I'm going to start a new feature on my underused blog that I hope you will all find interesting.
I live about a block away from a Dollar Tree and I have found that it's a good source for books. I'm an active swapper on paperbackswap.com and sometimes I want to play "Wish List Fairy" and share a brand new book with someone who's not expecting it! Brand new hardcovers for just a buck? You can't get much of a better deal than that.
Today was an unplanned trip while I was on my way to Chili's for lunch with my daughter and I decided to stop in since it is just a few buildings away from the restaurant. There were a lot of copies left from some of my previous purchases, but if I am patient enough I can almost always find something that looks interesting to me, or that might interest someone on paperback swap.
Why I want to read this: The cover really captured my attention. I love the feather floating on water and the sun shining through the clouds. I'm always happy to discover a stand-alone title that won't suck me into a series; I already read too many and there are still many more that I want to read.
What it's about:
From Publishers Weekly
Two worlds wrapped tight in gloomy gothic trappings vie for dominance in this engrossing, elaborately staged exploration of consciousness from O'Connell (The Skin Palace). Sweeney, an Ohio pharmacist, brings his comatose son, Danny, to the Peck Clinic, "a sandstone monster on fifty acres of private land near Quinsigamond's western border." Danny is all Sweeney lives for; he even studies the comic book Limbo, featuring a troupe of circus freaks led by the visionary Chick the chicken boy, for what his son may have imagined when his brain functioned normally. Like Stephen King in Richard Bachman mode, O'Connell digs for darkness as Chick and his companions, who inhabit the fantasy realm of Gehenna, encounter Dr. Lazarus Cole, "The Resurrectionist" (stoned to death only to walk again) and dread the inevitable showdown with their nemesis, "the mad doctor called Fliess," in his "enormous laboratory castle, the Black Iron Clinic." Meanwhile, in the real world, cultists kidnap Sweeney in hopes of using fluid from Danny's brain to transport them all to Gehenna. This strange brew is sure to enhance O'Connell's growing cult status.I absolutely LOVE the idea of two worlds blurring into each other, and I'm a sucker for anything with a fantasy element. I can't wait to check out Jack O'Connell, and I hope now you want to as well!
