Softly He Lifts His Snow White Mane ...

Despite his work life incarceration in the enforced gezelligheid (Dutch) of the modern era, here he skips bringing a sweet offering called Platterland. It is by Rob Hunter. It is sub-headed You'll Be Happy Here. But this is less an imperative and more a winsome blandishment softly uttered in anticipation rather than trepidation, one imagines. The author calls it a “hypertext puzzle box.” And — filled with nine stories and a novella — so it is.
Certainly “The Orange Virgin” —  the novella in question — is a quandary box filled with the seminal clutter of a well stocked mind made redundant — thereby free to gambol — by an errant world devoid of all nous about the classicism once imparted to a tender youth through a stern apprenticeship to Greek and Latin Masters frequently mistaken, though no more, for antarctic birds. In it a clash of titans fills the foreground as the earth goddess and sky demon jostle one another back into their proper dominions. A lavish palimpsest of characters spatters the way, like the texture of a well painted flat, rich in hue and vast in breadth while the depth leaves the reader breathless. Call it Ulysses in Willapac or the Decimated Decameron. Hell, its really Shakes' comic countrymen gathered in a giddy fête to gigue around the good old phallus. Lots of slap the stick humor. The image of a thousand clowns emerging from a VW or a deux chevaux is commonplace. Conjure the effort of stuffing the 957^th clown in! In the 30 years Rob struggled to create his Parnassus he must have felt like that when he wasn't envying the easy life of Laocoön. Oh far far better to cope with seas snakes than with narrative strands! Golems dance with demi-urges to the heady rhythms of cigar chomping manticores while Ur Goats nod and udderful bulls bellow to be milked though they know not where. Life is confusing for a bas relief left to the imagination below the belly button.

Notice must be taken of the cover art by Anna Wilkenfeld. Two of Swords distils Platterland — You'll Be Happy Here to a heady liquor while serendipitously capturing the current political scene.
But there is more. Nine stories more, sort of like this:
What is alien? Perhaps no more than your full on normal point of view, but seen out of the corner of another's eye?

So a Fixer says to the Golem behind the bar somewhere in the Larger Magellanic Cloud: Which way to the Poconos?

Now appearing nightly: Ernie Kovacs and Arnold Stang in "King of the Wood" the new off-off Willapaq hit play from the Golden Bough.

"Three smashed thumbs!!!" — The Carpenter of Kennebunkport.
"Huh?"  — Burt and I.
"Nertz" — Unperiodic Variety.

Who was that white suited dude with the handlebars?
You mean a mustache?
One of those too.
Was he driving a late model Fulton Riverboat?
No he was in the subway. In Milan.
Oh, Mark Twain.

Memory is the available time machine. Our own Doc Wonmug dials the relevant and irreverent past to show: 'here be dragon'.

But, seriously folks... Rob Hunter has assembled a delicious assortment of adventures with an interstellar cast of characters including Flyin' Ed. Those of you who have read Rob's work before will dispute my clumsy attempts above to assault the flavor of Rob's wit, imagination and sheer narrative dazzlement. Those who don't know Rob's work ... first, I envy them the encounter whose consummation is devoutly to be hurried to commencement and savored in the repletion during. There is no second because you are already clicking on the handy order form.
For those so churlish as not to have done so, follow the links for print, e-book and audio book formats. all for the amazingly low price — offer only available this century —of absolutely not a nickel, no shipping or handling, free — except where otherwise stated in the fine print.
— ml