[orty]

Just a few words of praise for Michael Shea's marvelous tale of "Nifft the Lean". This was simply one of the most vivid and imaginative books I've read. It is seldom that I spend the extra time trying to conjure every detail of an authors world. Not so with Shea; he blew me away. Go out and find this book Read it and enjoy.

If you've read it...tell me what you think.

[Mithfânion]

Cool title anyway. Could you give a synopsis or a summary?

[jfclark]

I'm currently reading Nifft the Lean in an omnibus paperback entitled "The Incompleat Nifft," which also includes the next Nifft book, though not the third one The A'Rak.

Shea's prose is brilliant. His fantasy world is above all a comic world, where the rogues are all delightful and where every city's a new zoo. His aim clearly is not to build a well-defined world, but rather to give hints of a world with a rich diversity of peoples and demons.

I'm not sure whether his ideas are generally very original (they seem to be comic takeoffs on the sword-and-sorcery subgenre) but Shea's writing shows real talen and a real zest for the English language. One suspects that his wordsmithing could make him quite famous were he to try his hand at something outside the fantasy realm.

[Llama]

Michael Shea is very good. His short story collection POLYPHEMUS from Arkham House is also worth checking out.