Brian McNaughtonRecensioni

This is a re-publication of Satan's Lovechild series from the 60s/70s. I'm still trying to get a copy of the original, Star Publishing, edition as my understanding is there have been actual revisions as well as possible additions/omissions and I'm curious to see what exactly that entails. I am assuming that the original, being published by Playboy under one of its imprints and from some comments made by the author over the years, is more explicitly racy than this reprint. I would be tempted to say that perhaps it is only a difference in socio-cultural norms between then and now as to what would be considered explicit sexual content, however even some of McNaughton's other works are more direct in their sexuality than this one leading me to believe that some of the changes lie there.
This falls pretty solidly into the satanic/witch cults genre of horror literature and film so prevalent from the 60s-80s. You never know if your neighbor, wife, daughter, those hermit farmers, weird hippies, or literally anyone else in society might be secret satan worshipers, looking to kidnap and/or sexually exploit children and sacrifice babies. The same ideas that the satanic panic and religious right of the 80s decided were real instead of just fiction. We get some hints that this might be a stranger, less judeo-christian, world with to the supernatural goings on than mere satan worship though. Specifically, the nature of certain brothers and sisters begins to show that perhaps this is a more Lovecraftian universe. I believe the farther one gets in the series, the more 'weird' and less just 'horrific' it gets.
As is the case with all McNaughton's work, the prose is beautifully polished throughout. He is an expert wordsmith. However, the pacing feels distinctly uneven. This is fairly short for a novel, coming in at just 144 pages, but long compared to a lot of his short fiction work. I think the pacing suffers from trying to bridge the gap between the more action oriented demands of short fiction (barring atmospheric pieces) and the internal character driven demands of long-form work. We get just enough of characters internal lives to make us want to know more, but not enough for them to feel fully developed. Engaging, more action packed scenes that seem to drop too quickly into denoument. In some of his anthologized works like Throne of Bones, we see characters more fully explored and developed over longer sequences of tales, and I think that may be where McNaughton shines. If there's every an omnibus of this series of books published, it may be better to read them that way, though I'll reserve judgment until I've read the rest of the series.

Throne of Bones could be considered McNaughton's opus. The collection first put out by Terminal Frights (now defunct), with tantalizing hints that there is significantly more material set in this world, collects McNaughton's work centered around ghouls of the vaguely Lovecraftian sort. I say vaguely because, if you're familiar with that style of ghoul its a good starting point, but this expands greatly on the lore of ghouls, taking it in some interesting and unforeseen directions. Hence it being generally regarded as the 'Dracula' or 'Frankenstein' of ghoul stories. Its also McNaughton's foray in to serious worldbuilding, as these interconnected stories span multiple clearly well developed and thought through cultures and across time in a world that, while horrific in its own right, shows clear influences of early 20th century/late 19th century fantasy and sword & sorcery authors.
I was prepared for the explicity ghoul-porn (though there was far less of that than I was led to believe), I was prepared for the sometimes cumbersone/tiresome older/weirder fantasy world-building naming schemes, I was prepared for the weird/lovecraftian elements. What I was not prepared for was the humor. Because there's been some intense worldbuilding going on, the interconnected nature of the story telling gave McNaughton the chance to do more character development in these short works than we would normally expected from short fiction. Getting to know and understand the internal lives of necromancers, scholars, the bumbling nobles, and the ghouls themselves set up a great deal of dramatic irony for the reader to laugh at. And while much of the action sequences are well written in the sword and sorcery style, even there we get to see and frequently find humor in the exploits of one of our more reluctant protagonists.
Honestly, I think is really where McNaughton's work shines in this collection, though I'm likely to be in the minority. Not the world building, not the horror, not the exceptionally well polished and carefully crafted writing. But in showing us characters and events in the midst of a world every bit as horrific and grey as the skin of his ghouls that can make also make us laugh, and in a few cases, evoke sadness and pity.
Is it my favorite work of weird fiction? No. Is it even the best of the novel length collections Terminal Fright put out in its heyday? Not in my opinion. And I would say lovers of Robert E. Howard sword and sorcery are likely to find more to enjoy here than the lovers of Lovecraftian weird fiction I think its normally directed at. But there are definitely some things to enjoy here. If nothing else, I think the humor alone makes it worth a read. And even the old Terminal Fright hardbacks are out there on secondary markets for relatively low prices, let alone the newer editions.

hi i read this book in like 2018 and it left an extremely bad taste in my mouth. if you want to read gore and violence, at least bother to pick someone who kills men as often as they kill women.

