His name....is not important!

Who would have known Zartibartflast was a musician, magician and a bastard?

Thanks to steve b*, scion of eeeeevil, I read a short excerpt of the Double D's Hunter's Moon. That, in case you are wondering, is David Devereux's brand new novel, which I mentioned in a post from yesterday.

He's a musician, he's a magician, he's a bastard -- he's John Constantine with a kazoo! Hellboy with a harmonica! Awesome!

Actually, it's kinda sorta [(JC + HB)-(Cool+Demon)]*JB = DD (Feel free to take a stab at the abbreviations. First one to get it gets a prize!)

Great, instead of the arithmetic of desire, I've created the algebra of aversion. And this is just from reading a paragraph.

I tell you, I will nawt (Kentucky accent) pay for that there book (under any circumstances where DD will get money for it). I'll have to wait to find it used or in ceiling-high stacks in some remainder store. Which was where I found copies of Memoirs of an Exorcist, come to think of it. Funny, that.

*Despite being a scion of eeeevil (give or take a few e's) steve b has a great post about Burma on his blog.

***

Don't you just hate it when you get a good idea for a post after you publish it?! I sure do. So I'm editing this one to include some choice quotes from various reviews of Hunter's Moon.

First, backing up the Mary Sue accusation, we have this quote from a review by Richard Larson:

Devereux does little to show that Jack is human, choosing instead to
impress us with Jack's power and his astounding ability to get out of every
situation without even a scratch while those around him fail miserably, and
suffer for it.

In the "Where do I sign up to read this gem?" category, Larson also tells us:

Hunter's Moon ultimately presents an imbalanced conflict between men and
women, introducing us to a hyper-masculine hero who demonizes women,
manipulating them and torturing them and killing them.

...maybe I should have added a (PB - American) to my equation above. (Extra bonus points, folks!)

***

This next part is just funny. Here's the link to a fawning review on Greame's Fantasy Review blog. Why so fawning? Because he "was lucky enough to win a book review competition" and his review is actually included in the book!

Ladies and gentlemen, that is certainly the way to get quality reviews in your book -- run a competition to attract the desperate unpublished! Woot! Tacky Fedora off to you, David. You win publishing.

***

And, sadly -- those are all the reviews I could find.

But I did check his MySpace page and see that he's considering going to Toowoomba, which is in Queensland. 'Scuse me for a moment while I do a brief ritual to keep him out of NSW....