Liam Sharp

Lovely SFX review in the May 2009 issue:

SFX REVIEW
Comic artist turns fine fantasy writer

AUTHOR: Liam Sharp
PUBLISHER Mam Tor Publishing – 304 pages - £8.99
ISBN: 978-0-9549998-6-5 – Out: April 10

Four stars

Comic artist shifts job description to comic writer is a well-trodden path. Comic artists are, after all, visual storytellers. Comic artist becomes fantasy novelist however, is a far more unusual tangent. If you’ve been a fan of Liam Sharp’s Frank Frazetta meets HR Giger-esque comic art – muscled barbarians mixed with Blade Runner neon and detritus-swept colour schemes - you’ll know that this is a creator with a distinct vision, dedicated to creating tangible other worlds. God Killers is Sharp fleshing these fantasy landscapes out, giving them detail and life.

It’s something he does remarkably well. The main strength of the prose and poetry collection God Killers, and its near 200 page central story, Machivarius Point, is how fully formed Sharp’s fantasy feels. The different races, the descriptions of the architecture, the history of its worlds – Sharp’s commits them with great confidence. God Killers does that most difficult thing in fantasy fiction. It absorbs its influences –China Mieville (who offers a praising cover quote and gave advice on the proof), Lovecraft and M John Harrison – but feels like a personal, unaffected realisation nonetheless.

That same strength is also its relatively minor weakness. Sharp sometimes gets caught up in descriptive passages when the plot should move on. He knows how to tease a reader though – Hergal, his warrior central character (a healthily macho, sword-skilled protagonist) travels across other worlds and inhabits other lives but can’t recall why, and Sharp is skilfully economic in how he reveals the truth. When the finale comes it’s suitably epic, dealing with eternity, nothingness and ‘vile space’. It would be too easy to describe God Killers as a promising debut. Sharp writes fantasy with the assurance of an otherworld-seeing prophet.

Rob Williams

Also:

SF site interview