The best fantasy book about necrophilia ever written, among other things.½

This book sucked ass. There was so many grammar mistakes there was spelling, spacing, and just poor grammar. It's like no one took the time to edit the book, it's like they just went "Oh look someone wrote a book lets just print it and not check for errors.". The only thing about the book I liked was the fact that the good guy lost. You don't see that very often in book it's usually the good guy that wins but in this book he lost to the villain and that was a refreshing change,but other then that nothing exciting stuck out for me.


The book follows a struggling author to his next book in hopes of making it big. On that note I would like to apologize to Brian for not liking his book. I understand that you and all the other authors out there struggle, work hard, and spend hours and hours writing your books and that deduction and hard work is appreciated to bring the reader something to read but sometimes it's just not that good. I'm sorry.

A fantastic series of stories in the Weird Tales tradition that are unabashedly delicious, dark and deranged. A must read for everyone who has the ability to fall in love with dangerous places and enjoy being aroused at taboo and atrocity.

Fresh, Disturbing Escapism

I am biased toward enjoying provocative fantasy/horror, and Throne of Bones delivers a pleasantly disturbing escape that is too shocking for young adults. The first tale, Ringard and Dendra, admittedly should prove digestible to many. Less so are the next six stories, which are a connected set (the titular Throne of Bones sequence) and should prove weird and jarring even to mature dark fantasy readers (can you say "ghoul erotica"?). Here, the timid and disoriented may want to leave the book unfinished. But hang in there. With each successive story, the connection between characters clarifies as does the "rules" of being a ghoul. All is consistent. And Bizzare. Excellent. The book won a 1997 World Fantasy Award and remains fresh and daring, even now (2012).

Oddly-placed, but well-done, is a stylistic humor reminiscent of that presented in Cohen Brothers movies (Fargo 1996, Burn After Reading 2008); the situations are so dire and characters so pathetic, that you cannot help but laugh at their choices and predicaments.

I was originally hooked by Alan Rogers introductory comments:
“You hold in your hands a book of stories that forced Brian McNaughton to write. Make no mistake: I don’t exaggerate. There’s a reason this book won the World Fantasy Award. The stories inside it are rich, fascinating stuff—creepy and unsettling and phantasmic. Imagine what Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings would have been like if Tolkien had tried to tell that story sympathetically from the point of view of the human denizens of Mordor and you’ll have the slightest sense of what you’re about to wade into—but only just a sense. These stories will make the same demands on you that they made on Brian: they will command and compel you, and fill you full of terrible wonder. And when you’ve finished them you’ll find yourself wanting more.” —Alan Rodgers

I disagree with the Tolkien call-out since it raises the expectation that the book would resemble Sword & Sorcery or Epic Fantasy (this book fits neither sub-genre). The world is medieval, but there is little military or melee action (however, it is decidedly "dark fantasy"). Otherwise, Rodgers' note is accurate.

Abject People/Artists: Many paint the entire book as being "about ghouls." True the Throne of Bones sequence is ghoul focused, but that comprises only 6 of the 15 tales. More generally, themes explore being an abject person, often with regard to being a misunderstood artist. Many characters are artists and it seems very possible that Brian McNaughton was conveying his own ability to create and enjoy dark art (while not being appreciated by others). Examples:

In the first tale, Ringard, a sculptor, and his painter wife Dendra, struggle to live in a world that shuns their union. The snipet below captures the protagonists ability to see hidden subjects and the ability of his father to not appreciate that skill: "In every stick I [Ringard] saw hidden shapes, and I became obsessed with revealing them. My father fretted that I meant to ruin him by turning his valuable firewood into whimsies. I perversely maintained that my carvings had more worth than kindling, that they even justified the sacrifice of living trees. Those captive owls and trout were really there. Why would the gods let me see them, if not to set me the challenge of liberating them?" Ringard and Dendra

