Date: Wed, 06 Aug 2003 09:53:05 -0500
From: Ron Crown 
Subject: (urth) Cybele, with bluebonnets

Has anyone read this book by Charles Harness (published by NESFA Press)? 
  I mention it because it's reminiscent of There Are Doors--written in a 
kind of magic realism with classical allusions, the same themes of lost 
love, death, and transcendence, etc., etc.  Which may explain why Gene 
Wolfe was asked to provide a blurb which he did in highly laudatory 
fashion ("There are perhaps a thousand wonderful books.  Most of us are 
fortunate if we so much as hear the titles of them in the course of a 
lifetime.  Very few of us ever touch the covers of more than half a 
dozen.  This is one of them.")  Exaggerated but it's still a delightful 
little read.  It's also a lot more overtly (ostensibly) autobiographical.

I especially enjoyed the hilarious description of the Battle of San 
Jacinto--the first person narrator is a Texan (as are both Harness and 
Wolfe, for that matter).

Ron Crown
Saint Louis University


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