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Nifft the Lean
Michael Shea
World Fantasy 1983

Extravagant imagery, detail, and action - like having a six-course desert for dinner. Amazingly creative yet not enough contrast to provide memorable depth and perspective. An erudite version of Edgar Rice Burroughs with adventure after startling adventure. So much action though, the suspense level blurs and doesn't have quite enough space to build.

The theme is archetypal good and evil. Though somewhat overdone, the vivid symbolism bombards the senses and makes it almost impossible to not see the aggression, negativity, and narrow-mindedness within ourselves. And while exploring these dark realms, Nifft keeps a positive attitude: "Though a light burn comparatively small in the darkness, its first and consuming necessity is to broadcast all the illumination it its power. While it is foolish to deny the dark around us, it is futile to exaggerate it."

Nifft's descriptive language reaches an artistic peak. I've often thought that swear words represent a small-minded lack of imagination. As an alternative, Nifft easily gets his point across without sinking to profanity: "you jowly sack of slops, you sag bellied sodomite, you puffed and strutting human pimple"; "They were huge in their stench too, charnel house mixed with the smell of a brothel's slop room.". And in describing a place: "Darkvent. A bottomless hole filled to the brim with shadow. A diseased mouth forever spewing its one black syllable of obscenity at the sunlight."

All this and still many insightful comments on the human condition: "Souls that burn hot enough, you see, stay in death, and win eternal being in this kingdom"; "the true demon highway to man's world lie through man's spirit; to yearn for destructive power is to open a gate to the sub-worlds"; "The essence of nightmare lies less in the simple experience of horrors than in the unpreventable fruition of horrors foreknown."

Not quite a Top 20 candidate but well worth reading for it's artistic imagery alone.

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