Tours of the Black Clock (1989)

Lives intersect across time and across borders against a backdrop of World War Two. Erickson conjures up a potent mix of alternative history, gritty noirish realism, and hallucinatory dislocation, but his characters frequently seem overmatched by the weightiness of the author’s themes. At times Erickson’s prose combines suspense and a kind of pleasurable derangement, with the reader as a luxuriating frog in the kettle soon-to-boil. At other times it seems as if his intent is too simple for his clever pen.

Petyr’s such an unsettling little worm that the day Kronehelm arrives I’m almost happy to see him slither in with his trunks and crates and immediately pull the curtains even tighter so that the thinnest slice of dank gray European light can come through. Kronehelm throws his arms around me and begins to cry with joy; I guess he figured I’d never really show up. After a few more days I know something’s got to give, what with three freaks waddling from one dark room to the next publishing obscene books for the private collections of deformed midgets in Berlin five hundred kilometers away. You just know that kind of enterprise is going to have one or two pressure points somewhere.

Tröegs HopBack Amber Ale
Harpoon UFO Hefeweizen

Some brief remarks (not really a review):

http://www.jgoodwin.net/?p=785