They’re unique. They fit in. You wouldn’t find the same kind any other time or place.� 3 1/2 ⭐️
Diary in the Snow: A would be writer isolates himself in a friend’s remote mountain cabin to work on his book of SciFi horror. But as blizzards isolate him even further, strange lights, markings in the snow and frost, and disturbing dreams and sleepwalkings begin to blend eerily with his bursts of inspiration in creating the cold, cosmic monsters of the story he’s working on. 3 1/2 ⭐️
The Girl with the Hungry Eyes: A chilling tale, told by a photographer, about America’s advertising It Girl and the dark secret behind her hungry eyes. ”But the Girl isn’t like any of the others. She’s unnatural. She’s morbid. She’s unholy. Oh it’s 1948, is it, and the sort of thing I’m hinting at went out with witchcraft? But you see I’m not altogether sure myself what I’m hinting at, beyond a certain point. There are vampires and vampires, and not all of them suck blood.� 4 ⭐️
A Bit of the Dark World: Friends spending a weekend in a cliff side cabin outside of LA first lament the absence of the supernatural in the modern world, then ponder its possibilities, and finally encounter its as terrifyingly ineffable. Cosmic horror at its finest. ”Then the mood darkened and the beings fell apart into a trillion trillion trillion lonely motes locked off forever from each other, sending only bleak meaninglessness in the cosmos around them, their eyes fixed foreword only on universal death. Simultaneously each dimensional star seemed to become for me the vast sun it was, beating incandescently on the platform where my body stood and on the house behind it and being led in it and on my body too, aging them all to dust in one coruscatingly blinding instant.� 4 1/2 ⭐️...more
The cover captured me. I was 12 or 13 when I came across Sir MacHinery in a used bookstore, and I was intrigued by the eclectic team of characters on The cover captured me. I was 12 or 13 when I came across Sir MacHinery in a used bookstore, and I was intrigued by the eclectic team of characters on that cover. A couple of kilted Scotsmen, one in a constable’s hat and the other toting a machine gun flanked the group, with witch, wizard, and some guy who looked like Gabe Kaplan from Welcome Back Kotter in the middle, being led by a small robot, a brownie, and a cat! Man, I had to read it!
Yeah, it wasn’t exactly Tolkien, but it was simple, fast moving YA fantasy. The Gabe Kaplan dude was an American scientist, Simon Smith, who had come to a remote Scottish castle to finish making his cutting edge robot. (Said castle had no electricity! I missed that plot fail as a kid.) No sooner does he finish his robot than a couple of brownies, mistaking it for a small knight, recruit it to fight an ancient evil. Somehow Merlin pops in, and team science plus magic is off to save the world!
No one will ever add this book to any 100 Best Fantasies list, but as a middle schooler I loved it. It had great atmosphere, a simple plot, and that fascinatingly incongruous crowd of characters. I mean, robots and Merlin, and Scotsmen, oh my! It still makes me smile. ...more
Seanan McGuire is endlessly inventive in finding more ways for kids to be outsiders, and for adults to fail them. This time out the kid is Nadya, bornSeanan McGuire is endlessly inventive in finding more ways for kids to be outsiders, and for adults to fail them. This time out the kid is Nadya, born with one arm to a single mother who abandoned her at birth, raised in a Russian orphanage, and adopted by a clueless American couple acting out some kind of virtue play rescue fantasy rather than truly committed to her welfare. She is pragmatic, surprisingly well adjusted despite the harsh circumstances of her life, and for me, the best feature of this book.
The world Nadya goes to once she falls through her door is interesting and creative, with its breathable water, giant talking turtles, huge, fearsome, carnivorous frogs, and near utopian culture, but I found Nadya’s story there only mildly interesting and a bit bland, compared to what I’ve come to expect from this series.
Fans of the Wayward Children series will definitely want to read Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear, but it would surprise me if this book ends up being anyone’s favorite....more
It was a while ago, in the days when they used to tell stories about creatures called the Selkie Folk.
Robbie Henderson, the protagonist of this excitiIt was a while ago, in the days when they used to tell stories about creatures called the Selkie Folk.
Robbie Henderson, the protagonist of this exciting YA novel is 12 years old � the same age I was when I first read A Stranger Came Ashore. The combination of uncanny foreboding, unfamiliar folklore, and adventure entranced me then, and it’s memory has stuck with me all these years. I passed the book on to my son when he was around 12, and he loved it. And here I am, old enough to be Robbie’s Old Da, reading it again and finding it is still an excellent tale.
