Scarred
Jon Richter (@richterwrites)
Reviewed by Matt Adcock (@cleric20)
‘The sword laughed as it slid into his belly, its blade strangely cold, as though he had impaled himself on an icicle. He closed his eyes as he felt his stomach open, blood and bile and the vitriol of years suddenly dispersed, like the opening of some monstrous release valve…’
You are not ready for this.
Forget your standard Fantasy novels – old master Richter who has delivered superb, crime, horror and cyberpunk books, now rewrites the rules, subverts and expands the fantasy genre. And he does it in fine style!
As Hugh Hefner once said: ‘one guy, through living out his own fantasies, is living out the fantasies of so many others’ – and I think that may well be appropriate for Scarred as there is an infectious joy of the subject covered bursting from the pages of this new novel.
I won’t trouble you with the plot too much, all you really need to know is that it’s a kind of quest tale, we follow lowly young serving girl Freya (who has the titular ‘scar’ on her face). If you’re a fantasy book fan then you can have a fun side game of fantasy world cliché bingo as the Richter delivers them in spades but due to his excellence with the craft, he manages to make even trolls and knights feel fresh again.
There’s much to enjoy here and its one of the few books that will make its way into my ‘reread at some point’ pile – I can’t give it much higher praise than that!
My advice is to do whatever you need to in order to get yourself a copy of Scarred, find a cozy nook and maybe a quality glass of wine and settle in to have your heart and soul transported into a weird but wonderful new kind of Oz.
It's been said already that this evokes classic quest sagas such as The Wizard of Oz and Stephen King's Dark Tower series, with a dash of Kazuo Ichiguro's The Buried Giant and Hugh Howey's Wool, Scarred balances stirring prose with a fast-paced and gripping narrative - and I can't argue...
Want to know more about rascally deviant Jon Richter? keep reading:
He is the writer of dark fiction, and is the author of four crime thrillers (Chains, Rabbit Hole, Never Rest and Deadly Burial) as well as three collections of short horror fiction (Jon Richter's Disturbing Works: Volumes One and Two, and his latest release DARK FICTION), cyberpunk thriller Auxiliary, and psychological techno-thriller The
Warden.
Jon lives in London and loves immersing himself in all things dark and sinister, whether they're books, films, video games or even board games – any way to tell a great story!
If you want to chat to him about this, or about anything at all, you can find him on Instagram @jonrichterwrites; he’d also love it if you would check out his website at www.jon-richter.com.
I have the privilege of being Jon’s co-host on the cyberpunk podcast ‘Hosts In The Shell’ and was fully prepared to give him a hard time if Scarred had been weak but I’ll not get to rib him on air because he’s flippin smashed it! Enjoy…
ööööö
(5 - Richter is has made the Fantasy Genre his gimp at first attempt!)
>>> Imagine a world where the earth is becoming hell?
Click banner below to find out in my dark sci-fi novel
(now becoming a graphic novel too)...
1 comment:
Thank you so much for being a part of the tour x
Post a Comment