Sono tre notti che un ometto gobbo saccheggia i cimiteri. L'ho visto durante i miei pattugliamenti. Due notti fa, grazie al plenilunio, l’ho seguito. Ha portato il suo bottino in una grande fattoria a sud di qui – un posto pieno di pali della luce, sopra il quale infuria una tempesta perenne. Ha consegnato il materiale a un uomo alto e longilineo, chiamandolo 'Buon Dottore'. " LAST NIGHT WE OBTAINED MORE INGREDIENTS for the master's spell. As we paused on a corner in Soho the Great Detective and his companion came out of the fog and approached us. Thank you to my friends Tadiana and Evgeny for turning me on to this book and this author! I will be rereading this for October as each chapter is a day in October. I might summarize my feelings during the whole process.

I have to say that I love the cover art. It looked familiar, though, so I did some googling of the artist, James Warhola. Just as I thought, he did cover art for some of Spider Robinson's Callahan's series. He uses the same structure, with the book's characters grouped in small groups, obviously visiting in one room. I find it very pleasing, if a bit busy. But unlike some artists, it seems that Mr. Warhola actually read the book and understood what he was illustrating. Larry Talbot is perhaps his own companion: the name comes from the 1941 movie The Wolf Man, and Larry certainly suffers from lycanthropy. Summoning Artifact: The Opening Wand, a Magic Wand with the sole purpose of opening a gateway to let Eldritch Abominations into the world. You know. The big fellow the Good Doctor put together from all the parts his assistant dig up for him." The narrative voice is terse but effective, as it always is with Zelazny, and the characters involved are all a curious and reasonably well-developed folk that I wouldn't have previously imagined myself to root for. But I do still think that it could've used to set up the scene and the conflict a little bit more from the beginning, and by the same token, it ended rather abruptly as well.La notte scorsa ci siamo procurati altri ingredienti per l'incantesimo del padrone. Mentre riprendevamo fiato a un angolo di Soho, il Grande Detective e il suo compagno sono sbucati dalla nebbia e ci sono venuti incontro.

Graymalk, the cat, and her human, Crazy Jill (probably based on one of the witches from Shakespeare’s MacBeth) Capital Letters Are Magic: Snuff describes the vicar ranting about "Creatures of the Night and Unholy Practices and Living Blasphemies and Things Like That". Streaks of high cirrus fluoresced above us from the stars they framed, and a gust of wind stirred my fur." Master of Disguise: The Great Detective. He uses about half a dozen disguises in the course of the novel, each good enough to fool all the human characters (but only one of which is good enough to fool Snuff's nose).

This book provides examples of:

The Dividual: Morris and MacCab are an example of the Syndividual; they're not identical but they function as a single unit, neither ever being mentioned separately or doing anything without the other. They even die simultaneously. Where all the other teams of Players consist of one human and one familiar animal, theirs is the two of them sharing one familiar, the owl Nightwind. Trigger warnings! Mild violence and a scene with vivisectionists I'd prefer not to have read. I know it explains part of the story, but...I wish it could be otherwise. I don't deal well with this type of thing. It really bothered me. I think Zelazny could have "alluded" to what was going on, and it would have the same effect. That's my only gripe with the book. Casts No Shadow: Cheeter, thanks to the shadow-pinning rite Owen used to make the squirrel his familiar. About 150 posts as we dissected the book to find all the allusions & sources Zelazny drew from. Wow! Would Not Shoot a Civilian: Not only humans. Familiars tell normal critters to stay the hell away and some are outraged when mundane animals (whom they actually refer to as "civilians") catch fallout from the Game, such as crossbow bolts.