Author: Van Essler
Publisher: Raw Dog Screaming Press
Plot: Product Description: Balanced on a thin wire between horror and steampunk, Van Essler’s debut novel is an acrobatic performance at the darkest of circuses. Lenora Leahill has recently inherited her father’s estate and is ready to take her place in the enlightened Age of Awareness where books can be instantly consumed as injections using an Aqua Peritia cuff. She has grand plans for securing her legacy, but navigating these new responsibilities alone is not easy, especially when it’s impossible to see clearly under the city’s ashfall.
My Review and Thoughts:
Powerful. Just plain powerful. Powerful in so many ways. An intense beauty of words weaved together to create an imaginative, thought provoking prose. This is something new, unique, one of a kind. This is imagination brought to life in a vivid texture of dreams, fantasy, nightmares and waking moments of crystal clarity. Essler has created a debut novel of simply put, perfected achievement.
I loved this book. So rich in story and fantasy. So futuristic in truth and make believe, yet that make believe shines bright in a world that you, the reader are written into. What a mind. What an imagination. What a truly gifted story that brings so much to the reader. I was enthralled with it's complex steampunk style reality. It's futuristic mentality and yet it's a tale that seems so reality based, so modern day and yet flourishes with an escapism that holds you tight.
I read this is 2 settings. Started it on Saturday and finished it on Sunday. It flowed with ease and gave a complex futuristic beauty.
This is a book that not only demands to be adventured into, it demands for you to open your imagination and enter the recesses of pure thought provoking prose that lingers in tiny drips and drops of written word on you tongue and on your mind and most of all in your dreams of make believe.
Van Essler is a new voice. A new mind. A new master of words. A wonderfully imaginative experience that is hard to forget. Most of all this book becomes a new chapter in your life that you won't want to forget. Simply put this is highly recommended.
Would I Return to it Again: What an experience. It's an experience that you will want to explore again.
Would I Recommend: Without a thought otherwise. Absolutely this book should be read and should be experienced. I loved it and I think you will to.
My Rating: 4 out of 5
Four Final Words: Complex creativity. Positively Alive.