From Publishers Weekly
Judging from his earlier books, this antiquarian book dealer and writer's interests are eclectic, ranging from the English "Uranian" poets to rock music to Aleister sp ok Crowley. All of those concerns can be detected in this, his first novel. The protagonist, Thomas Graves, who has long been fascinated with alchemical texts, is recruited by ALEMBIC, a shadowy British government department dedicated to searching for the philosopher's stone and the endless gold and eternal life it will bring. Compounding the strangeness of his peculiar position are Graves's vulnerable imagination and the influence of the symbolist-sated, sexually jaded, possibly satanic Nicholas Spark, an old friend and the animating spirit of a wildly popular hard-rock band. It's a formula for paranoia, and everything that follows--from the grounding of herons to the sexual preoccupations of Graves's underage lover--becomes tinted with a (perhaps deserved) sinister significance. As in a maze, a few paths rather annoyingly lead nowhere, but d'Arch Smith's anfractuous, often beautiful prose is seductive, whether in comic deadpan descriptions of improbable events or in the gradual, hallucinatory revelation of the truly unnatural.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Tom Graves is not your typical library worker. He translates medieval texts for ALEMBIC, a secret British laboratory aiming to transform dross to gold and flesh to immortality. He is also an old school chum of the brooding Nick Spark, leader of Celestial Praylin, a wildly popular occult-oriented band. While vacationing at Spark's estate, Graves falls for his boss's pubescent daughter, Joanna. It's not just more sex'n'drugs'n'rock'n'roll but a bubbling blend of conspiracy, black magic, and madness. What's going on, who's fooling whom, and who--or what--is truly insane? False clues and frequent shifts of time and place complicate matters further. Overuse of such devices and lapses into pedantry blunt the book's power, rendering what might have been gold into highly burnished brass. But brass sure beats the dull lead of most rock or occult fiction, and this book will appeal to cultists, literary-minded rockers, some Led Zeppelin fans, and many sf, fantasy, and conspiracy lovers.
-Jim Dwyer, California State Univ. at Chico
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
-Jim Dwyer, California State Univ. at Chico
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
