Blood Will Have Its Season
Blood Will Have Its Season
By Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., author Nightmare’s Disciple
Introduction by S. T. Joshi
Illustrated by Thomas S. Brown and Stanley C. Sargent
Hippocampus Press 2009
ISBN 978-0-9814888-8-2
The dark, forbidding alleys of ruined cityscapes; the hopeless lives of brutalized whores, amoral hit-men, and vengeful-victims of violence—these are the landscapes and characters that fill the stories, poems, and prose-poems of Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. in his first collection. And yet, there is a strange and intoxicating beauty to Pulver’s creations, for they transport the reader out of the mundane and into the unearthly by the effortless stroke of a dazzling metaphor. Many of Pulver’s stories are innovative riffs on the enigmatic mythology of The King In Yellow, pregnant with the demonic witchery of the original. With this collection, Pulver places himself in the forefront of contemporary fantasy and horror literature.
“The prose of Joe Pulver can take its place with that of the masters of our genre—Poe, Lovecraft, Campbell, Ligotti—while his imaginative reach is something uniquely his own.” –from S. T. JOSHI’S Foreword
“Each piece seethes with a sinister madness like a straitjacketed ghost forgotten in a dark and cobwebbed cell. In this innovative, hypnotic collection, Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. has proven himself to be a perversely masterful sculptor of our dreams.” – Jeffrey Thomas
“Joe Pulver is a dark star is the merciless cosmos of weird fiction. His work is as brutal as it is beautiful.” -Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire
“In an earlier day I feel sure Joe Pulver would have been arrested for writing some of the stuff in this collection. Maybe he will be yet! In any case, I cannot shake the feeling that his stories are all well described by analogy to “The Colour out of Space” in that the descent of some elder, outer entity acts as seed producing, from the dark mulch of Joe’s subconscious, a luxurious growth of beautiful and at the same time poisonous blooms. One knows one ought to flee but cannot resist hanging around to savor the corruption! And how can he write, with such intricate delicacy, thunderous prose that fairly rips up the pages it is printed on? I wish I knew!” -Robert M. Price
“Pulver challenges his readers with amazingly bizarre and intriguing
versatility as he masterfully and engagingly explores worlds of
beautifully mournful fantastic prose, invokes hellish realms of
relentless violence, conjures wild homages to his many heroes, and
tinkers with conceptual formatting.” -Stan Sargent
“BLOOD WILL HAVE ITS SEASON teeters between lyrical tranquility and unchecked brutality. Joe Pulver’s style is sometimes jarring, sometimes lulling — but deceptively so. BLOOD is a rough ride. It’s not for children or old prudes.” -Mark Rainey
Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. is the acclaimed author of the Lovecraftian novel Nightmare’s Disciple and the author of many short stories that have appeared in magazines and anthologies. He has received several Honorable Mentions in Datlow’s and Windling’s The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.
http://www.hippocampuspress.com/other/blood-will-have-its-season.html
There are 1 Comments to "Blood Will Have Its Season"
I can’t wait to read your critique