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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Criminally neglected,
By Zothique "Zothique" (Zothique) - See all my reviews
This review is from: An East Wind Coming (Paperback)
A dark, rich and unusual fantasy / science-fiction novel, this is Arthur Byron Cover's follow-up to Autumn Angels(recently reprinted) and the outrageously hard-to-find Platypus of Doom and Other Nihilists.
However, don't worry about reading them in order. AN EAST WIND COMING stands by itself and ably lays out the basic premise of the world. (I first read AN EAST WIND COMING years before I realized that it was actually part of a series.) The story is set on a future Earth that has had its population decimated, but granted remarkable, godlike powers. With the ability to do anything, to become anyone -- they display a remarkable lack of imagination. Most of them have taken on personas drawn from literature and pop fiction and lead aimless lives of role-playing in an endless twilight of eternity. The previous books in the series had a more playful, jaunty tone. Cover has great fun creating interactions between diverse figures clearly inspired by characters like Nero Wolfe, The Maltese Falcon's "Fat Man," the Wolfman, Lois Lane, lawyer Theodore Marley "Ham" Brooks (from the Doc Savage novels), Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op, Howard the Duck, Hawkman, Captain Marvel and various other creatures, demons and fabulous entities. But here, things take a darker and more serious turn. The Golden City of the Godlike Men is haunted by a murderer -- possibly a reincarnation of Jack the Ripper. As the utopian streets run with blood, the godlike men face the ultimate crisis of their aimless, drifting existence. The murders seem to expose the underlying corruption and pointlessness of their existence. And the only hope seems to be to rouse the Consulting Detective (Sherlock Holmes) from his torpor, to finally investigate a new case that could change the nature of the godlike men's world. It's a rich, fascinating book that takes diverse turns down many corridors -- introducing us to many of the godlike men as they wrestle with the problem of what to do in a universe where infinite power and infinite possibilities all too often lead to infinite despair. The literary fun-'n'-games should appeal to fans of Alan Moore's LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN or anyone who's explored the Wold-Newton playground of Philip Jose Farmer. But there's a wholly unique and utterly fascinating quality to this lonely, haunted, elegiac novel. Again and again, Cover defiantly mines new meaning and hidden power from the detritus of junk, pop, pulp culture. This lost classic of fantasy richly deserves to be rediscovered.
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