A Review, The New Death and Others

I'd promised James a review of his book The New Death and others more out of respect for his excellent work at Age of Fable than any love of the type of fiction or of reviewing.

I am glad I did.

Lets start with the layout and structure, its not pretty or heavily illustrated but its small, easy to download on the slowest connection and the use of hypertext is flawless. Its easy to navigate and the font is easy to read and display. This is a fine thing.

I also like the mirthfully creepy cover art which reminds me of Edward Gorey.

The stories and poetry are a wide mix of the strange, homage works to the pulp era and a plethora or weird fiction. Now truthfully this is a genre I tend to avoid as I find it difficult and less than rewarding most of the time.

I'll make an exception here, the quality of writing and elegant brevity of the works makes this a most worthwhile read.

I found myself enjoying them and pretty easily able to get into the flow of the story.

Now like every work it has a few flaws, in particular the E-Book references his no longer extant website near the end and while you can find him elsewhere, this could be annoying, Secondly there is just a hint of a amateur roughness in places. Certainly not enough to discourage me from recommending the work, to the contrary its in general excellent but if you are word nut you'll notice it.

However if this his early work I can't wait to see his later and at 99 cents, you really can't go wrong. Its agreat read

You can get the book a Smashwords here, so go spend the buck, read a few tales, you'll be glad you did.