This story is magic, and it's not even fantasy. My mother read this to me when I was about twelve years old and I still remember the musical cadences of the narrative that pulled me into the story, that made it an expressive and powerful tale. On the surface, this story has a plot that is similar to the one of E.T. An alien worker, mistakenly left behind by his comrades, is abandoned on Earth and must communicate with a human boy in order to survive and get back home. But that's very much on the surface.

The narrative is split in POV, balanced between Tyro, the "fallen Spaceman" in his gigantic space suit. And the humans who encounter him, most significantly a young boy Erik, whose fate ends up tangled with Tyro's when he accidently becomes trapped in the damaged suit. This is a powerful, optimistic tale about understanding and hope for the future, but its also an excellent SF story. Descriptions of the enormous spacesuit and how it is used, the difficulty of breathing the air of this planet, small peices of technology are interwoven into the story without it ever losing its poetry or emotive qualities. Most importantly, its done in such a way that a child of eight years or older should be able to enjoy the story.

The narrative never falls into the trap of "dumbing down" for its audience, but does a remarkable job of remaining on target while still appealing to mature audiences. I highly recommend this book as a read-aloud. Parents and children will both enjoy the experience. The particular copy I have also contains line illustrations by John and Ian Schoenherr that aide in visualizing the story. It's not an easy book to find, but if you come across it, please give it a try--this is a treasure whether or not you are a SF fan.

Happy Reading! ^_^
--shanshad

Ok, this may seem incredibly biased because I wrote one of the stories in this book, but the option for the author to separately write something about his own work is not available anymore (or not on this listing anyway). The 4 stars in this review is entirely based on Lee's story and not my own, though. I was a huge Lee fan before I ever got the opportunity to do this chapbook with him, and I thought his story here was a riot. Like his other hardcore work, there are unfathomable depravities backed up by a very strong sense of characterization which generally goes ignored by his critics. He's one of the most entertaining writers out there, able to pull off the sickening delights of works like THE PIG or THE BIGHEAD alongside extremely layered stories like "The Ushers." Anyone who enjoys Lee's work will not be disappointed by his outing in PARTNERS IN CHYME...I wanted to say in defense of my own story that it was written for the Gross Out competition for the World Horror Convention in 1999. The brevity of the story -- a valid criticism -- was a result of trying to present a whole story in under five minutes. I disagree that it is "far from being memorable," however. I base this on the grounds that I read this story to an audience in 1999 and although the chapbook was proposed less than a week later, it was not published until December of 2001; despite this, I still had people quoting lines from the story to me a couple years later, so I think it has a way of staying with you. There's a very good chance you'll think of my story next time you go to Subway.

I've also heard of a few people who refused to finish reading the chapbook after my story because it was too sick, so it's at least made an impression.

This is definitely a hardcore horror collection, written with fiends for disgusting fiction in mind. It was written for the fun of the art of repulsion (hence the title) with no attempt to frighten anyone (though we might have done that involuntarily; we probably don't seem like the kind of guys you're dying to go to the opera with, to paraphrase Lee's story).

"Both authors are capable of better." This I agree with. You'll still have fun with PARTNERS IN CHYME, though, if you believe the gore, the merrier...

Ryan Harding (nonesovile@hotmail.com)

If you're looking for that perfect book to make yourself completely sick, this is it!

Partners in Chyme (pronounced KIME) is a 34-page chapbook, containing two stories by these masters of gross. When I first heard about it, I thought, "Two stories? Why only two?" Then I read it and understood. Anything else would have been overkill. Ed Lee and Ryan Harding achieve in these two stories a complete gross-out, enough to make you reconsider eating anything the rest of the day.

We start off with Ed Lee's "The Dritiphilist", a story about fetishes. You're wondering what a dritiphilist is, and what the fetish entails, aren't you? So was I at first. Now I'm kind of wishing I still didn't know. And I'm not going to tell you in this review. You wanna find out, order the book.

The last time I read anything that grossed me out, I was reading Ed Lee's "Portrait of the Psychopath as a Young Woman," and here he is doing it again.

See, this is why I don't even bother trying to write this hardcore gross-out stuff anymore, because I know nothing I can come up with is going to equal Ed Lee's mind. He's a sick, sick man. He's also, from what I've been able to glean online, a very nice, intelligent, approachable guy. But he's still a sick, sick man.

And Ryan Harding's "Damaged Goods" is no better.

Great stuff if you like it gross.

What a pair of naughty boys Edward and Ryan have been. I like it. I ordered this chapbook on the strength of reading some of Lee's other works and not realizing that Harding was a co-author (co-contributor?) (and not the illustrator). My gain. While I'm already on the prowl for more works by Ed, I've now added Ryan to the hit list. I can't seem to get enough of a good thing.

I'm attracted to Lee Child's novels because of the hardboiled and self-contained nature of his hero, Jack Reacher. After almost two decades as a military cop in the U.S. Army, Jack now wanders the U.S. with only the clothes on his back - no car, no charge cards - and a penchant for crossing paths with assorted villains. Very soon, the reader begins to feel sorry for the Bad Guys.

Reacher is so unpolished that one sometimes wonders how he reached officer grade O-4 (Major), which would imply managing a wardrobe, knotting a tie, and displaying minimal social skills in the officers' mess and at the CO's annual Christmas party. It's not that Jack is a Neanderthal; he just doesn't care to run with the rest of the lemmings anymore.

In WITHOUT FAIL, M.E. Froelich, who heads the Secret Service protection detail for the newly elected Vice President, Brook Armstrong, hires Reacher to audit the security of the new Veep's protective screen. Froelich is also the ex-girlfriend of Jack's dead brother. After finding holes through which a potential assassin could drive a monster SUV, Reacher learns why the Service really wants his help. The VP is receiving credible death threats. And it may be an inside job.

