Lost Gods: A Novel

by Brom, R. C. Bray (Read by)

Overview

A young man descends into Purgatory to save his wife and unborn child in this gorgeous, illustrated tale of wonder and terror from the mind of master storyteller and acclaimed artist Brom.Fresh out of jail and eager to start a new life, Chet Moran and his pregnant wife, Trish, leave town to begin again. But an ancient evil is looming, and what seems like a safe haven may not be all it appears.Snared and murdered by a vile, arcane horror, Chet quickly learns that pain and death are not unique to the living. Now the lives and very souls of his wife and unborn child are at stake.To save them, he must journey into the bowels of purgatory in search of a sacred key promised to restore the natural order of life and death. Alone, confused, and damned, Chet steels himself against the unfathomable terrors awaiting him as he descends into death’s stygian blackness. With Lost Gods, Brom’s gritty and visceral prose takes us on a haunting, harrowing journey into the depths of the underworld. Thrust into a realm of madness and chaos, where ancient gods and demons battle over the dead, and where cabals of souls conspire to overthrow their masters, Chet plays a dangerous game, risking eternal damnation to save his family.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781441721556
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	10/25/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 5.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Brom has, over the past decades, lent his distinctive vision to all facets of the creative industries,
from novels and games to comics and film. Along with The Child Thief, he is the author of the award-winning illustrated horror novels The Plucker and The Devil’s Rose. He is currently kept in a dank cellar somewhere just outside of Seattle.

R. C. Bray is an award-winning audiobook narrator with over 180 titles to his credit. Besides winning three AudioFile Earphones Awards, he won the prestigious Audie Award in 2015 for Best Science Fiction Narration and has been an Audie Award finalist seven times. He has been a finalist for the Voice Arts Award, and in 2014, his narration earned a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award.

Editorial Reviews

08/15/2016
Fantasy artist and author Brom creates a fascinating vision of the underworld in this sprawling dark novel, but the quest story that crosses the landscape is unsatisfying. It’s 1976, and 24-year-old bumbler Chet Moran has just served seven months in county prison in rural Alabama for drug possession. He reunites with his pregnant girlfriend, Trish, and they elope to Chet’s ancestral home, Moran Island, S.C., where his grandmother Lamia welcomes them with open arms. The island is not the haven it appears to be, though, and when Chet is murdered, he must cross through purgatory, which is currently in a state of perilous upheaval, to save Trish and their baby from a bleak fate. Brom clearly wants to show off his worldbuilding and much of Chet’s journey through the afterlife involves him stumbling into situations that could have been compelling, but Chet treats them as mere obstacles impeding his quest, which dulls their impact. The momentum is entirely driven by plot, and many characters seem more like puppets than people. The prose is evocative and the settings are brilliantly crafted, but unwelcome surprises (including upsetting things happening to the baby and many of the other female characters) and confusing, contradictory metaphysics (which both draw on and disparage non-Christian traditions) detract from the experience. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

05/15/2016
Artist/author Brom's Krampus and The Child Thief were decidedly different retellings of familiar fairy tales, but here Brom offers an original story. Murdered by a lurking, ancient evil, newly minted ex-con Chet Moran must save his wife and their unborn child by traveling deep into Purgatory—which, as the 35 color and black-and-white images suggest, looks a lot like hell. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

Library Journal

2016-08-03
Underworld fantasy from the artist, games designer, and novelist (Krampus, 2012, etc.).Released from jail for drug dealing, trying to start a new life, Chet Moran goes to meet his pregnant girlfriend, Trish, hoping that her father, Judge Wilson, who’s implacably opposed to their union, isn’t home. Trish agrees to run off with him, but Coach, Chet’s old high school nemesis, tries to stop their hurried departure, and Chet accidentally sideswipes him with the car. The pair heads for Chet’s grandmother, with whom Chet has a psychic connection and whom he believes to be a witch. Malevolent child-ghosts surround Lamia’s isolated house; Lamia explains that Chet’s evil grandfather Gavin killed them and tried to kill her too. Chet, totally fooled, agrees to stay, but Lamia kills him and reveals something of her horrid plans for Trish and their unborn daughter. Now a despairing ghost, Chet encounters Senoy, an angel who lost most of his powers when Gavin stole his divine key. If Chet can recover the key for Senoy, the angel will be able to defeat Lamia, allowing Chet to reclaim Trish and their child. But to find Gavin, Chet must descend to purgatory, where, he will learn, nothing is what it seems and some things are much worse than being dead. Chet’s exciting adventures occur in an inventive hodgepodge of mythical and literary netherworlds that owe little to logic, where the intention seems more to dazzle than illuminate. An oddly schizophrenic yarn—organized above, chaotic below—but fans of Brom’s weirdly offbeat imagination will find much to admire.

Kirkus Review