Matthew Revert

After losing on a televised quiz show by giving an incorrect but bizarre answer, Brewster Gilligan's life continues to roll downhill. He doesn't realize it yet, but his wrong answer set in motion a series of powerful events-events that could change the world forever. Will the thoroughly unlikable Brewster be able to save the world? You'll have to read this and see!

I love books that revolve around themes like opening doors to other worlds, ripping through our reality to get the other side, and ancient organizations or cults whose only purpose is to make those doors open right now. THOSE WHO GO FORTH INTO THE EMPTY PLACES OF GODS is none of those, exactly, but it's close. I love this paragraph, from the introduction, talking about artists, (authors, musicians, etc...), getting random glimpses of things:

"I do know, though, that when they reached down into the recesses of their brain buckets to pull an idea up from nothing, that a little of that nothing came back up with the idea. It's worming its way into existence, one story and one song at a time. Pretty soon there will be no nothing left on the other side."

The writing here is seamless and often beautiful. Also, it's concisely descriptive and gory as well. I found at times that scenes were unfurling in my head like a movie. Most especially one scene where all the guardians, (You'll see), strutted into town, (Sheba) like superheroes in a Marvel movie, or better yet, like something out of Tombstone.

Even though Brewster is a pompous jerk I couldn't help but feel for him and what he went through. I wish I could tell you that everything turned out all right. I wish I could tell you that the gate stayed closed and that humanity remained untouched, unharmed. Or maybe I'm lying to you right now, and it did stay closed? I guess you'll just have to read this to find out!

THOSE WHO GO FORTH INTO THE EMPTY PLACE OF GODS was my last read of 2019 and what a way to close out the year! If cosmic horror, or the themes I mentioned above are your cup of tea, then you need to add this book to your 2020 reading schedule.

Highly recommended!

*Available now, here: https://amzn.to/2T347hN

*Thank you to Curtis Lawson and Douglas Rinaldi for the signed, paperback ARC in exchange for my honest feedback. This is it.*… (mais)

(...)

A few final words on those emotions. Human Trees doesn’t seem to be written from a happy perspective. Parental abuse and their little sister dying were formative for the Larson brothers. There’s angst and phobia, and Robert, the main character, hasn’t made peace with the world yet.

There was a lingering emptiness, which Robert absorbed into his character, but life, he would come to learn, was a procession of new emptinesses to explore, absorb and forget.

While I cannot claim to have been happy my entire life, I simply cannot relate with the book’s main atmosphere – which sometimes has something of unfledged rebellion to it. I do not feel life is empty. I do not feel afraid.

That said, I do think Human Trees manages to evoke something of how certain people feel, and again, that is no mean feat – even though Robert suspects “that all empathy is self-absorption.”

A difficult book to market – give it a go, you might like it a lot.

Please read the full review on Weighing A Pig Doesn't Fatten It… (mais)

Matthew Revert's A Million Versions of Right is one of the best collections of bizarro short fiction that I've read. There are only six stories in it, but most of them are fairly long, and all of them were enjoyable.

The book opens with the titular "A Million Versions of Right." This is the story of a young man who discovers that when he ejaculates, he will occasionally release a miniature tiler instead of the expected sperm. The first time this happens he ends up having most of his body covered in tile before being rescued by his father. The whole experience tends to warp his sex life very badly.

The next story is "The Bricolage Scrotum," which is about scrotums. A school principal has hired two local boys to pulp his scrotum in front of his students because he hates scrotums. The boys manage to destroy their own scrotums while practicing. Also there's a scrotum advocacy group that wants to stop the exhibition.

Then We have "The Great Headphone Wank," which is about a man who has a job insulting walls. He is given a pair of headphones that only produce the sounds of masturbation. Weirdness ensues.

"Meeting Max" was the next story, and was one that I though was a bit slow paced, but I still enjoyed it a lot. It's about a guy who lives in the barber district and is obsessed with barbers. A bald guy is going around knocking over comb jars and smashing windows, and our hero tries to track him down Then lots of even weirder stuff happens.

Then come "Power Blink," which is mostly about band-aids.

The final story is "The Bookmark That Wouldn't Work," which is the fictional history of bookmarks, and the story of one woman with reading problems who gets a bookmark that won't work.

I like this collection a lot, and highly recommend it.… (mais)