Rating: 
Summary: NIGHTMARISH, COMPELLING, AND RIVETING!
Review: Kevin Grierson has a problem. A really, really big problem. His shadow has a mind of its own. And a life of its own. Drugs, murder, felonious mayhem...only a few of the items on the list which Grierson would rather distance himself from. But he can't. He's as anchored to his shadow as his shadow is to him...and it keeps him bobbing only fractions away from the black depths of certain hell. If only he could break loose, free himself of the onerous weight his shadow puts on him. The responsibility. But, in the hands of Richard Bowes, one is never quite certain who is who throughout this compelling and nightmarish novel. At once a novel about addictions, being gay, and finding ones true self, MINIONS OF THE MOON is like an acid-flashback one can never escape. Grierson's plight and ultimate redeeming journey through the Hell's Kitchen (suitably used for the name alone) of his youth and adulthood takes the reader on one carnival ride after another. One never knows whether the shadow is the person or the person is the shadow. This is one read that will keep you interested and intrigued until the very last word. You might even find yourself searching for more pages after the last one has been turned, just to satisfy your curiousity! Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: NIGHTMARISH, COMPELLING, AND RIVETING!
Review: Kevin Grierson has a problem. A really, really big problem. His shadow has a mind of its own. And a life of its own. Drugs, murder, felonious mayhem...only a few of the items on the list which Grierson would rather distance himself from. But he can't. He's as anchored to his shadow as his shadow is to him...and it keeps him bobbing only fractions away from the black depths of certain hell. If only he could break loose, free himself of the onerous weight his shadow puts on him. The responsibility. But, in the hands of Richard Bowes, one is never quite certain who is who throughout this compelling and nightmarish novel. At once a novel about addictions, being gay, and finding ones true self, MINIONS OF THE MOON is like an acid-flashback one can never escape. Grierson's plight and ultimate redeeming journey through the Hell's Kitchen (suitably used for the name alone) of his youth and adulthood takes the reader on one carnival ride after another. One never knows whether the shadow is the person or the person is the shadow. This is one read that will keep you interested and intrigued until the very last word. You might even find yourself searching for more pages after the last one has been turned, just to satisfy your curiousity! Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A complex and complicated tale of a depraved ,dark life.
Review: Maybe one doesn't need to know how it feels to be a fifteen year old hustler selling his body at the Y, or walking through a rotten tenement to score some heroin from some animal that might just as well kill as deal. This author knows and communicates the disorienting merry-go -round of addiction, the intense highs as well as the loss of perspective as experienced by the protagonist, (and through superior storytelling,experienced by the reader.)The story takes some work to get through as it really is a tapestry or mosaic of vignettes,some in the present or near past and some only in dreams of the past.Does he really have a double? Or is the wraith-like figure merely an allegory for the evil he has done? The darkness of the story is gut wrenching as is his search for humility, charity and peace. Like a gritty film noir Alice in Wonderland, the story takes the reader to a place he longs to escape from,while hoping for the redemption of the hero and his eventual escape as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Yawn
Review: This book was a complete and utter bore. Nothing exciting AT ALL happened and it draaaaaags ever so much. Save your $25 -- get The Tooth Fairy!
Rating: 
Summary: Felix Krull redux
Review: This is a terrific book! Years ago I enjoyed Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidance Man. This book also keeps you reading on and on. I can't wait to read his next book.
Rating:
Summary: Very, Very Bizarre-
Review: This is one of the most bizarre books I have read in quite some time. The tale that Richard Bowes weaves is an intricate and strange one, full of fantasy that just barely crosses the out of reality. Half of the time you wonder whether this could really happen, while the other half you realize how fantastical it really is. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, but in many instances, it wasn't clear exactly what was happening in Kevin's encounters with characters such as Smiley Smile and the sojourners. I also found the interactions between Kevin and the "carousel" to be somewhat confusing. Overall, I would definitely recommend the book to anyone wanting to take a break from ordinary fiction, but not wanting to stray too much into the realm of fantasy.
Rating:
Summary: A Fine And Brave Book
Review: This is one of the most remarkable books I've seen in a long time. Remarkable not just in the quality of the writing - which is extraordinarily fine, but no surprise to anyone who has already read the author's short fiction in the SF and fantasy magazines - but in the tremendous courage that must have been required to write it at all. It is obvious that this story is based on personal experience of the most painful sort - the kind that most of us would want to forget and hope no one else ever found out. Yet Bowes has had the guts to bring it all up and show it to us, so that he can share with us the things he has learned from his experiences; and perhaps help us learn too. Not that this is a didactic or boring book; on the contrary, the story is an exciting and fascinating one, an exploration of the Doppelganger concept, rarely seen in fantastic fiction because it is so hard to handle well. But besides entertaining us, Richard Bowes is trying to tell us some things, about the split nature in all of us and about how we have to come to terms with our darker selves. This is, in fact, one of those books that can be read at many different levels - as a straightforward supernatural thriller, as a psychological exploration of the human identity, as a symbolic treatment of schizophrenia and addiction, and many other things. It will repay re-reading; you will find things you didn't notice the first time around. Homophobes may be offended by the frank and unapologetic treatment of the narrator's sexual development; some gays, on the other hand, may not like the de-glamorized descriptions of such things as child prostitution. But this is above all an HONEST book; a demonstration that, as Hemingway pointed out, the story that is made up can be truer than any mere narration of facts. Richard Bowes is a fine writer and a brave man. I salute him.
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