Omnibus #Two

Four Great Novels in One. THE YOUNG DICTATOR. TWISTHORN BELLOW. THE ABNORMALITIES OF STRINGENT STRANGE. THE FURTHER FANGS OF SUET PUDDING. "Rhys Hughes seems almost the sum of our planet's literature... As well as being drunk on language and wild imagery, he is also sober on the essentials of thought. He has something of Mervyn Peake's glorious invention, something of John Cowper Powys's contemplative, almost disdainful existentialism, a sensuality, a relish, an addiction to the delicious." — MICHAEL MOORCOCK "Quirky and fantastic and sometimes quite twisted, Rhys Hughes is a treat for those in the mood for something utterly different." — ELLEN DATLOW "Rhys Hughes is an accomplished player with words, plots, effects, relationships, sensibilities; you name it, Hughes tries to stand it on its head. More often than seems attributable to mere chance, he succeeds." — LOCUS "I wore throughout the undisplaceable, unsequelchable rictus of a grin of both delight and amazement." — MICHAEL BISHOP "Hughes' world is a magical one, and his language is the most magical thing of all." — T.E.D. KLEIN "Hughes' similarity to Spike Milligan runs deeper than the occasional shared lurch of phrase, for he writes as though he'd been bloodied in the same wars Milligan fought for eight decades: the same up-yours melancholia about the malice of the absurd – about the absurdness of the world defined not only as an inherent lack of species-friendly grammar in the convulsion of the real, but also a sense that anyone who acts as though he believes what he is told by our Masters will almost necessarily inflict pain on others." — JOHN CLUTE “If I said he was a Welsh writer who writes as though he has gone to school with the best writing from all over the world, I wonder if my compliment would just sound provincial. Hughes’ style, with all that means, is among the most beautiful I’ve encountered in several years.” — SAMUEL R. DELANY “It’s a crime that Rhys Hughes is not as widely known as Italo Calvino and other writers of that stature. Brilliantly written and conceived, Hughes’ fiction has few parallels anywhere in the world. In some alternate universe with a better sense of justice, his work triumphantly parades across all bestseller lists.” — JEFF VANDERMEER