Wednesday, November 28, 2012

A Red Sun Also Rises-Mark Hodder

A Red Sun Also Rises


Mark Hodder

PYR, Dec 4 2012, $17.95

ISBN: 9781616146948



The bookworm priest Aiden Fleischer and the social outcast Miss Clarissa Stark the hunchback are transported to the planet Ptallaya of the two yellow suns. The duo meets the indigent sentient species the peaceful Yatsil.



The natives read the mind of Clarissa and create a London from her image of the great earth city. To honor her, the Yatsil add her onto the Council of Magicians; they make Aiden a city guard though he wonders if this is an honorary title as crime never occurs here. That is until the day equivalent to months on their home world finally sets and the evil red sun arises in the sky bringing out the blood gods.



Without a Burton or Swinburne in sight (see Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon), Mark Hodder provides a strong psychological fantasy thriller with a nightmarish version of Victorian London as the base for destruction. The Yatsil are a fascinating race of mimics who use Clarissa’s angry version of her hometown to construct a new London on their orb before morphing into a powerful good and evil confrontation as the two earthlings must look within at their less stellar acts before they can fight the enemy.



Harriet Klausner



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