Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness

Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness
A "dictionnarrative!" I can't say I was swept up in the sort of fervor that made Constance Hale "shiver with glee," but I was pleasantly surprised by the erudition and poetry in Gordon's slender volume. (I suppose I should have read the many prequels.) Tongue-tripping and intellectual--what's the difference between complacent and complaisant?--and altogether good fun. A sample quotation:

The horizon greeted us with a baleful rumble of louring coruscations as we dreaded our way along the precipitous switchbacks of Upper Trajikistan.

Say it out loud; try, though, to avoid spitting on your keyboard.

[originally posted July 14, 2004]