City of Dancing Gargoyles - Tara Campbell
Product Details:
Paperback : 250 Pages
ISBN : 9781951631390
Cover design: Gunnar Jacobson
About the Book:
In the parched, post-apocalyptic Western U.S. of the 22nd Century, wolves float, bonfires sing, and devils gather to pray. Water and safety are elusive in this chaotic world of alchemical transformations, where history books bleed, dragons kiss, and gun-toting trees keep their own kind of peace. Among this menagerie of strange beasts, two sentient stone gargoyles, known only as “E” and “M,” flee the rubble of their Southwestern church in search of water. Along the way, they meet climate refugees Dolores Baker and her mother Rose, who’ve escaped the ravaged West Coast in search of a safer home. This quartet forms an uneasy alliance when they hear of a new hope: a mysterious city of dancing gargoyles. Or is it something more sinister? In this strange, terrible new world, their arrival at this elusive city could spark the destruction of everything they know. Tara Campbell summons fantastical magic in this kaleidoscopic new speculative climate fiction.
About the Author:
Tara Campbell is an award-winning writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, fiction co-editor at Barrelhouse, and graduate of American University's MFA in Creative Writing. Her flash and speculative fiction stories have appeared in Masters Review, Wigleaf, Electric Literature, CRAFT Literary, Uncharted Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and Escape Pod/Artemis Rising, among others. She's the author of the eco sci-fi novel TreeVolution, two hybrid collections of poetry and prose, and two short story collections from feminist sci-fi publisher Aqueduct Press.
“This strange, sharp warning of a novel is a little bit Calvino, a little bit Atwood, and a little bit Anne Carson - but the monsters and the cities and the post apocalyptic landscape are entirely Tara Campbell originals, bleak and wry and brilliantly written. I’d read pretty much anything Campbell writes, and this one had me hooked from the opening lines.”
“In this wild postapocalyptic outing from Campbell, the first characters readers meet are E and M, two sentient gargoyles who, due to covert government testing, have come to life…Campbell’s unfettered imagination is sure to win readers over. Quirky and occasionally mystifying, this offers plenty to entertain.”
“City of Dancing Gargoyles is a magnificent, postapocalyptic buffet of weird magic, unexpected friendships, and talking gargoyles that brings that vivid, eclectic, kaleidoscopic imagination to bear. I adored every page of this book, and I think you will also.”
“One day our world will be ruined, unfortunately, but when it is, may it be as wondrous as the ruined world in Tara Campbell’s City of Dancing Gargoyles. These are strange and beautiful cities you need to spend some time in.”
“City of Dancing Gargoyles is a book that will leave you thirsty, an epistolary arroyo of rocky beauty, a kind of love like the scraping of stone teeth.”
“Stones with wings, fearful blankets, angry candy, wind chimes who would rather gurgle than ring—everything in this weird, post-apocalyptic landscape is alive! City of Dancing Gargoyles intertwines the research of fledgling academics with the epic journeys of human and magical climate refugees, near-future families seeking new homes, new lives. Campbell fills our minds with the glorious improbabilities they encounter, depicting changes that test the fragile boundaries around what we’ve always thought could happen. Sharp and true, her language brings us face-to-face with the inescapable wonders surrounding both them and us every day, in every way.”
“Campbell deftly weaves between absurdist worlds and a post-apocalyptic journey across a parched American landscape, never losing sight of the poetry of the human condition. An eerily prescient adventure across a drought-ridden America, with Tara Campbell’s signature in every line: dark absurdism and existential whimsy with a
heartbeat. If you want to imagine six impossible things before breakfast, read this book.”
“Carrying on the post-apocalyptic experimental coolness of Dhalgren, written in an effervescent style, with unexpected humor and characters who will stay with you.”
“In the metaphorically deft City of Dancing Gargoyles, trees wield guns, books bleed, ghosts sink into rising waters, and creatures of flesh and of stone alike are seekers in a climate-ravaged world. This is a trippy, engrossing, visually-stunning zoetrope of a novel, swirling with storytelling that warns us, moves us, and changes us. Tara Campbell has written a singular eco-fantasy that is an exciting addition to the literary canon of the U.S. West.”
“Inventive, absorbing, and utterly original, Tara Campbell’s City of Dancing Gargoyles sweeps readers into a near future landscape plagued by both the familiar and strange, and populated with the most surprising of characters. At once a post-apocalyptic fantasy and an intricate fable about how to navigate a transformed world, Campbell’s brilliant novel left me transfixed.”
“Both a meditation on the role of humans in the ecosystem of the world and an exploration of friendship, City of Dancing Gargoyles will charm and mystify the readers with its wonders.”