PositiveWashington Independent Review of BooksFord knows how to tell a story, whatever the genre, and how to get out of its way and when to stop, and here that makes for a great few hours between the covers ... This is a New York you can see and smell, and you’ll encounter not just George and Ahab but vicious street gangs, coach chases, mysterious knife-throwing ladies, ambushes, opium lords, a loathsome — possibly inhuman — adversary known as the Pale King Toad, ghost ships, zombie assassins, and something called the manticore, about which the less said (and dreamt) the better. There is a subtle emphasis here on how stories get written and why — not with postmodern purpose but to ask why they matter to us, and why fact and fable so often share the same book or body ... Sign on for this one; it’s well worth the trip.
Jeffrey Ford
PositiveWashington Independent Review of BooksJeffrey Ford is a bit hard to categorize as a writer, and might I heretically suggest it’s unnecessary? ... Ford knows how to tell a story, whatever the genre, and how to get out of its way and when to stop, and here that makes for a great few hours between the covers ... Along the way, we learn a good deal about the New York of 1853, not by shoehorned-in facts and footnotes but by gritty description of the alleyways and denizens ... Sign on for this one; it’s well worth the trip.