Reviewer Praise for FEASTS AND SEASONS: Better Written and More Original

Mr Kieth West of Amazing Stories has an amazingly kind review of my work:

http://amazingstoriesmag.com/2014/12/small-press-book-review-book-feasts-seasons-john-c-wright/

Here is the review, which I reprint in full, in order to flatter my bloated ego.

This week I’m reviewing a title that’s seasonal in nature, although the seasons it deals with occur across an entire year rather than a small part of the year. I’ve not read much of Mr. Wright’s work, but what I have has been better written and more original than much of what’s currently being published.

The same is true here. These stories have a great deal of depth, both in the characters they’re about and the concepts with which they deal.

Wright is a Catholic, and as a result the holidays and feasts he focuses on tend to be religious ones or have religious aspects. There are ten stories here. I’ll focus on the ones that resonated the most with me.

Wright opens with New Year’s Day. “The Meaning of Life as Told Me by an Inebriated Science Fiction Writer in New Jersey” sounds like it should be a Harlan Ellison story. Which is quite appropriate since Ellison is one of the characters. So are H. G. Wells, Olaf Stapleton, and A. E. van Vogt. It seems that what these three men wrote was actually fact thinly disguised as fiction. This is something Ellison reveals to Wright (yes, he’s a character in his own story) one night in a bar in New Jersey.

I should point out that this is the first story in the collection that directly involves the time machine as H. G. Wells described it. Wright has a fondness for time travel stories, and after reading City Beyond Time, I have to say he writes some of the best.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.