The Evil in Pemberley House 2

This book, which I pre-ordered in February and which has just been published, has arrived here, avoiding major postal strikes. It came all the way from America in about a week or so. The Bob Shaw book I ordered from South Africa – a stone’s throw away compared to America – has yet to arrive, and isn’t expected for another couple of weeks. And I think I paid more in postage for the South African book than the Philip Jose Farmer/Win Scott Eckert book. That’s postal systems for you I suppose.

I bought the limited edition of The Evil in Pemberley House and it arrived with an accompanying chapbook, also limited edition. I’m looking forward to starting to read the novel over the weekend. The limited edition is still available on Subterranean Press and other sites, but I doubt if there are many left: I have number 141. That’s over seventy percent of the number available -  unless they’re posting copies out and not bothering to use the numbering on the 200 limited editions, but I can’t see any reason for doing that.

Both arrived in wrapping and I’m half tempted to leave them unread and pristine.

The book itself is an excellent printing, and as Win Scott Eckert points out the binding on the limited edition is different to the binding on the normal hard back. The novel itself runs to a couple of hundred pages, which is a bit light nowadays but I’m not complaining: I’m not too keen on really long books. (It took me months to wade through David Simon’s Homicide and its’ companion The Corner.)

I did have a brief look through the chapbook. It’s closer to a booklet, running at 50 pages, and has a piece about the Wildman coat of arms, the outline of the novel, a chronology of events relating to the novel and a short piece by Win Scott Eckert.