"5 Stars

I love The Crow. It is my favorite movie, comic book, all of that. And I've wanted to read Poppy Z Brite's novel in the The Crow universe for a while now, and it did not disappoint.
The thing I loved the most about this book was the characters. Jared Poe, AKA The Crow, was an excellent version of the character and I had a blast reading about him. Lucrece was also a brilliant character whom I had a wonderful time reading about, and I wanted to know even more about her life! The villain was excellent and all of the side villains were good as well.
The setting of New Orleans worked wonderfully and I felt like I visited the city, even though I've never ever been there.
Also, there's a scene where Clive Barker is namedropped and a character is reading The Great and Secret Show. One of my favorite authors mentioned in a The Crow novel... can it be better?
This was an amazing book that I most likely will reread in the future!
And yes, I read it in one sitting."

"I've never once encountered a sequel or spin-off of The Crow that I didn't hate and wish I could erase from my memory. It was Brite's name that lured me in first, I had owned a couple books by him, but only really knew him through reputation in goth literary circles--the queer circles I was in weren't fans of his, interestingly enough (valid, his work is...polarizing.)

This novel was one of those brilliant and rare cases of a tie-in becoming it's own beast; this trashy, dimly lit, New-Orleans-humid, mess of twisted iron, pleather, and black lace rang like a Gen-Y tribute to O'Barr's original work, but also as it's own nasty, black-nail-polished horror novel. The purple prose and over the top gore can easily come across as juvenile, however the masterful balance of name dropping subculture personalities and artworks was just enough that as a queer goth, I felt immediately at home with Jared and the twins, but not so much that it felt poseur and distracting.

Is it five-stars for literature? Absolutely not. Did this book thoroughly succeed at at what it set out to do, and then some? Yes.

"

"This was fairly ridiculous and, by the author's admission, more commercially driven than it was a labor of love (nothing wrong with that--we all gotta eat). That said, PZB (now Billy Martin) is always entertaining and I have found the creative trajectory of this author/artist to be completely fascinating. This was one of the few of his previous efforts I'd yet to read, so I guess I can now cross it off the bucket list. "