The Untold Tales of Ozman Droom

Robin Spriggs. Anomalous (www.anomalouspress.org), $16.95 trade paper (208p) ISBN 978-0-9634296-6-7

Spriggs (Diary of a Gentleman Diabolist) evokes terror and awe in an intentionally fragmentary biography of one Ozman Droom, a sinister entity whose macabre exploits are glimpsed in legends, poems, incantations, and stories. Is he a poet, scholar, author, outsider, and sorcerer? Is he a shiftless demonic prodigy, an imposing menace haunting Reverend Gilreath’s sermons, or a figment of the imagination in a mind unaware of its dreaming? Droom even appears as a character in the stories he narrates. Medium is the message in this dazzling anti-story, a love letter to the weird. Despite obvious homage to Dunsany and Lovecraft, a distinct vision, lent eerie authority by copious scholarly footnotes and self-referential secondary sources, emerges. (Aug.)