Glowing notices for Joe R. Lansdale’s Lords of the Razor
Mark Graham of The Rocky Mountain News has this to say about Joe R. Lansdale’s Lords of the Razor:
Whether you’re an avid reader or a dedicated book collector, $100 is a lot to pay for a book. On the other hand, with the average price for an “ordinary” hardcover edition averaging between $25 and $30 these days, occasionally such an expenditure might be justified.
Consider a book that contains original stories unavailable in any other form by top names in the supernatural-horror field, all wrapped in a finally crafted tome, housed in a custom slipcase and signed by the authors. One might regard such a purchase an investment - a venture not necessarily less risky than the stock exchange but certainly one more enjoyable.
In 1985, Joe Lansdale, an East Texas rose picker and sometime horror and Western writer, turned out a nasty little story that would define him as a force and standard-bearer in the area of graphic supernatural terror. That story, The God of the Razor, reproduced as the first entry in this anthology, introduced one of the devil’s minions: a being with a jet-black complexion who wears a top hat with razor blades on the band. His teeth look like stick pins, he uses human heads for footwear and he dispatches folks with an oversized straight razor.
After Lansdale’s brief, unique tale, 11 other authors follow with their own interpretations of the character, before Lansdale (”hisownself”) adds a new, disturbing reprise.
Among the highlights is a rare novella by Bradley Denton that includes not only the God of the Razor but Denton’s trademark character, Jimmy Blackburn. For me, this alone makes the investment worthwhile.
Their stories, each illustrated with a frightening drawing by award-winning artist Glenn Chadborne, feature the razor god in settings as diverse as Vietnam, a stately British manor and various American locales. Some are perversely humorous, but all are genuinely frightening and guaranteed to make you opt for shaving with an electric razor.
And this, from Locus magazine:
Lords of the Razor is another, rather more expensive, Lansdale-related anthology project, and it also revels in larger-than-life pulp territory… This limited edition invites several talented writers to use Lansdale’s character as they see fit, with some impressively bloody results.