Mollie Hunter weaved an enthralling tale of a mysterious stranger who came ashore one of the Shetland Islands during a storm that foundered a ship. Robbie’s family and the rest of the islanders assumed him the sole survivor of the wreck, but Robbie and his wise Old Da suspect that he is more than what he seems, and fear that he may be a serious danger.
Hunter here combined the folklore of the Shetlands and Scotland, with a focus on the Selkie Folk (a sort of wereseal) with a surprisingly detailed description of Shetland life and customs. She folded this all into her exciting tale of young Robbie’s quest to save his sister from the fate the uncanny stranger would bring her. With the knowledge given him by his Old Da, and the help of a sinister school master, Robbie must challenge the power of the Great Selkie himself. The tale comes to its thrilling climax on the celebration of Up Helly Aa, backlit by the eerie Northern Lights � the Merry Dancers. ...more
”Stories are weapons, you see. All stories. Some are swords and some are cudgels, but all of them can hurt you, if you allow it…All stories are weapon”Stories are weapons, you see. All stories. Some are swords and some are cudgels, but all of them can hurt you, if you allow it…All stories are weapons, and children’s stories are doubly so, for children have not yet learned how to be careful.�
Seanan McGuire writes fictions dark and dangerous. That she writes them for children doubles the danger and deepens the darkness. She writes in the tradition of those original fairy tales � the ones where kids fully encounter wonders both deadly and delightful, not the safe, Disenyfied amusements for cherished innocents. McGuire’s Wayward Children series is filled with multiple wondrous worlds waiting for children who need to find them, but she constantly reminds us that not all wonders are safe.
Juice Like Wounds is a Lundy story, within the Goblin Market world where her door led her in In an Absent Dream. Lundy with her friends Moon and Mockery set off into the forest on a quest. Three go in, but only two return to the Market. That you know from the start. The magic and the horror unfolds from there.
This short story isn’t the door you should use to enter McGuire’s Wayward Children series. For that, read Every Heart a Doorway, then read the prequel In an Absent Dream to discover the Goblin Market. And then, if you dare, you can follow these remarkable children’s ill-advised quest after pomegranates and monsters....more
A delightfully charming story on the magic of books and the power of libraries. Meigan artistically customized her little free library kit, stocked itA delightfully charming story on the magic of books and the power of libraries. Meigan artistically customized her little free library kit, stocked it with her used books, and waited to see what would happen. Soon, she was corresponding with a mystery borrower who left odd gifts and notes in exchange for books. What she first assumed to be an artist playing games with her turned out to be far more surprising and fantastical.
You can read this story in just a couple of minutes, and its reward will far exceed your effort....more
In this novella Lovecraft successfully set about capturing the unreality of dreaming. Less horrific and more trippy than most of his other material, (In this novella Lovecraft successfully set about capturing the unreality of dreaming. Less horrific and more trippy than most of his other material, (though it contains many tendrils that reach into his horror mythos) The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath doesn’t so much have a plot as it does a palpable feeling. Here, Lovecraft’s infamous purple prose actually adds to the tale rather than distracting from it. As I listened to it on audiobook, I fell under the spell of the music of his relentless barrage of baroque prosody. Somehow it seemed oh so familiar. With a start, I realized that listening to it felt very much like listening to a cosmic Dr. Seuss! Once thought, I couldn’t unthink it. So here, for your consideration, is �
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (as written by Dr. Seuss)
In Upper Dreamland where the fetid fungi grows And the voonith howl On the blasphemous plateaus, Where weird eyed Zoogs ferment their curious wine And the Cats of Uthar purr (in three quarters time!) Came a doomed and desperate dreamer � Randolph Carter, they say He was off to see strange place, Yes, he was off and away!
He walked up and down steep steps ‘neath the fabled Peaks of Throk Where the gibbering ghouls romp, and the red-footed Whomps cavort. He prowled labyrinthine caves and the unhallowed vaults of Zin, He braved the Outermost Abyss (And that’s just where he began!)
As a daemon trumpet blew its hideous, tinny blast And the heedless Great Ones howled and the heedless Great Ones danced, While the nightgaunts sailed through the Elder Dark and the toadlike moonbeasts threatened to eat his very heart,
Carter rode the monstrous Shantak O’er the gilded spires of Thran In search of Unknown Kadath (Which he dreamed and dreamed again) He prayed to the hidden gods of Dreaming, Even as he slept, Yet always was he haunted by that crawling chaos, Nyarlathotep!...more
”It seemed to him wholly unsatisfactory, and yet very lovely � the only really beautiful picture in the world.�
Leaf by Niggle is a short, melancholy a”It seemed to him wholly unsatisfactory, and yet very lovely � the only really beautiful picture in the world.�
Leaf by Niggle is a short, melancholy allegory. Both tone and subject are utterly unlike Tolkien’s more familiar, high fantasy works. It’s the story of a little man, Niggle, whose vision far exceeded his limited talent. His passion to work on his personal masterpiece was frustratingly, continually interrupted by his obligations. And when his time to make that unpleasant journey we all eventually have to make came, he was utterly unprepared for it, and his project was left incomplete. What follows is a bureaucratic purgatory, a time of refreshing redemption, and an appreciation of both the unrealized vision and the small but fine work left behind.
