The Dork Review: Objects of Worship

Wow, it's been awhile since I've done a book review. You'd think I hadn't been reading. Truth is I read a lot, but a lot of it lately has been non-fiction and/or really niche items that would only be interesting for a limited amount of people, like books about kendo or samurai, or the book's been nice and all but not worthy of the effort of a blog post.

Alright then, so what makes Objects of Worship by Claude Lalumiere worthy of me taking the time to review it? Because it's freaking awesome!

Ok, maybe I'm going a bit overboard with the praise, but I really did enjoy this book. It's a collection of short stories by a Montreal author, all of it work that has appeared elsewhere. To be honest, I generally prefer to read short stories in this format. Grabbing a bunch by the same author at the same time just works better in my opinion. The stories tend to be more consistent in tone and structure, at the very least in the skill level in which they are executed.

Now, before I bought this book I hadn't read anything by Lalumiere. I was taken in by the sales pitch put forth by the publisher, Brett Alexander Savory of Chizine (real nice guy BTW), and picked this up at Ad Astra earlier this year. I think the phrase that sold me was "gay zombies raising a human child". Yes, there are zombies in this book, in more than one story. Don't worry, they're good stories and not tired retreads of an already exhausted concept. Add in at least one Cthulu-like being, a few superheros, and a dash of weird family values and you've got one heck of a mix. Sprinkle a bit of sex, in a few different forms, and you're done.

Pick it up direct from the publisher here, as you aren't likely to find this in any bookstore. That's both the unfortunate and wonderful thing about small publishers. When you find them they can be gems, but like most gems they're hard to find lying around.

EDIT: Turns out I was mistaken. This and many other fine CZP books can be found in stores across North America. Go out and find them, and if your store doesn't have any, ask for them to get some in.