Then there was Asterial Vendren, a misunderstood writer of horror fiction: "I [Asteriel Vendren, writer] seldom give readings anymore. I am sick of women who scream or faint, men who grumble, "Barbarous!" or "Obscene!", sick of the self-righteous show they make of stamping out before I finish. And half of those who remain, of ocurse, will approach me to ask if I really skinned my mistress to preserve her exquisite tattoos, and might they not call on me to examine the artwork?" The Vendren Worm

And ... the body painter Tiphytsorn Glocque (who continually strives to find unique, brilliant ways to decorate skin) laments as he is arrested and brought before a magistrate for being a lunatic:
"How could anyone understand his Art when they couldn't even see it? " The Art of Tiphystorn Glocque

Many more examples pervade the book. Amplifying the artistic themes are a dozen grotesque, full-page paintings from the cover artist, Jamie Oberschlake. Incidentally, he continues to produce disturbing paintings.

No maps or index? I was taken by the promise on the Dust Jacket by publisher Ken Abner (Terminal Fright) that promised that he had a genuine map and promised to published it with additional material at a later date. Sadly, that was claimed in 1997, I cannot find any related sequels for sale, and Brian has passed away in 2004.

Jeff Van Dermeer Interview did interview the author in 1999 (available online) and revealed that Brian was not keen on sharing his map:
JVD: "The dust jacket for the book includes an appreciation by the publisher, Ken Abner. He mentions you have a whole chronology and set of maps for Seelura. You didn't want these published with the collection. Abner mentions those items as "crutches." Could you elaborate on why you didn't want the chronology and maps published?"

Brian McNaughton: "None of that stuff is really finished -- and if it were, I would feel less inclined to write fiction about my imaginary world. A certain sense of discovery is necessary for me. Besides, I feel strongly that the stories should stand on their own. I have to know as much about the world as possible in order to convince the readers that I know what I'm writing about, and that my characters weren't found yesterday under a cabbage leaf. The late Lin Carter deserves our admiration and gratitude for all he did to bring dark fantasy to the attention of the public, but he's the last sort of person I would want messing around with my creations. Maps and chronologies only encourage such people."

Ultimately, a map was not critical to enjoy the book. However, an index would have been much appreciated as the names of people and places proved disorienting. When ghouls begin taking the pace of other people, an index would have helped keep me grounded. Brian McNaughton was a great artist. Read this when you feel like everything in your book queue is derivative, shallow fluff.

Satan's Love Child by Brian McNaughton is a paperback from Carlyle Communications, dating back to 1977 (I saw the 1977 edition, not the 1980 or 1982 printings). Used copies are available for pennies online. The forgettable cover art shows a satanic face overshadowing the nude reclining figure of a woman; the artist is not identified but who cares? The author's name does not appear on the front, giving us some idea of how prestigious this publication was. Apparently the original title was Gemini Rising, and a corrected text with the original title appeared in 2000. When I first read Satan's Lofve Child I had never seen the new Wildside Press editions. I approached it from the perspective of a fan interested in the Cthulhu Mythos. Brian McNaughton wrote the brilliant collection of ghoulish stories, Throne of Bones, which cannot be recommended highly enough. It is the absolute best among stories about ghouls. He also had a few entertaining stories scattered about in other Lovecraftian collections. Unfortunately Mr. McNaughton died in 2004 so we will never see any more of his grotesque fiction. At any rate, this title appeared on a few lists as being a Cthulhu Mythos book, so because of that and my enjoyment of his other works I ran down a copy.

Marcia Creighton is a beleaguered feature writer for a local newspaper in a New Jersey town called Riveredge. She has a loser abusive architect husband, Ken and 2 young children by him. In the past she lived in a commune and has a 15 yr old daughter from those days, Melody. Melody's father is not known and Marcia's memories of those days are foggy, only gradually recovering. We meet the loser reporter she works with, Ron Green, her editor, Ken's loser mistress, their earthy granola-ish neighbor Nora and a whacked out priest Father Collins. Walpurgis Night is fast approaching and there are some weird doings about town. First of all the place is overrun all of a sudden with hippies or drifters, congregating in town in significant numbers. Also there is some monstrous beast running loose, eating livestock and killing some people. Marcia's memories are slowly coming back and they are rather alarming. Melody is taking nude sleep walks and Ken is losing himself to alcohol.

