It's really, really good, and deserves its reputation. gimme a good ol' fashioned vampire,' give The Fisherman a shot. I'm looking forward to reading more by him.If the big beasties and inter-dimensional reverberations of 'cosmic' horror don't automatically make you roll your eyes and say 'c'mon. He's one of the founders of the Shirley Jackson Awards, for which he served as a juror during its first three years. With Paul Tremblay, Langan co-edited Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters. At the very beginning of the novel, Abe, the narrator, whose wife died of cancer, states that other people’s compassion quickly fades away and sooner or later you are left alone with your pain. The Fisherman won the Bram Stoker and This Is Horror Awards for superior achievement in a novel. Langan also, thank goodness, avoids any tie-in to Judaeo-Christian anything, which means that, outlandish as the mythology behind the book may seem, I can't reject it out of hand because it's something I've rejected already.There were occasional places where I thought Langan's reach exceeded the power of his prose, but the book is well-written and Langan is a very thoughtful guy (I am listening to a podcast called 'Talking Scared' and he is certainly steeped in his chosen genre's history and traditions). One of the main topics discussed in John Langan’s The Fisherman is pain associated with the loss of our closest ones. Lovecraft being cosmic horror's exemplar) as to seem like a pastiche, or an homage, or anything like that. It's a great example of what the kids today call 'cosmic horror,' but it is not so Lovecraftian (H. I thought this a superb horror novel and finished it in two days.

The Fisherman by John Langan