Chuck… Chuck… Chuck.  Seriously.  Is there anything you can’t write?

How do you take a main character that seems about as unsympathetic as you can get (just short of him being a pedophile serial killer) and make me rooting for him by the end of the book?  I mean standing-up-and-hollering-like-a-fool rooting for him!  I thought I was going to have to drudge through with Mookie as a character, but I loved him!  That lug…

Chuck is an amazing author. And The Blue Blazes is some of his best work yet.  He weaves story themes that you know and have come to trust in with his own sense of humor and gifted storyteller voice to create a fantastic book that feel fresh and exciting.  A cast of characters (and, let me tell you, what a bunch of characters they are) that each feels fully-realized, different, and all acting as if The Blue Blazes is their damn book and not the Big Lug’s.

In the end, The Blue Blazes is a wild ride underground with an author that keeps delighting me and making me crazy jealous with each book.  I thought he had me at Miriam, but he’s got me at Mookie too.

Bastard.

(Now, Chuck, here’s your next writing project: Adolf Hitler as orphanage caretaker.  Go!)