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Cobwebs and Whispers
$36.00
Ships in an Average of 1.0 Mailing Days
Fiction:
Cobwebs
Sleep of the Flower God
The Cathedral at Humberfield
Joseph Warren's Invention
Dearg-Due
Strange Things About Birds
Sharp Medicine
Little Mercy
Hunter of Gulls
Crow Apples
Laben Blois's Death
The Thorn Dance
Ellette
The Collector in the Mill
Dream of Dead Eyes
Widow's Pond
The Apple Track
The Beast on the Plain
Vale of the White Horse
Marcy Waters
The Wreck at Wickhampton
Whispers
Touched with Broken Clouds
The Harvest of War
The Puppet and the Train
A Fine Death for Hubert Hillaby
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ProjectPulp.com Review
I'm stunned. For the first time as a
reviewer, I have no idea where to start. Yes, this collection of
short fiction is that good! No amount of hyperbole, no
erudite scholarly analysis, no words in the English language can
communicate what I felt as I finished Scott Thomas’s Cobwebs and
Whispers--but I am a reviewer, so I must try.
Not since Michael Cisco’s The
Divinity Student have I been so affected by a piece (or pieces) of
fiction. This is clearly one of the best series of stories I have
ever read. Ever. And I have read a lot. Others seem to agree, even
Cisco himself, who lauds the book in the depths of the Terror Talk
message boards. Forewords and Introductions by Jeff VanderMeer and
Michael Pendragon are also full of praise for the book. Ask anyone
who has read it--nary a complaint among them.
Enough, I must speak about the stories.
But my words are meaningless until you pick up the book and read it.
So I will be brief: 26 stories, only 9 of them reprints, from the
haunting and subtle ghost story "Crow Apples" to the utterly shocking
"The Wreck at Wickhampton," Thomas’s smooth, hypnotizing prose cannot
fail to pull you into its needle-toothed maw. The fiction here ranges
from vampire tales to shamanistic terror, from ghost tales that ring
of MR James and Dylan Thomas (all of the stories have a Victorian or
neo-Victorian setting) to surreal tales well outside the realm of
"traditional" horror. Thomas does it all, and he does it with panache.
His ability to create atmosphere, characters with whom the reader can
relate (though separated by a century or more of chronology), and
tight plots in which the beginning is woven with the end without
giving the ending away too soon--all these things combine to whisk the
reader away to an earlier, simpler age, where individuals and whole
societies are naked before the terrors of this world and others beyond
it, free from the cozy insulation of modernity and technology.
My favorites are the bizzare,
phantasmagoric stories that plunge themselves headlong into the
surreal: "Hunter of Gulls," "The Puppet and the Train," "Joseph
Warren’s Invention," (in which the above mentioned technology takes a
critical role--and a horrific role at that!), and the atmospheric
masterpiece "Vale of the White Horse." It is difficult to pick
noteworthy stories out of such a fantastic collection, but other must
reads include (but are surely not limited to) "Cobwebs," "Little Mercy,"
and "A Fine Death for Hubert Hillaby."
That said, there is not a bad story in
the collection. None. Whether you are a quasi-Luddite, a lover of
Victoriana, or just a fan of the horror genre, your money is more than
well spent on this volume--this is more than a book, it is a
collector’s piece, a treasure. Get it quickly, though, only a few
signed copies of this limited edition are left available. The word
is out, and it’s a race to see who can get their hands on this
glittering prize! You miss this one, and I’ll personally send you a
certificate with your name on it--one that has SUCKER written all over
it. Then, when you’re old and gray and finally read this collection,
you’ll know I was right when I said:
If you buy any short fiction
collection in the next year, this must be it!
::Forrest Aguirre::
Have you read this title? Rate it for other customers here.
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