Countdown to Christmas: Reason Number Nine to Buy The Servant of the Manthycore

Okay, several of you have written to me saying that you really did have legitimate fiduciary conflicts preventing a purchase of my book, The Servant of the Manthycore. Two things--if you can use "Fiduciary conflict" with a straight face, then you are clearly a poseur covering up your inadequacies with a slacker façade. Go get a job, slacker. Someday you’ll thank me, and so will your mother. She will need that basement space you are living in to store the fabric she will be able to afford when you finally move out and stop sponging off of her. And secondly, the joker who sent me the picture of his Mom in the iron lung? Cute, but your Photoshop skills need honing a little. And unless your Mom is Barbara Billingsley, I ain’t buying it. I mean, really, who wears pearls in an iron lung?

If this edition of Countdown to Christmas: Ten Reasons to Buy my Book seems a little Mom heavy, it is because reason number nine will compare The Servant of the Manthycore (available by simply clicking the handy link below) to that favorite of Moms everywhere, the classic love novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

Countdown to Christmas: Ten Reasons to Buy my Book, Reason Number 9: Servant of the Manthycore is a lot like Wuthering Heights, only with more swords and monsters and human sacrifice and stuff.

Let’s run through the similarities first. Wuthering Heights is famous for its circular structure and innovating plotting. So is Servant of the Manthycore—its first story uses a circular timeline, and as an episodic novel the plotting covers important events in the timeline without dragging the reader through bridging exposition.

Wuthering Heights is a story of timeless love, told through the eyes of several of the stories characters, which creates a rich tapestry of history and narrative. The Servant of the Manthycore also is a story of timeless love, spread over 800 years as the Servant takes people out into the deserts and feeds them to the monster, in order to preserve her love held captive by the Beast, and is also told through the viewpoint of several of the stories characters, creating a similar rich tapestry of history and narrative.

And the most important similarity between Wuthering Heights and The Servant of the Manthycore? You haven’t read either one, you mook! This is easily fixed by clicking on the link below, because if you don't buy it, you can't read it! (I’m sure you can find a nice copy of Bronte there, too.)

Okay, now let's look at some of the reasons why Servant of the Manthycore might be better than Wuthering Heights. Both have supernatural aspect--Bronte uses the device of ghosts and their warnings as both a plot-driver and as a way of maintaining a gothic feel to the story, but she totally punks out. Not one of her several ghosts ever rips someone's head off, or offers them immortality in return for their eternal service as hit-woman for an ancient Syrian Death Goddess. In fact, The Servant of the Manthycore rocks pretty hard when it comes to supernatural beings and body count, and the whole immortality for service is a conceptual backbone of the story.

Wuthering Heights uses an exotic and mysterious setting to create a mood of melancholy, deep history and brooding. The name of the novel itself refers to the stormy and wind-lashed cliffs and moors of Yorkshire. The Servant of the Manthycore uses the exotic mysterious setting of bronze-age Mesopotamia to create a setting of deep history, but where Bronte completely drops the ball and doesn't even include one human sacrifice by ancient Druids or some other cult, The Servant of the Manthycore is full of ancient cults and sacrifice including at least one (don’t want to spoil it) ichor-dripping ziggurat in a city of the dead. Advantage: Manthycore!

Finally, while I have to admit that Wuthering Heights has some of the most vivid and well-drawn characters in the history of English letters, and the relationships between the various narrators and characters are complex, rich and vital, not one of them is an 800 year-old sword babe. Cathy, though a strong character, is too indecisive and a whole bunch of her problems would be simplified by taking a few folks out into the moors and returning alone. But she doesn't, which is the final nail in the coffin of Wuthering Heights.

So if your mom or some other family member or friend simply adored Wuthering Heights, you won't go far wrong by surprising them with a copy of The Servant of the Manthycore. And while you are at it, pick up one for yourself, by simply clicking that little link below. You know you want to!

*Tomorrow, Countdown to Christmas: Ten Reasons to Buy my Book (CtC:TRtBmB) Reason Number 8: Lose weight, feel better, and improve your attraction to the opposite sex!

Buy Servant of the Manthycore!