With Lost Gods, dark fantasist Brom (Krampus: The Yule Lord) once again brings life to a host of fiends and nightmares in prose and images.
Chet Moran, a small-time drug dealer in 1976 Alabama, comes off a seven-month jail sentence with a fresh perspective on what matters in life, and he sets out to win back his pregnant wife, Trish. Since Trish's father, Judge Wilson, literally wants to kill Chet, their reunion consists of him sneaking into her bedroom at her parents' house and asking her to run away with him. After extracting a promise that Chet will leave behind his checkered past, Trish agrees, but the lovers are caught by the Judge's friends Tom and Coach. In his haste to escape, Chet hits Coach with his car, killing him. Fleeing to South Carolina, Chet and Trish take refuge at the home of his maternal grandmother, Lamia, a powerful witch with whom he shares a psychic connection. Lamia offers the couple sanctuary and healing, but a betrayal leaves Chet murdered and the soul of his unborn child vulnerable to an ancient, deadly evil.
His soul cast adrift, Chet accepts a mission from Senoy, an angel trapped on earth. If he searches Purgatory and locates the angel's key--stolen by Chet's long-dead grandfather--the angel can restore the balance of life and death, saving Chet's child. Brom's Purgatory is a vast country with its own history, government and social customs. Clearly influenced by Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, Lost Gods combines elements of Catholicism, ancient mythology and pulp horror tradition for a sprawling quest powered by a versatile imagination. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads