Rainbow Reviews

BOOK BLURB:
Ancient folklore and modern myth come together in these stories by author Craig Laurance Gidney. Here are found the struggles of a medieval Japanese monk seduced by a mischievous fairy, and a young slave who finds mystery deep within the briar patch of an antebellum plantation. Gidney offers readers a gay teen obsessed with his patron saint, Lena Horne, and, in the title story, an ailing tourist seeks escape at a distant shore but never reckons on encountering an African sea god. Rich, poetic, dark and disturbing, these are tales not soon forgotten.

BOOK REVIEW:
Every story in this excellent collection is truly a delight to read and a joy to behold. Author Craig Laurence Gidney's lyrical imagination and poetic prose soar and dip, propelling us to mountain peaks and casting us into abysses. Depths of character delineation vie with descriptive narrative (both first and third person) against a backdrop of intriguing secondary players. Although Mr. Gidney writes from the perspective of a 21st century Gay African-American, and vitally explores that viewpoint, his stories reach out to touch every reader in profound and stirring fashion.

I found myself after each story wanting both to read on and simultaneously to turn back to the beginning of the story I had just finished, to read it again. Although each story is a treasure in itself, my personal particular favorites are "The Safety of Thorns," whose subtle musical-supernatural overtones reminded me of legendary Mississippi bluesman Robert Johnson ~ did he or did he not sell his soul to the Devil? history asks ~ yet is infused with the ugly shadows of American slavery. This story is an absolute jewel! Another favorite is "Come Join We," in which a young boy discovers that second sight is indeed a gift bestowed from ancestors to descendants, and that when the world cannot take too much of the special ones, they can find their home among the entities they resemble ~ those who live beyond the veil of ordinary reality.

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