Book Review: The Claw of Craving by Joseph Sale
Title: The Claw of Craving
Author: Joseph Sale
Release date: June 18th, 2023
Over the last decade, I’ve been devouring Joseph Sale’s imaginative fiction. I’m often left humbled and in awe of the world’s he creates, the characters he blesses us with and the sheer scope of each and every piece he unleashes. His novel, ‘Gods of the Black Gates’ is still one that I think of often and with this novel, ‘The Claw of Craving’ having come out about four months ago, I smile, seeing where his focus is turning.
This is the first part of Sale’s new ‘Lost Carcosa’ series, a retelling of the Carcosa mythology and the King in Yellow. Now, I readily admit, my horror life has had very limited experience with the King in Yellow and Carcosa itself. I knew Barker was inspired by it, but it has never been a mythology that I’ve dove into, never been something I’ve explored or spent much time with and going into this novel fairly blind, I did end up taking frequent pauses to Google character and place names.
With an existing mythology, there will be gatekeeper’s and naysayers a plenty, but in this case, I am neither, someone who simply is excited to enter a world and see what Sale’s adaptation will bring. He is no stranger to ‘epic’s,’ his own ‘Virtue’s End’ poem having already shown his willingness to go there, so it was that I joined along with Alan Chambers and found my way to Carcosa.
What I liked: Right off the bat, I’d like to say this is Sale writing like a possessed man. Every single page of this bristles with an energy, an energy a reader knows only comes when a writer is so deeply embedded into the subject matter, that they are creating the closest thing to real world magic that you can get.
Alan Chambers has lived a life of struggle and desperation. A man who knows there is something else out there, somewhere, and when he finally finds a way in, he is willing to do whatever it takes to get there. He goes to a place, tells the little person (Petruccio) his desire and is introduced to Cali. Cali inflicts the greatest pains she can to make Alan break, but he embraces them and once the ritual is done, he awakes on the other side, on the outskirts of the horror that is Carcosa.
From here, Sale takes us on an epic adventure, where Chambers is considered an outcast but a necessary cog in the power struggle taking place and ultimately, they travel to confront a demon and make Chambers whole again.
This reminded me of everything I used to watch when I was a kid. Most of all, it reminded me of the ‘Den’ segment in the 1981 movie, ‘Heavy Metal,’ where a nerdy teen wakes up in a strange world and an adventure awaits. As the story progresses, Sale takes his time making the reader flinch and feel disgust with outrageous (but amazing) descriptive moments that once again highlight why his writing mind is second to none.
The ending – while abrupt – sets us up for Book Two and with the brief epilogue, it sounds like it’ll start off with a band.
What I didn’t like: 100% my issue, but by not having much knowledge on Carcosa and the ‘hierarchy’ of how that world operates, there are a few throw away moments that didn’t exactly distract me, but after I had Googled them, I did scratch my head over why they were included. Saying that, this was just an opening entry into a longer series and those moments may very well come back to be answered.
Why you should buy this: It’s long been said that dark fantasy and horror are frequent bedfellows and I know, in my own writing, I often mix and mingle. Sale though is on a completely different level and as a huge fan of his work, it is disheartening that I don’t see his stuff plastered on every single social media site I’m on. It could be a case of being born in the wrong time, that is Sale had been writing these books in the 60’s and 70’s our great literary awards would be named after him, but for now, I will continue to do my best to rave about how amazing his work is and hope that people who preach the gospel of Barker will begin to see that Sale very well might be the next coming of the man.
‘The Claw of Craving’ just might be the SINGLE best thing Sale’s released yet, but with Book Two hopefully coming soon, that statement may already be outdated by the time you read this.
5/5
