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Friday, March 13, 2020

Bargain Friday: "The Book of Skulls"

A bargain on Robert Silverberg’s dark masterpiece, The Book of Skulls, and it’s in time for the socially distanced weekend. For a limited time it’s available for Kindle for $1.99.

Here is the publisher’s description and further down is a handy link to Amazon:

After Eli, a scholarly college student, finds and translates an ancient manuscript called The Book of Skulls, he and his friends embark on a cross-country trip to Arizona in search of a legendary monastery where they hope to find the secret of immortality. On the journey with Eli, there’s Timothy, an upper-class WASP with a trust fund and a solid sense of entitlement; Ned, a cynical poet and alienated gay man; and Oliver, a Kansas farm boy who escaped his rural origins and now wants to escape death.

If they can find the House of Skulls where immortal monks allegedly reside, they’ll undergo a rigorous initiation. But do those eight grinning skulls mean the joke will be on them? For a sacrifice will be required. Two must die so that two may live forever . . .

Stretching the boundary between science fiction and horror, Robert Silverberg masterfully probes deeper existential questions of morality, brotherhood, and self-determined destiny in what Harlan Ellison refers to as “one of my favorite nightmare novels.”


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