What Da Cover Says: The Lion Communique are thirteen darkly wound stories that examine the struggle between good and evil from multiple perspectives. Jim Morrison in the wilderness of Shamans and psychedelics, capturing the soul of General William Tecumseh Sherman, mysterious forces at play in the trenches of WWI, southern gothic/noir, families at war, and the ghosts of our pasts that we carry with us, and the hope of redemption.
What I Says: The Lion Communique is a book filled with demonic/ghost stories…these ghosts and demons are not what you would be expecting, this is all about those that you carry around with you. Cherry allows us to witness the inner struggles of a wide range of characters, from a General tasked with removing the American Indian threat to Jim Morrison on a spiritual quest, a serial rapist and a fisherman filled with guilt, there are a huge range of characters to explore.
Favourite has to be the fisherman’s story, Cherry’s exquisite writing drew me in right away, so easy to picture the loneliness out on the ocean as a weird light is spotted on the horizon, what follows next was so surreal, a short story that could easily become a movie. There were a few links between some of the stories, a couple were based on the frontline during The Great War with one character linking them together, I was left feeling there was more that could be done here, it would have been interesting to see how this one person manipulated events in more short stories.
Finally, even though I said the fisherman’s story was my favourite I had another favourite, Arrival For Duty was a lot of fun, the most deserving of hauntings in the book. The story follows a “fictional” President of America dealing with an important decision due to a rather corrupt past…I have zero idea who this could be based on…insert thinking emoji here. The way the ghosts deal with the President was fantastic, had me grinning away.
I had read a few little bits here and there from Cherry over the years and this was the first time I’ve sat down and given his work a serious read and it doesn’t disappoint, the stories are fun, creepy and after only a few paragraphs he manages to draw the reader in again and again.
Gnome Appreciation Society 