Bloodland Tales (Electronic book text)

"Each age calls forth its own prophet, a poetic oracle who sees past the heavy drapery we call "the world" to the prime reality that lies beyond. You should feel both ecstatic and terrified that our age has elicited M. J. Hewitt as its prose-lapidarian. Ecstatic, for Hewitt himself truly resonates with the daemonic muse, a voice that echoes from the depths of Tartarus and beckons forth, by turn, angels, devils, monsters, and gods. And terrified, for Hewitt sings not of arm-in-arm brotherhood and cozy lovingkindness, but rather of Yeats's "blood-dimmed tide," an aeon drenched in gore-bespattered corpses and unrelenting pain for the pitiable humans left alive. "BLOODLAND TALES shimmers with the decadent imagery that Clark Ashton Smith conjured so easily, and in these opalescent prose-poems Hewitt both acknowledges his debt to "Klarkash-Ton" and progresses even further into a darkness-drenched universe without redemption, mercy, or salvation. There is no way to reach out to those we care for; only broad-axe slashes that leave gaping wounds. There is no bright afterlife with grace and holiness; only transmogrification through pain and torture as humans become parasitic spirits who lure others into torment. Love is destined to end in disillusionment and despair, and we learn our world itself is the black-tinged dream of distant alien beings our brains cannot even comprehend, beings who survive only through our suffering. "You will find no words of comfort in this scarlet landscape. But for those who are able to realize the Baudelairean beauty that lies in decay, the Sadeian pleasure of witnessing another's hopeless prayer for mercy, the Lovecraftian awe of glancing into unilluminated gulfsin which madness dwells, Hewitt fills our descent into chaos with exquisite scenes, mixed in equal parts, of glamour and gore. "I've joined the Cult of Hewitt. It's time you signed your soul away and joined as well."