Description:

Jim Blunt—don't trust him with your money; don't trust him with your woman—but if you're looking for the man to storm hell with, he's the one!

Excerpt:

From "Shallalu"
It was a shadowy, half-transparent shape like a massive dog, but much larger than any dog had a business being. As its huge head, which trailed low to the ground, swung this way and that, Blunt could see that out of its bulky shoulders grew two extra limbs. The little arms were strangely stiff; they seemed fixed in their peculiar upward posture. But the arms terminated in many disemboweling claws; the mouth, as it lifted its head and howled, was filled with triangular shark-like serrations. And though he could see the rough stone behind its long, sinewy body, he could not see through its claws—or its teeth...

From "The Thief of Joy & Light"
Jim Blunt braced his shoulders against the stone at his back, his intent gaze stabbing the shrouded corners of his refuge. In his slightly raised left hand, half-concealed by the tense curve of his fingers, was a flat small weapon. It was not as deadly as the other, the one whose ever-chilled metal and weight numbed his naked thigh beneath the lank Aspian robe. But it was silent. And even here, on mad Fzil, world and city, crazed theme park of theology, it was prudent to do murder silently...

From "The Embrace of the Four-Armed Houri"
The mountain stood dominant, an Everest shaped by fire and ash. Its febrile heart lit the smoke-blackened sky, spewing forth its incandescent guts in a ceaseless rain of molten cinders. Lightning stuttered through its endless cloud, stinking of poison and the brimstone heart of hell. It was a mighty pustule on the skin of the world, an inflamed boil that could never be appeased or salved, even by the death of a woman...

From "The Dream Miners"
The dank mustiness of the deep pervaded Blunt's lungs. He heard the slow drip of unseen water, and the moan of the wind rushing up the shaft. He fingered the beam-light hung on his belt, but there was, perhaps, no need for its aid: below the descending plate was a faint, spectral gleam. It was the light of the dream-stones, and as the cage sank, the light grew brighter and brighter...

From "The Curse of the Dog-faced Mummy"
The unnamed rock they orbited had looked bleak even from outer space, and from his closer vantage, the view was not improved. The dull, huge sun shone red in the dust-darkened sky. Dry rock and rusty red dirt stretched to the clouded horizon. It seemed the only structure on the entire small planet was the tomb itself. That, as Captain Blunt stared at it critically, proved to be a low, featureless dome rising just out of the ground. Before him a long sloping tunnel plunged into obdurate darkness...

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