Category: book review

Review: The Monster Of Elendhaven

Johann the Monster joins up with Florian the Sorcerer in the decaying industrial town of Elendhaven. Wacky hijinks ensue. If by wacky one means murder and lust and revenge and disease. That’s pretty much what I mean. Nicely decadent. Good emphasis on clothes and food; can’t have a decadent fantasy novel without descriptions of food and clothes. The setting is delightfully grimy and cold and smelly. The author made a great choice in setting the story in the Arctic, makes for a striking change of setting. Not many decadent novels have this setting. A very impressive first novel.

If you like: The Paradys stories by Tanith Lee or The Etched City by KJ Bishop.

Another success in the Tor novella line. They’re doing a fantastic job in their choice of publications.

Thanks to Jack Guignol at Tales of the Grotesque and Duneonesque for the recommendation

Person of interest: Lafcadio Hearn

Two articles by authors who I really admire and respect on a topic that sounds very fascinating.

Lafcadio Hearn.

The Many Lives of Lafcadio Hearn
The first is by Andrei Codrescu


Hearn’s ultra-realist exposés were drenched in the wounded sensibility of a writer with a merciless eye who had Greek myths and Celtic fairy tales in his blood.

The second is by Bruce Sterling.


–Hearn was your basic congenital SF saint-perv, but in a nineteenth century environment. Hearn was, in brief, a rootless oddball with severe personality problems and a pronounced gloating taste for the horrific and bizarre.


From SCIENCE FICTION EYE #6 CATSCAN 6 “Shinkansen”

Book Review: Sara by Garth Ennis

Wait… wait… wait…
Patience is the hunter’s greatest virtue. Sara hunts Nazis on the Eastern Front.
Garth Ennis knows how to write a war story and this is one of his best. It opens strong and never lets up. The tension ebbs and flows but never disappears.
The story is not only of Sara on the hunt and killing, but it also shows her life back on the camp, among the other women in her unit. This is a story comprised mainly of women, the men just have walk on roles. Slowly Ennis reveals Sara’s story: why she fights, why she’s losing her faith, why she’s the best.
Epting’s art is very good; clean and clear. Even in the biggest battle sequences, you always know what’s going on, where everybody is.
This is a really good story, one of Ennis’ best. And if it’s an example of the TKO is publishing, then this imprint has a very successful future ahead of it.