I’m delighted to announce that Publishers Weekly has seen fit to award Creatures of Want and Ruin a star! Given how difficult a book this was to write, how much I have feared for its quality, this feels like about fifty pounds of bricks being lifted off my shoulders. Here are my favorite bits, because it’s my blog and I get to brag on myself:

  • “Tanzer’s charming, confident follow-up to Creatures of Will and Temper continues the conceit of drawing on famous literary source texts for character and plot material; here, The Great Gatsby crashes into the works of H.P. Lovecraft, with, of course, chaotic results.”
  • “Fin and Ellie make an appealing team as they work to figure out what’s wrong and stop it, and the depiction of Long Island is a fine example of nuanced, lovely landscape writing.”
  • “Tanzer resists simplistic moral takes.”

This was the boost I needed as I claw my way up the last few thousand words of the third and final “creatures” book, Creatures of Charm and Hunger (Spring 2020). That’s been… well, it was supposed to be less political than this book, which is pretty got-dang political (“The portrayal of groups of normal people falling into mob violence and hatred of the other groups is genuinely unnerving”—Publishers Weekly), but life holds its surprises for us all.

So yeah, it’s good! At least the critics think so. So please pre-order–links on the side-bar! It’s a great read according to people who judge such things for a living. Listen to them!

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