Andy Davidson (1) (1978–)

A Southern Gothic with a lot of gore. It’s a bit of a muddle, with names that invoke Shakespeare’s Tempest, elements of Eastern European mythology, all sloshing together in the muck of the swampy Arkansas bayous. The language is florid, and the action is violent and grim, of the sort that makes it hard for me to want to keep reading because horrible things happen unrelentingly to good people, and to morally ambiguous people, and to downright evil people, who outnumber the good ones by quite a lot. But I kept reading to see how it all turned out, despite that where and why things went the way they did wasn’t always entirely clear, even at the end.

On the plus side, the florid language did evoke the bayous’ sights, smells, and sounds almost tangibly. And there are two or three really interesting and well-drawn characters.… (meer)