#Spooktober ‘A Night In The Lonesome October’ by Roger Zelazny

About the book…

All is not what it seems…

In the murky London gloom, a knife-wielding gentleman named Jack prowls the midnight streets with his faithful watchdog Snuff – gathering together the grisly ingredients they will need for an upcoming ancient and unearthly rite. For soon after the death of the moon, black magic will summon the Elder Gods back into the world. And all manner of Players, both human and undead, are preparing to participate.

Some have come to open the gates. Some have come to slam them shut.

And now the dread night approaches – so let the Game begin.

I am full of regret for not having made this glorious novel, ‘A Night In The Lonesome October’, a part of my annual Halloween reads, but so glad that from this year on, it will be.

Narrated by watchdog, Snuff, along with his fellow companions to an eclectic bunch of individuals (for example, the cat, Graymalkin, who belongs to witch Crazy Jill) this story is set in chapters which take the reader through the nights in October, up to, and including Halloween.

This year, the game is afoot as several players, most of whom will be well known to any casual reader of horror fiction/film buffs, are out, nightly, collecting ‘items’ or ‘artefacts’ for this great ceremony, where once more, Elder Gods will be able to wreak havoc upon the world.

It’s a race, a competition, but the familiars are polite, even friendly on occasion, swapping information but not to the extent that it threatens their master or mistresses’ chances of ‘winning’. Winning, however, is relative, depending on whether you are a gate closer, or opener…

I found this book a pure delight to read, I wasn’t sure what I was getting into, but the more I delved deeper, the fonder I got for Snuff, and the way he takes care of his master, gathering info, and keeping certain things at bay.

And by certain things, I mean the Thing In The Steamer Trunk, The Thing In The Wardrobe, The Thing In Attic and The Things In The Mirror. These things beg and slither and please by Snuff is a good guard dog, he does not get fooled easily.

It is a dark, funny and warm book, which will appeal to fans of Neil Gaiman’s ‘The Graveyard Book’, it has horror in it, fantasy, suspense and thrills galore, all bound together in timeless prose and illustrated with the pen and ink drawings of ‘Gahan Wilson. Pure joy abounds-which sounds odd as it is a Halloween read, but truly, to spend a whole day dipping in and out of this book, was joyful.

About the author…

Roger Zelazny made his name with a group of novellas which demonstrated just how intense an emotional charge could be generated by the stock imagery of sf; the most famous of these is ‘A Rose For Ecclesiates’ in which a poet struggles to convince dying and sterile Martians that life is worth continuing. Zelazny continued to write excellent short stories throughout his career. Most of his novels deal, one way or another, with tricksters and mythology, often with rogues who become gods, like Sam in ‘Lord Of Light’, who reinvents Buddhism as a vehicle for political subversion on a colony planet.

The fantasy sequence ‘The Chronicles Of Amber’, which started with Nine Princes in Amber, deals with the ruling family of a Platonic realm at the metaphysical heart of things, who can slide, trickster-like through realities, and their wars with each other and the related ruling house of Chaos. Zelazny never entirely fulfilled his early promise—who could?—but he and his work were much loved, and a potent influence on such younger writers as George R. R. Martin and Neil Gaiman.

He won the Nebula award three times (out of 14 nominations) and the Hugo award six times (out of 14 nominations). His papers are housed at the Albin O. Khun Library of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).