So how is this book of interest to a Lovecraftian? I'd say associations are loose at best. First of all, given the title, you can imagine Melody's parentage is somewhat suspect. She also has a supernatural twin not really of this world (a plot device well known to HPL fans from The Dunwich Horror). The hippies/coven members are heard to chant the name Yog Sothoth once or twice. Rather than Satan, they are trying to make a way for outré entities to impregnate virgins, a common enough Lovecraftian theme. I guess that's about it. Mostly this would have worked as a story about Satanists instead of Yog Sothoth cultists and not lost anything. A silver crucifix talisman had great power over the most unnatural of the twins, not very Lovecraftian. This creature could not manifest but could assume control of other bodies after a fashion, unlike Wilbur Whateley's twin. And how was it? OK enough I suppose. I zipped through it over the Memorial Day afternoon so it is a very quick read. Probably that's a testament to Mr. McNaughton's prose and plotting. The characters had more snap (even though they were all basically just caricatures) and the dialogue more liveliness than the other books I've read recently (Deeper by Moore and House of the Toad by Tierney). Compared to McNaughton's typical work, the gore was rather muted. There were, however, 4 or 5 pornographic sex scenes that each stretched over 4-6 pages, very graphic indeed. Maybe when I was in my early teens I would have found them very titillating and said, "Wow! This is even better than Doc Savage: Fortress of Solitude!" Maybe early teens were the target audience. Now, however, I found them rather exasperating and wondered tediously how long until we get back to the story. There was also a very graphic rape scene that was quite emotionally detached. My favorite part was the ending which left the possibility (indeed, necessity) of a sequel wide open.

So what is my bottom line? Not required for a Lovecraftian except those who think mentioning Yog Sothoth and lifting the basic premise of The Dunwich Horror constitutes mythos fiction (if that includes you, may I recommend A Darkness Inbred by Victor Heck.). If you are jazzed by this, get a cheap used copy for the beach.

Now I have to emphasize that when Mr, McNaughton finally had a decent editor and a sympathetic publisher, he was able to redraft the book with the original title, Gemini Rising. It is one of his final works, a Lovecraftian masterpiece. Satan's Love Child is strictly for McNaughton and mythos completists; even then I don't recommend reading it! Just keep it on the shelf but only read Gemini rising, unless you are into such comparisons.

After the pornographic Satan's Lovechild, I had written off Brian McNaughton's four mythos influenced short novels. James Ambuehl, noted mythos maven, responded that the author actually had better intentions than his editor allowed, and that I might actually like these books. So I gave them another try.

Downward to Darkness was originally published in 1978 as Satan's Mistress by Carlyle Books. This corrected text/title was published in 2000 by Wildside Press. New it costs $14.95; you can get free shipping from Amazon if you order > $25 worth of stuff (like Worse Things Waiting!). Page count of this trade paperback is 141, with text starting on page 7. There is a too brief but entertaining minibio of the author on the last page. Editing was good, production qualities were good, and the cover had no art, just the title in large type. I did not do an exhaustive comparison of Satan's Mistress and Downward to Darkness, but a very cursory examination shows that there was not really anything too much different or very objectionable in Satan's Mistress, not when compared to the difference between Gemini Rising and Satan's Lovechild. There was frank sexual imagery and taboo acts referred to, but not in a pornographic sense. Rather, it was important to the strange atmosphere the author was trying to build up. Considering my modest expectations, I was quite engaged by this book. With the relatively short page count, the clever plot and the very readable prose I polished it off in one day. The way the book is written, the twisted nature of the plot is not really made clear until at the very end. It does not start off with any particular Lovecraftian elements, but eventually it all comes together in a fiendishly clever sort of way. The characters do not know what they are in the middle of until the end, and even at the end maybe only one minor character has figured it all out. Downward to Darkness is not a sequel to Gemini Rising although it has some similar thematic elements.

