"A cracking
good read."
-- The Bookseller, May 27, 2005
"Stewart delicately
balances humor with a strong sense of place and menace."
-- San
Francisco Chronicle
* "All-around
terrific."
-- Booklist (starred review)
"Heartbreaking
and hilarious, peppered with satisfying pop-culture references
(Battlestar Galactica, Tom Waits, Ramen noodles) and informed
by Stewart's twisted sense of humor and proud redneck sensibility,
Perfect Circle delivers what the maudlin "Sixth
Sense never did - a wicked good time."
-- Cleveland
Plain Dealer
"Stewart's
compelling account of how DK comes to grips with his ghosts, both
actual and metaphorical, is alternately poignant and hilarious,
with some genuinely creepy moments and one or two powerful jolts....
Compelling ... with strong potential for crossing over into the
mainstream."
-- Publishers Weekly
"Stewart's
quicksilver wit makes Perfect
Circle perfectly hilarious. And, a supremely skilled storyteller,
he saves the best for last."
-- Texas Monthly
"His
novels deserve to be more widely known than they are. He delicately
balances humor with a strong sense of place and menace. Perfect
Circle finds him in fine form and will leave readers eager
for his next offering."
-- San
Francisco Chronicle
"Sean
Stewart delivers an urban fantasy that is the perfect amalgam
of cursed past and haunted present, of classic ghost tales and
up-to-the-minute cinematic riffs ... Stewart's mastery of Will's
first-person narration is unflinching and unfaltering. The voice
conjured here is absolutely authentic and affecting, as is the
portrait of Houston, Will's stomping grounds. Will's vast extended
family of oddballs and losers and honest toilers imparts a John-Crowleyesque
heft to the book. And his treatment of the ghosts -- "Ghosts don't
do things to you. Ghosts make you do unspeakable things to yourself"
-- is truly eerie. Readers familiar with the quotidian spookiness
of master English horror writer M.R. James will find similar frissons
here, but married to the gritty demimonde in the novels of American
noir writer James Crumley, resulting in a fusion of black humor
and pathos, blood and ectoplasm."
-- Washington
Post
"By turns
heartbreaking and hilarious, Perfect Circle is ... an impressive
example of an author using genre resources to stake out a territory
that, for the moment at least, no one but he occupies."
-- Locus
"A read-at-one-go
novel.... Everything is both stated and understated, elegant,
full of the mundane horror and fear that inform a normal, frustrated
life.... And it is well, well worth the reading. A highly recommended
work."
-- F&SF
"A hell
of a book."
-- SF Site
"The
kind of book that fatasy was invented for."
-- NYRSF
"By turns
funny and sad.... Compelling."
-- New Trail
"When
he isn't peering into other realms, Kennedy meditates on rock
music, Texas culture, and the nature of regret. There may be more
to be had from a ghost story, but I don't know what." A
-- Marc Sheehan, On the Town, West Michigan
"You
can't put the book down because you just have to know what is
going to happen next. You can't sleep if you don't find out. Sean
Stewart manages this brilliantly.... Oh, and the soundtrack is
great too."
-- Emerald
City
SF
Revu
