- Hardcover: 115 pages
- Publisher: Subterranean Press; Limited edition (October 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1931081891
- ISBN-13: 978-1931081894
- Product Dimensions: 22.3 x 14.9 x 1.4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 308 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,965,456 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Blaylock and Powers (The William Ashbless Memorial Cookbook) are the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore of fantasy fiction, writers whose characteristic playfulness is a measure of their control of craft and confidence in their materials. This slim three-story collection shows a slightly darker side of their imaginations, but is no less an index to their inventiveness and skill at using unadorned prose and everyday situations to evoke the uncanny. "Through and Through," a solo shot from Powers, is a haunting story of a fallible priest who is shocked to discover that his latest confessor is a troubled ghost to whom he can actually bring salvation. The title tale, by Blaylock, begins as a clever satire on the inherent absurdities of academic multiculturalism, but ends as a exercise in gothic horror centered on a nondenominational school chapel. "Fifty Cents," written collaboratively, is an eerie excursion into Twilight Zone territory, involving a motorist traveling through the southwest whose repeat encounters with two different men along the desert way can only be explained by inscrutable supernatural machinations. At the center of each of these stories are believably rendered characters, familiar in their simple sensibilities and understandably dismayed to discover that the paths they follow in their routine lives have merged imperceptibly with byways to extraordinary experience. Readers who have enjoyed the authors’ excursions into fantasy’s zanier possibilities will find this compilation of daylit dark fantasies a credit to their versatility.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Must for Fans of Powers and Blaylock,
By
This review is from: Devils in the Details (Hardcover)
Blaylock and Powers have been collaborating for thirty years, often implicitly influencing each other and sometimes, like here, collaborating on stories with both their names on them. Fans of either should appreciate the brief account of that collaboration in this book's afterward and introduction and, specifically, the comments on the volume's three stories.As is typical for his shorter work, Powers abandons his characteristic secret histories. In "Through and Through", a weary, lukewarm priest confronts a ghost in the confessional and rethinks the power and significance of Catholic ritual. But, if we don't get an epic combining of magic and history, Powers still works in some interesting thoughts on the Garden of Eden. The modern obsession with inclusivity on college campuses is satirized in Blaylock's "The Devil in the Details". A college president's attempt to build a Christian chapel is thwarted by forces both silly and sinister. I must admit that I appreciated and understood Powers' and Blaylock's collaboration "Fifty Cents" more after reading Blaylock's afterward. But, even on the first reading, the protagonist's quest -- searching in used bookstores for a book once given to him by his dead wife -- and the odd characters he meets in his drive through the desert Southwest, kept me interested. Each story gets its own introductory illustration, and Blaylock's afterword is in the form of an inserted pamphlet. Collectors or fans of either of these authors will want this book not only for the stories but the accounts of a longstanding literary friendship.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review) 7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Must for Fans of Powers and Blaylock,
By Randy Stafford - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Devils in the Details (Hardcover)
Blaylock and Powers have been collaborating for thirty years, often implicitly influencing each other and sometimes, like here, collaborating on stories with both their names on them. Fans of either should appreciate the brief account of that collaboration in this book's afterward and introduction and, specifically, the comments on the volume's three stories.As is typical for his shorter work, Powers abandons his characteristic secret histories. In "Through and Through", a weary, lukewarm priest confronts a ghost in the confessional and rethinks the power and significance of Catholic ritual. But, if we don't get an epic combining of magic and history, Powers still works in some interesting thoughts on the Garden of Eden. The modern obsession with inclusivity on college campuses is satirized in Blaylock's "The Devil in the Details". A college president's attempt to build a Christian chapel is thwarted by forces both silly and sinister. I must admit that I appreciated and understood Powers' and Blaylock's collaboration "Fifty Cents" more after reading Blaylock's afterward. But, even on the first reading, the protagonist's quest -- searching in used bookstores for a book once given to him by his dead wife -- and the odd characters he meets in his drive through the desert Southwest, kept me interested. Each story gets its own introductory illustration, and Blaylock's afterword is in the form of an inserted pamphlet. Collectors or fans of either of these authors will want this book not only for the stories but the accounts of a longstanding literary friendship. |
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