Thank you to Word Horde and the author for giving me a copy to read and review. 3.5 stars! This is a difficult collection to review. Imagine, if you will, a target zone like a bullseye. Visualize me reading these stories and some of the stories landing right there in the center. The zone. Then picture ...more
A remarkably cohesive collection filled with refined, flowing prose. The Human Alchemy is an impressive leap forward in terms of artistry and skill. Like most people, I was won over by Griffin's previous collection, The Lure of Devouring Light, and he's only gotten better. The style here is toned do ...more
Michael Griffin's new collection, The Human Alchemy, is visceral, cerebral, as if you're inside the protagonists' head through each story, along for the strange, maddening ride.
Griffin's writing is more honed in this collection, and it's clear that he has improved his craft since The Lure of Devouri ...more
”Away from the humdrum, toward the beautiful strange.”
This sentence, taken from the story that closes the second collection of short fiction from Michael Griffin, sums up what you are going to find in these pages: a love for the strange - celebrated disturbingly in th ...more
There is so much I want to say about The Human Alchemy. The prose are composed by one of the best writers currently out there, every story left me thinking about it well after I put the book down for the night. But then I think what can I say that isn’t better said in the introduction by S.P. Miskow ...more
Stylish, literary dark fantasy (maybe?) that focuses on the inner lives and rationalizations of its characters.
Michael Griffin is drawing on a Lovecraft-inspired tradition that foreground's Lovecraft's occasional philosophical asides by his characters. Thomas Ligotti is part of this lineage, as are ...more