Lots of the characters’ actions are motivated by sexual appetites that are many things - mostly disturbing - but never even remotely erotic. On the other hand, many of the characters are by far the most despicable I’ve ever met and their actions among the vilest put to paper. And it’s set in a vivid world, parts of which will haunt me for a long time. It contains some of the best writing I have ever read in fantasy by turns tense, dark, grimly funny, and occasionally majestic. The late Brian McNaughton’s 1997 collection The Throne of Bones is a book I want to on one hand praise and with the other hold it away from myself with a pair of iron tongs. They see their fellows as impediments to feeding, to be mauled and shrieked at when the mourners go home. It vaporizes delicacy and leaves behind a only a slag of anger and lust. Hunger is the fire in which they burn, and it burns hotter than the hunger for power over men or for the knowledge of the gods in a crazed mortal. For all their laughter, ghouls are a dull lot.
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