Patrick Laughlin is an awkward intellectual high school student with odd parents. His parents are among the intelligentsia; his father Frank is a commercial artist and his mother Rose has a PhD in English. Unlike many mythos books, these characters come alive. The author has a gift for putting you inside their point of view so the most outrageous things make a sort of sense. They live in an old mill converted into a studio for Frank, as well as their home. The mill was inherited by Rose; it later turns out it was home to an ancestor or hers, Mordred Glendower, a reputed evil magician. He and his daughter, Mirdath, lived there, and apparently she was worse than he was. Eventually the town got tired of disappearing babies and burned the place (and Mordred) to the ground. Mirdath was accorded a fate deserving of a witch; she was hanged at a crossroads. Well, time has passed, and the crossroads and adjacent potter's field have been converted into the town dump. A local Wiccan (or better, pagan), Howard Ashcroft, has had his eye on the mill for years because Mordred's library is purportedly still there. Unfortunately Rose claimed her property when her father died and moved there with her family. Ashcroft can do some low grade magic, like cast glamours, and he and his followers are still trying to maneuver their way into the mill. Unfortunately his dabbling has in effect resurrected the spirit of Mordred into the genetic make up of his male descendent, Patrick. Shades of Ephraim Waite from The Thing on the Doorstep, he is trying to get control of Patrick's body. He begins by sending Patrick visions of his red haired daughter, Mirdath, as a seductress. This bleeds out into everyone, so that Rose is rummaging about the basement looking for a hidden treasure, and Frank can't help drawing pictures of a red haired woman. We meet some other characters in the town: nosy Jane Miniter and her dogs, and naïve daughter Amy, Rupert Spencer a youngish writer who is not so successful and lives with his father, an older lawyer named George, Shana Jennings a blonde high school beauty who manipulates Patrick to do her schoolwork and her boyfriend Bruce Curtis, and an unpleasant teacher of theirs, Bob Bamberger. Ashcroft invited Amy and Patrick to a pagan celebration/black mass that Patrick counsels against going to, as he understands a virgin's virginity is usually sacrificed to everyone. This is a very similar image to the pagan orgy in Gemini Rising that was used to achieve a kind of power. Everything comes to head on Hallowe'en (sic), when the Laughlins hold a big party at the mill. Everyone and a lot of other people show up, and events really spin out of control. Thanks to Ashcroft's manipulation, Rose breaks into the cellar where there is a copy of the Necronomicon and Mordred completely seizes control of Patrick. In a very tautly written scene in the kitchen at the party, Bruce and a thuggish friend, Duke, with a very drunken Shana, are tormenting Bob Bamberger, Amy Miniter and Patrick. When Bruce is about to beat the crap out of Patrick he utters the First of the Ten Words of the Litany of Hastur. Now Mordred in Patrick's body attempts to resurrect Mirdath, who was even more a Master of the Runes than her father. Mordred was always disorganized, impatient and sloppy with details. This means he does not separate Mirdath's body from any other fragment of human/animal/plant tissue...What rises is feeling a bit peckish. Now Mr. McNaughton takes a plot device I usually can't stand and makes it really work. HPL was writing the truth, tweaking the collective nose of the world's intelligentsia that refused to accord him the same consideration. I usually hate this concept but McNaughton's prose is so good and it is so organic to the plot that it all really worked for me. George hears about all this and talks a disbelieving Rupert into tracking down the Necronomicon, but instead he has a less than productive encounter with Mirdath. George comes to realize the Necronomicon is real and really wants to get it to head off certain danger. At the same time, Patrick, still alive in a corner of his own mind, somehow manages to wrest control partially back from Mordred. Unfortunately, as Patrick-Mordred attempts to placate the Mirdath thing with a snack, Mirdath no longer recognizes him as the spirit of her father....When George arrives at the mill, among other things, he finds Rose, who has only been semiconscious since Hallowe'en, and a distracted Amy Miniter. There is a denouement of sorts in a very good final scene.

Brian McNaughton provides a terrific reading experience with this book. He puts us in the viewpoints of all the major characters, and makes them all become alive on the page. The plot comes together liked a finely wrought piece of clockwork, the action scenes are quite invigorating and the entire story has a very creepy atmosphere. This is what I expected from the author of The Throne of Bones! It is a corking good read and certainly merits a few hard earned Cthulhu bucks. I liked it so much I dove right into Worse Things Waiting, and it's even better!

Worse Things Waiting is the third Lovecraftian novel of Brian McNaughton. Like the others, it had an original cheapo mass market paperback, Satan's Seductress from 1981. I quickly leafed through that book and I don't think it had the same pornographic bent that Satan's Love Child did but I can't be certain. At any rate, in 2003 Wildside Press issued this very nice trade paperback edition that allowed the author to correct the text to his preferred version. Thank you, Wildside Press! Page count is 159 with text starting on page 7; cost is $14.95 with no discounts (a bit pricey but this book is not otherwise available, so what's a fan to do?). There is no cover art again, somewhat typical for Wildside Press' editions of McNaughton's work (his two short story collections and Downward to Darkness). The several line biography in the back is the same as in the other books in this series. Editing and production qualities are good.

Worse Things Waiting is a direct sequel to Downward to Darkness. In fact, I think it is rather difficult to make sense of what is happening in WTW if you haven't read DTD. It probably still works as a book but do yourself a favor, and read Downward to Darkness before coming to this book; it's a very fun read and can be recommended on its own merits anyway. Four years after the events in DTD Amy Miniter returns to Mt. Tabor, CT. She is now the sole survivor who has any connection to the massacre at the end of DTD. Rose Laughlin was found guilty of murdering everyone else and died in an asylum a few years ago. George Spencer has vanished and is assumed to be traveling abroad. His son, Howard, was assumed to have run off with the cheerleader, Shana, while Bruce never awoke from his coma. She has become very withdrawn and socially timid; her very idealized fantasy life has nothing to do with the way she actually interacts with the world. She is fixing up her mother's home for sale while living at Brooksprite Gardens, a new apartment complex built on land reclaimed from the town dump (and you remember what was buried there...). Her neighbors, Toni Sloane and her boyfriend Todd figure into the story too. Martin Paige is a hack author of letters to men's magazines and has ghost written a book that was made into a movie for a famous writer he despises, Hogarth Zuner, all the while working on his magnum opus, a fantasy The Swords of Windsor. I have to say that these two main characters are so deftly drawn the really do jump off the page and become alive. This was some of my favorite writing by McNaughton; the reader really identifies with his characters. In fact Martin Paige's life predicament was presented in such a razor sharp fashion that I wondered if part of him was autobiographical, considering Mr. McNaughton worked 10 years as a night manager in a motel. Martin has come to Mt. Tabor with the hopes of writing a true crime article about the massacre at the mill, and as such he is desperate to meet Amy. When he finally does encounter her, he comes across as a pathetic and somewhat creepy loser to her, while he is so smitten he falls hopelessly in love. Amy has been having weird dreams, for lack of a better word, where two voices are speaking in her head and making her do things she otherwise wouldn't, and where time seems to be rather malleable. Little does she know that she is not the only person experiencing this. It also turns out Dr. Howard Ashcroft is still around, still attempting to find the Necronomicon, still attempting to obtain power while presenting himself to the world at large as an eccentric earth loving pagan. He tries to entice Amy to a pagan Sabbath, aiming to use her innocence as a sacrifice, much the same as he did in Downward to Darkness. Meanwhile, still pursuing his story, Martin breaks into George Spencer's house, finding his notes and the Necronomicon. As Amy's visions become weirder and more intense, Martin manages to meet George. At least he meets the brief earthly manifestation of what usually happens to a Master of the Runes who spends too much time reading the Necronomicon. He tells Martin what is happening, that the resurrected Mirdath desires human existence again so much she has made a compact with an unimaginably horrible entity, That Which Is(Not). Amy is her intended vessel, and Howard is her willing (if unwitting) tool. Martin makes a frantic attempt to rescue her. The ending is anything you could hope for in a mythos novel.

I have really enjoyed these books of Mr. McNaughton. Worse Things Waiting was even better than Downward to Darkness. A very clever plot is served up with gallows humor, believable dialogue and full blooded characters. Just like DTD, it captivated me so much I polished it off in one night and was left wanting more. I would say I liked DTD and WTW more than I liked Balak by Rainey, and maybe more than Where Goeth Nyarlathotep by Reiner. Based on this I have already started reading his last novel, The House Across the Way, after which I will seek out a copy of Gemini Rising. Highly recommended!

