El Dia de los Muertos

by Brian A. Hopkins
Earthling Publications
$30 (numbered ed) 0-9721518-0-X
$150 (lettered ed) 0-9721518-1-8

This compact novel may be only 100 pages in length, but it's packed. Multiple Stoker Award-winning author and editor Brian A. Hopkins scores again with a multi-layered work that draws emotion effortlessly from committed readers while also raising the "grotesque factor" by quite a few degrees in just the right way. Anyone who's read earlier Hopkins collections such as "Salt Water Tears" and "These I Know by Heart" will already know that he has the innate ability to slip an emotional dirk through your jaded armor and skewer your heart just when you don't expect it. You won't be disappointed with this novella, a masterful blend of thoroughly modern grief and old gods, as well as those who would invoke the latter to relieve the former.

When a terrible earthquake in Mexico claims noted archeologist Ricky Bennington's young daughter, grief and desperation unite for gut-wrenching impact, as he grasps at the one ritual which could help him recover not one, but two lives on the Day of the Dead, when the line between worlds is at its thinnest. Ricky plays a shaky hand—but what hands will the other players lay on the table? Led from a gruesome exchange to one even more devastating, Ricky learns that when dealing with gods and men, one should always prepare for the worst, because both are capricious.

The first half of the novella sets the stage with strong place details and research joining to provide a travelogue of dread—for Mexico's bloody history, its people and its gods, and its modern but anachronistic disposition all blend into a seamless portrait of a place where magic is not only possible, but inevitable. The second half fulfills the promise by bringing Ricky to the very precipice of madness—an understandable, even forgivable madness, and one he conquers. But in victory there is also loss, and Hopkins forces Ricky to learn the lesson in poignant detail. Once experienced, Ricky's attempt to right the greatest wrong in his universe—and the result—cannot easily be forgotten.

Rife with observation, speculation, spirituality and belief, this thin novel brings to bear themes found in Frankenstein and King's Pet Sematary, among others, but then twists them to draw completely different conclusions. The temple scene is alternately unbearable and riveting, and the moral quandaries facing Ricky Bennington swirl around the heart of the novel—how we learn (or refuse) to face loss... No two ways about it, Brian A. Hopkins is a master at asking the big questions.

Another superb example of the best of the small press in action, this gorgeous package benefits greatly from generally excellent design and lush, amazing cover art by John Picacio. I guarantee that you will love the way this book looks on your shelves.