Claude Lalumière

The world building in the beginning of this book is insufferable and the prose is narcissistic to the point of being ridiculous but there are good moments in here and the further in you go the more rewarding the experience. The silly and long-winded art prose gets in the way of the interesting ideas and locales here. Many of the character's motivations seem abstract or nonsensical, it's hardest to empathize with the misanthropes among them and their unrealistically scathing hatred for the show more world around them for its daring to not accommodate their rarified tastes and lust for adventure. This comes off as cheap and forced even to an introvert who you'd think would be the perfect audience for that sort of fare. I can't even imagine how others must take it.

I have a suspicion that most of my points against this book come from it reading initially like a mockery or weird doppelgänger of my own writing from high school, sexually charged and laced with abstract imagery, strange items and monsters and places that are unhinged in time and space yet often lacking direction or cohesiveness. It is to the author's immense credit that after all this strange prejudice and distaste, I came away from this book smiling and feeling like I'd really gotten something from it. The only way to treat some of the most over-the-top prose is to laugh but laughter isn't so bad and where this book succeeds in making compelling creatures and mythologies it does so rather brilliantly. I'd recommend finding a sample of this novel's prose somewhere and reading just a sentence or two. You'll know absolutely immediately if it's for you because of the wry grin creeping across your face, if not, you'll probably grimace in disgust. It's just that kind of book I guess. show less

Here's a book with three strikes against it:

It's a collection of short pieces by different authors, most of which you probably haven't heard of

It's about superheros.

And they're all Canadian.

Still with me? Have to report I enjoyed it a lot.

Post "Dark Knight" and "Watchman" and Post The whole Marvel age it's not news that people in capes who fly can have problems and personal lives and human frailties just like the girl (or boy) next door.

Still these little stories really make you feel like show more - yeah - this is what it would REALLY be like if people REALLY had "super" powers and really had to deal with them.

If there's a complaint is that the stories are all too short. It feels like reading the origin story issue of a new comic book series and getting hooked - well hey I want to read the next issue.

(though some of the stories just dump you right into the middle of things, and you sometimes have to scramble to keep up. That's OK).

There are a couple of yarns in here that I won't be reading again, but honestly the quality is pretty high. The POW! ZAM! ZAP! quotient is mercifully low and the characters are interesting and involving.

I liked it. Glad I read it. Will be looking for some of these authors again show less

The Door to Lost pages is a collection of connected short stories, all written with a mix of the weird, sci-fi, bizarre, horror and fantasy genres. There are a handful of experiments with meta-fiction as well. Many of the stories left me with a kind of sharp heartache, a bittersweet hope that the fanciful dreamy parts of the novel are real and that the indications of a grim reality are the only fiction the author intended.

The book pulled me in easily. The prose is very simple and kind of show more alluring. I don't know if that is due to the writing style or the subject matter. Maybe both. For example:

"Aydee had to control herself so as not to scream with excitement. Here was a story she needed to read: an opportunity to learn how other people, besides Lucas, besides herself, had been affected by their contact with Lost Pages. A chance, maybe, to better understand this strange life and her place in it. She bundled herself in her reading chair, enraptured." p74

Everything about it forced me to keep reading, even when I was afraid of what I would find on the next page. All the stories are connected by an original mythos, each tale adding to your knowledge of it, slowly building another world in the background. A mythos of gods, protective beings (that include grade school boys), strange beasts, curses and spells, all kinds of magic and dimensions. The shifting sense of reality is a feature of the whole book; once you think you have a handle on the world, Lalumiere changes it with a sad twist. It is left up to you as a reader to decide which reality you believe to be real.

It isn't a difficult or long read, but neither is it light reading. I would suggest it if you want something bizarrely engaging and maybe a little raw and bittersweet. show less

I suppose this odd little book is best described as a collection of linked short stories. All of them feature a bookstore called Lost Pages, which sells books about histories and myths and creatures that never existed, at least in our world. Collectively they involve a variety of misfit children, visions of a tentacled god of nightmares and the supernatural armies who oppose him, and people who experience encounters -- often sexual ones -- with the uncanny. I'm not sure it quite gels show more together into a coherent whole, and if it were any longer, that might be annoying, but as short as it is (about 200 smallish pages with good-sized type), the fact that we only get little half-glimpses of this weird reality that seems to exist behind our own works surprisingly well.

It's strange and interesting stuff, and apparently just exactly what I was in the mood for. show less