This is the 4th of Mr. McNaughton's novels to be published by Wildside Press. Unfortunately, unlike the others, this book as far as I can tell is only available in a nice hardcover with a pretty high list price, $37.95. It is discounted on Amazon, but not much. Page count was 209, pretty slim for the cost, but is McNaughton's final novel, I think. Originally the text was published in 1982 as Satan's Surrogate; used copies of this are quite expensive in their own right and I never saw a copy. Unlike Satan's Love Child, which was a pornographic version of Gemini Rising, I do not believe Satan's Surrogate had any objectionable material; the author reports that the text was substantially altered and we may regard THATW as his final thoughts on the text. Production qualities are good; cover art by Jaime Oberschlake was pretty good but did not blow me away.

Where Gemini Rising, Downward to Darkness and Worse Things Waiting had clear Lovecraftian motifs and themes, The House Across the Way was not in the same vein. Do not expect that it is part of the same series of stories. It owes a little bit more to Robert Chambers, with some character names, a maid named Cassilda for example, and a few place names. I have not made a study of reading Chambers' fiction like I have Lovecraft's, but I think there is no other big debt to Chambers beyond this. Similarly, in what I think is a nod towards some of McNaughton's favorite writers, there are place names from Lovecraft: the Whateley Library and the Pickman Museum.

The plot is extremely complicated and the truth only gradually becomes apparent to some of the characters. There are so many characters with such complicated relationships and points of view, and wild twistings of time, that they defy synopsis. The Otherworld is occupied by...the Others, who might be considered as Faerie. Not in the sense of lightness and good, Tolkienesque elves, but dark and incomprehensible, capricious and malicious. They love to torment humans and control them through both their uncontrolled passions and their dreams. The title house of the story occupies an important point of overlap between these realities which makes life fraught with menace for the current occupants. The Eldritch King has dark and mysterious reasons for manipulating humans, as he/it has done through the centuries.

None of this is clear to the characters in the book who fumble through their disorienting lives trying to grasp what is going on. Like in all of Mr. McNaughton's novels that I have read, all the threads come together to make perfect sense of the complex tapestry by the end. Along this wild ride, McNaughton's considerable gifts are on display: he takes us inside the minds of the characters; when it is their point of view, the world is clearly seen out of their eyes. I love the way he lets us sink into the characters' skins. Dialogue is sharp, the plot is propulsive and descriptions of the gory consequences of losing yourself to the Others are deftly written. The denouement was a fitting conclusion to a majestic effort. I was very glad to have read The House Across the Way and highly recommend it to all fans of dark fantasy literature. What a great loss that we will have no more such novels from Mr. McNaughton's pen!

Brian McNaughton died in 2004 and there will never be another like him. His short stories, which should be mandatory reading for fans of fantasy, sword & sorcery, horror, dark fiction, ghouls, magic and Lovecraftian writing, have been compiled into two books from Wildside Press. Nasty Stories was released by Wildside Press in 2000; it has 156 pages and lists for $14.95. It is well edited, although there is no cover art to speak of, and alas, no author's notes on the stories. The very short author biography is the same one that appears in all of Wildside Press' McNaughton editions. We owe a great deal to Wildside for this collection. These stories are just too dang good to be allowed to fade from memory.

I have a very hard time describing Mr. McNaughton's fiction. He was widely read and sprinkled references to many works of popular ficiton and classic literature into his own works, so spotting the allusions is quite entertaining. He had a gift for putting you inside the skin of the character whose particular viewpoint he was narrating from, to the point that you start going along with their perspective even if what they are doing is outrageous. He did not shy away from, and in fact embraced wildly colorful and at the same time horrifyingly improbable sexual or ghoulish horror imagery. At the same time your flesh is crawling you can't help laughing out loud at the humor. I really cannot think of another author who pushes the boundaries so far, maybe Will Ludwigsen as a tepid comparison.

The only way to let the uninitiated in on the wonders of this writing is with a few choice examples:

The Conversion of St. Monocarp: "And Gunther, tragically cut down in the prime of his vaunting heroism by some unknown coward who had waylaid him and stamped his spine to the consistency of fingernail-parings, had unfavorably compared her generous mouth to an old sow's pudendum, bristles and all."

