The Divinity Student

Rating:
Summary: Insanely good dark fantasy
Review: Wow. I was genuinely blown away by this little novel. I have heard Cisco compared to Ligotti (there is even a Ligotti blurb on the back), but his work is entirely unique, a bizarre marriage of disturbing surrealism and dark fantasy rendered in a highly original prose style. The book is worth reading for the prose alone, which replicates the effects of a dream, at times blurry and indiscriminate and sharpening to crystalline detail at other moments. The imagery is some of the most simultaeneously beautiful and nightmarish that I have ever experienced save in the work of Kafka, Schulz or Ligotti. The plot moves with a raw, pulsating power, and the book induces bizarrre emotions in the reader which have their only corollary in dreams (or nightmares). The last chapter is one of the most bleak and moving pieces of prose that I have encountered in weird fiction. Simply put, if you are a lover of surrealism or dark fantasy, YOU NEED TO READ THIS BOOK.
NOTE: This book is being reprinted in The San Veneficio Canon, to be published by Night Shade Press. The San Veneficio Canon will also include the sequel to The Divinity student.