NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW ON-LINE

This is a substantial book with all sorts of horror tales, wicked witches, and wizards. It is a difficult area for Michael Pendragon to work in because there is a fine line between acceptable tales of witchery and pranks and graphic nastiness. However, Michael Pendragon has controlled it well and produced a pleasantly wicked publication; and even though the editorial talks one-sidedly about the 'darker elements of man' there is a fair sprinkling of female contributors to take him to task on this. And Sean Russell Friend goes nicely into atmosphere in the poem IN THE CHAMBER OF THE FLAME:

	Go, blazing wing of lost ghosts,
	and let the poor man slumber
	in his fear; as if he trembled
	not enough upon the brink of the
	coming storm; as if he burned
	too little for the Sekhmet-Sun,

	How the farmer
	works — all spade and
	clinging mud, black
	beneath his fingernails,
	rough-fleshed, baked
	until even gristle melts