I originally discovered this story in my first burst of seeking out all things Tolkien after reading The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in the late �70s. It was collected in The Tolkien Reader, a collection of Tolkien’s odds and ends � poems, short stories, essays, and nonsense songs. Leaf by Niggle impressed me far and above anything else in that collection, at least in part because it was so unlike his other work. It is poignant and melancholy, almost haunting, and shows more clearly than his other work his strong, Catholic influence....more
”Never tackle postmortems before breakfast…that’s what I always say.�
The above line is Jamie Delano’s, from the first section of this collection. It c”Never tackle postmortems before breakfast…that’s what I always say.�
The above line is Jamie Delano’s, from the first section of this collection. It collects his final Hellblazer stories, and it’s easy to imagine him wanting no postmortems on them. The artwork ranges from boring/barely serviceable to hideous/barely intelligible. And the stories range from meh to cringe. Constantine is portrayed as not just beaten down, but weak, pathetic, a whiner wallowing in self pity. There is almost nothing of the brash con man magician in these tales, which begs the question, why read them? There are some revelations about his birth, childhood, and early life, but they suffer from being use to explain this pathetic excuse for Constantine. This opening section (which fills more than half the collection) rates only two stars.
”I laugh in the face of the Devil, when all the other people can do is succumb�
But then we get to what we came here for � what they named the collection for � Garth Ennis’s brilliant debut Hellblazer tale, Dangerous Habits. Ennis went big, went bold. His Constantine is in even worse shape than the final iteration Delano served up, but without having his cocky spark extinguished by his despair. Constantine is dying in a most mundane and terrible way � stage four terminal lung cancer. If that’s not enough, he’s tricked and humiliated the Devil who is salivating to give him personal attention when he arrives in Hell. Oh, and Heaven ain’t an option, and there’s no one left to help, and no debts he can call in. And backed into that impossible and bleak corner, Constantine does what Constantine does, with ”no sympathy for the Devil.�
I would have preferred to read Ennis’s Dangerous Habits by itself, without Delano’s stories tacked on to the beginning. The difference in both tone and energy between them is startling. Even the artwork in Dangerous Habits is superior to the earlier stuff. While there is a bit of continuity between Delano’s final, weak stories and Ennis’s tale, you won’t really lose much of anything if you just skip over them and go directly to Dangerous Habits. The four stars I gave this collection is based completely on the Ennis material. The remainder is dreck.
There was a long wait for book five of The Stuff of Legend. After the first four books came out every year between 2010 and 2013, A Call to Arms, BookThere was a long wait for book five of The Stuff of Legend. After the first four books came out every year between 2010 and 2013, A Call to Arms, Book 5 didn’t come out until 2020. But finally this twisted, dark Toy Land story with its striking, sepia toned artwork resumed, and it continues to impress.
More is revealed here about the origins of the Boogeyman and his relationship to the boy. There are more tragic losses and ever more agonizing betrayals. The Boogeyman’s powers continue to expand making him seem unassailable, and the boy remains in his clutches. But now, in this penultimate story, forces gather for the final battle � the huge army of lost toys who fight for the Boogeyman against the loyal remnant who will fight for the boy.
As I write this review, Book Six, the final chapter of The Stuff of Legend remains unpublished. I anxiously await it. ...more
Seanan McGuire continues to deepen the vistas of her brilliantly creative Wayward Children series in this, her ninth book. She adds depth to familiar Seanan McGuire continues to deepen the vistas of her brilliantly creative Wayward Children series in this, her ninth book. She adds depth to familiar characters through details of their backstories, and fills out her world building by explaining much more about the Doors that act as portals to magical worlds for the wayward kids.
As always, McGuire is doing a lot of work with her story. She spins an exciting fantasy adventure which does double-duty as a cautionary morality tale about the neglect and abuse of vulnerable children. (In Mislaid In Parts Half-Known she blends these flawlessly, though that isn’t the case in all of the books.) And of course, the biggest hook for this YA series is its theme of misfit kids � outsiders and oddballs � who discover (and then sometimes lose) places where they belong and are accepted, where their own quirks and interests are just what is demanded, and through that discover their own value.
Nine books in it feels like McGuire has achieve a sustainable stride that just keeps getting better. Her series remains on the dark side of the YA market, and is quite frank about sexuality and gender issue, and doesn’t shrink from showing the harm that has been done to kids who are her characters, so be advise that these books are on the mature end of YA lit. ...more
The Sandman: Act III continues the excellent audiobook adaptation of the Sandman graphic novel cycle. It covers volume 7, Brief Lives, and volume 8, WThe Sandman: Act III continues the excellent audiobook adaptation of the Sandman graphic novel cycle. It covers volume 7, Brief Lives, and volume 8, Worlds� End. Any fans of the graphic novels will appreciate this dramatic production. The voice actors are excellently cast, production values are high, and Gaiman himself provides the narration. ...more
Always read the one star reviews first. They often tell you more about a book than the five star ones. A well articulated one star review (as opposed Always read the one star reviews first. They often tell you more about a book than the five star ones. A well articulated one star review (as opposed to the “this sucks!� variety) is usually information rich. This rule holds true for Monstrous Regiment. I liked the top couple one star reviews for this book. I thought they made good points. I still gave Monstrous Regiment five stars.
This is a one shot Disc World book. Sam Vines appears, but only in a supporting role, not much more than a cameo. So Monstrous Regiment has the handicap of being a Disc World orphan. And it is predictable. From page one. It goes on longish, seemingly having at least a couple more twists than such a predictable book needs. And yes, it’s Grrl Power theme didn’t manage any serious blow against sexism, as the book’s satire spiraled into farce.
Yet Monstrous Regiment still worked for me. Polly, the first person narrator, is perfectly drawn. Her combined confidence and confusion, bravado and self doubt, skepticism and hope made her a brilliantly fleshed out, three dimensional character, and I adored her narrative voice. Sergeant Jackrum was a great side character, worthy of being a Disc World regular. Even Lieutenant Blouse, the mostly clueless “Rupert� (officer) is more than a simple joke, has satisfying depth, and adds to the tale.
Pratchett skewered many of his usual suspects in Monstrous Regiment. Nationalism/Patriotism, religious fundamentalism, sexism and the patriarchy all take their licks from Pratchett’s satirical pen. At first glance, the edge of his satire appears to dull as progressively revealed secret identities transform satire into farce. Yet even here, I think Pratchett stayed two step ahead of the rest of us. Despite our best intentions and efforts, many of these worst abuses continue to survive, leaving us, in the end, either dying of bitterness or laughing at the farce. Pratchett’s darkly honest humor encourages us to do the latter. ...more
I was underwhelmed with this collection. It was, at least in part, a matter of timing. Instead of reading it when it first came out, when I would haveI was underwhelmed with this collection. It was, at least in part, a matter of timing. Instead of reading it when it first came out, when I would have been eager for brand new Sandman stories, I read it immediately after rereading the entire ten volume Sandman cycle and its excellent prequel. It suffers by comparison.
Death and Venice (Death’s tale) was both brooding and charming, with pleasant, accessible art by P. Craig Russell that nicely matched the story. 4 stars
Milo Manara, creator of brilliantly erotic illustrations, appropriately did the art for Desire’s story, What I’ve tasted of Desire. Loved the sexy artwork, and it was my favorite of these tales. 5 stars
Dream’s tale, The Heart of a Star, is a story from the dawn of Everything, with interesting correspondence with the story in Sandman Overture. The art, by Miguelanxo Prado wasn’t bad, but wasn’t my taste either. 3 stars
Fifteen Portraits of Despair was a mess. The art, by Barry Storey was hideous, (appropriate, I guess, for Despair’s story) and the design, by Dave McKean was so close to unreadable that I skipped this tale. 1 star
Going Inside, Delirium’s tale, was marginally more readable than Despair’s chapter, but I still find Delirium the most tedious of the Endless. The game just isn’t worth the candle, trying to read through Gaiman’s attempt at creating a tale about madness � too much work for too little payoff. Bill Sienkiewicz’s art, at least, is interesting. 2 stars
Destruction gets a story, even though he’s abandoned his post. On The Peninsula is an intriguing idea, told well, with straightforward art by Glenn Fabry that enhances the story. Delirium appears with big brother Destruction in this story, and illustrates once again that she works best as a side character rather than a focus. 4 stars
Speaking of side characters, how do you craft a story focused on Destiny? I mean, he knows everything, kinda IS everything, so where do you get a story? And that’s the problem with his tale, Endless Nights. As Gertrude Stein would say, “there’s no there there.� The art, by Frank Quitely, was more interesting than the story. 2 stars...more
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