I would've awarded WITHOUT FAIL at least one more star had it not been a Jack Reacher adventure. But it is, and here our prickly protagonist has to play well with others: Froelich, her boss Stuyvesant, FBI guy Bannon, and a colleague from Reacher's old Army days, ex-Sergeant Frances Neagley. Reacher's talent for punitive violence is severely curtailed compared to past episodes, revealing itself only at the very beginning and the very end. In between, Jack is reduced to being a consultant, even to the point of wearing a suit. Say it ain't so, Lee!

The most interesting character is Neagley, now employed by a civilian security firm. She's ostensibly more deadly at physical combat than Reacher himself, and he admits to being afraid of her skills. So, the reader waits, hoping she'll unleash some mayhem. In the meantime, we learn that Frances, while being a little in love with her old military boss, has a severe dislike of being touched due to some unspecified trauma in her past. Unfortunately, Neagley remains mostly a cipher, and the entertainment value of her character is left pretty much unexploited. Perhaps she'll appear in a future Reacher novel. Better still, the author should give her a series of her own.

I hope the next Reacher thriller is JACK IS BACK. With a vengeance.

When Lee Child wrote the KILLING FLOOR several years ago, I new that his first novel was so well written that it was going to be a difficult book to surpass. Though I continued to buy his novels in hardcover whenever they came out, I found myself more disappointed than amazed at their quality. ECHO BURNING won me back over and made me eager for the next one in the series. I'm extremely happy to say that Mr. Child's newest novel, WITHOUT FAIL, is the best in the "Jack Reacher" series. Not only did the author manage to grab my attention in the first chapter, he kept me anxiously reading during a day-and-a-half period of time while I was at the bus stop, during my breaks at work, and into the wee hours of the morning at home as sleep beckoned me. I finished the book with a big, silly grin on my face, saying a silent "thank you" to Mr. Child for writing such an excellent novel and for providing so much fun. WITHOUT FAIL brings Jack Reacher back as a private consultant to the United States Secret Service. A serious threat has been made against the newly elected Vice President, and the head of his protection detail, M.E. Froelich, believes that there's a possibility the threat is coming from inside the Service. She uses her previous relationship with Jack's late brother, Joe, as a lure to get our ex-military policeman to help her investigate the threat and hopefully to prevent the Vice President from being assassinated. Jack, knowing that two heads are better than one, calls in his own Army friend, Frances Neagley, to assist him in tracking down the potential killers and to watch his back. Together, they quickly begin to find flaws in the protection detail around the Vice President and realize that there's no way they can actually stop someone from killing the government official. Their only course of action is to anticipate the moves of the would-be assassins and to attack first. What Jack doesn't anticipate, however, is that he will fall in love with his dead brother's former girlfriend, which only adds to the problems he has to solve before the bodies start piling up. Though WITHOUT FAIL is low on action, the story line more than makes up for it with its multi-layers of suspense that keeps the reader speculating as to whether or not the threat to the Vice President is coming from within or outside of the Secret Service. We also learn more about Jack's brother, Joe, and their relationship with each other. Jack comes alive in ways that make him seem more human and gives us a greater understanding of why he's such a loner. With an inside look at how difficult it is for the Secret Service to protect a politician, WITHOUT FAIL delivers in every way, leading us to an ending that will satisfy even the harshest of critics. If you enjoyed the other "Jack Reacher" novels, then you're going to love the newest edition to the series.

In charge of providing secret service protection to Vice President elect Brook Armstrong, M.E. Froelich worries about keeping the former North Dakota senator safe. She remembers a discussion with her deceased mentor and lover Joe Reacher that the best way to do a security audit is to use an outsider. She traces Joe's brother Jack, who has no paper trail, through a bank transaction in Atlantic City. M.E. hires Jack to "assassinate" the vice president.

When several days pass with no attempts by Jack, M.E. figures he did not try until he suddenly contacts her. Jack and his cohort Frances Neagley prove to M.E. that they had three definite hits on the VP if they chose to really kill him. M.E. invites Jack and Frances to meet her boss, Stuyvesant as the mock security audit was more than a test as the newly elected Veep has received threats. The Secret Service hires them to uncover if the threats are genuine and to help prevent the killing of the vice president.

Jack Reacher is already a great protagonist, but his latest appearance, WITHOUT FAIL, is his strongest adventure yet because he stays in character yet works inside a great political thriller that reaches into the highest levels of DC. Though the story line is loaded with action, the key cast members are fully developed so that new readers know Jack and long term fans appreciate Frances and M.E. Readers will demand more tales of Jack and Frances perhaps in her own series while placing Lee Child's novel at the top of the year's political thrillers.

Harriet Klausner

This book is also named "Displaced Person" and I, a 15 year old student read it in less than one hour. A short story? Just about. It almost seems as though the author has written a short story, been told how excellent it is, and prompted to write it into a novel!

Misplaced Persons is a 'different' read, the author taking on an unusual approach to character development and overall narrative. The tension is set from the beginning, and does not stop until the very end...each little 'climax' adding more and more...enough to drive you insane!

Although Misplaced Persons has been given many awards, I would not reccomend it for a good read by the fireplace. It is a book to read while in bed....and wanting to get to sleep in a hurry.

I havn't read it since it's first publication, but Misplaced Persons remains vividly in my recollection. A young man finds his link with the physical world around him disappearing, and he must figure out a way to survive. This short novel truly provokes a "sense of wonder". If you can find it, get it.