Nothing But the Best: "He had feared dogs ever since the Avignon fiasco, but he had forgotten the Sextons' pet, a Doberman pinscher, who in his last life commanded - with notably more audacity than brains - an SS panzer division. Unaware of this background, Jessica had christened him Muffin."

Fantasia on 'Little Red Riding Hood': "About to abandon his careful plans and absorb her into his cellular makeup, he notices the perilous proximity of two woodcutters, who are gathering faggots. They do this by striking manly poses against trees, their shiny axes over their muscular shoulders. One wears a T-shirt that reads "My favorite Beetle was Gregor Samsa." "

I could go on, and provide a striking image from each of these 27 stories, but then you wouldn't need to buy the book! After you finish this, please go get The Throne of Bones and Even More Nasty Stories. You won't be sorry you took a walk on the wild side of Brain Mcnuaghton's imagination.

Wildside Press performed a service of inestimable value to fans of horror and weird fiction when they published their survey of Brian McNaughton's novels and stories. Mr. McNaughton died in 2004 so we will never see the like of these gems again. EMNS is a 153 page trade paperback published in 2000, that costs $14.95, undiscounted on Amazon, but eligible for free shipping. There is no cover art to speak of; we get the same very brief biography that has appeared in all the McNaughton books from Wildside, and a useful publication history in the front of the book.

How I wish I could have met Brian McNaughton! He had a gift for putting you inside the skin of his characters, so that what they were doing made inherent sense, even if it was fantastically horrific. Mordant hilarity, impossibly grotesque imagery, deft characterizations and clever plotting are the order of the day in his stories. Compared to Nasty Stories, there is less in this collection that had me laughing out loud, although I still was mostly absorbed. These stories were perhaps more horrific. Sometimes we have a slow crescendo, sometimes we have a brief, sharply punctuated image.

EMNS starts out with The Doom That Came to Innsmouth, which previously saw print in Tales Out of Innsmouth from Chaosium. The more I read it the more impressed I become. It surely is one of the my favorite 3 or 4 modern Cthulhu mythos stories, and may be the best spin on the Innsmouth legend ever. We are swept along in the narrative, all the while nodding sympathetically to a descendent of the original inhabitants on Innsmouth about his people's mistreatment by the government, until...well, you simply must read this for yourself! The Return of the Colossus is a modern exploration of a creation of Clark Ashton Smith, and I can't help but think that he would have smiled to read Mr. McNaughton's effort, which is vividly original. The Benevolent Emperor is also a homage to Smith, a wonderful Zothique story. If there was anything I didn't care for, it was Beyond the Wall of Time, which was originally part of a round robin story and seems to be missing something out of context. McNaughton being McNaughton, there is a very good ghoul story set at Miskatonic University, Ghoulmaster.

Obviously I think everyone should read these stories. Of course you must find Mr. McNaughton's ghoulish masterpiece, The Throne of Bones. His novels, published by Wildside with his final thoughts on them incorporated into the editions, are also books full of terrible wonders. Brian McNaughton's voice was wholely original and inimitable; there is no one like him writing now and probably there will only ever be pale imitators. Do yourself a favor and explore his worlds.

The Throne of Bones is a collection of short stories by Brian McNaughton in a generally horror genre. As Alan Rodgers says in the Introduction, it is more of a Fantasy Horror in the vein of J.R.R. Tolkien. All of the stories take place in the same general geographical location, which works well to tie all of the stories together. However, each story takes place at a different place in time. They are more or less in chronological order to avoid confusion. Most of the stories are centered on ghouls and, essentially, zombies. There is a great deal, more than I care for in fact, of sex, in particular necrophilia, though it isn't written in a crude romance novel sort of way. Thus, it isn't a terrible burden, but I did get a little queasy when one character was complaining of holding the butt of his mate in the muck of a rotting corpse's coffin. Besides that, the stories are pretty well written and engaging. Interesting and certainly original. My particular favorite story in this compilation is the final story entitled, Liron Wolfbaiter. It reminds me a lot of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, in that everything can be questioned, because you don't know whether it is due to a dream or is actually in reality. Overall, a good book, though not excellent.½