[Cal Leandros 01] • Nightlife

**The Barnes & Noble Review**

With the dark humor and violent intensity of Anthony Burgess's 1962 dystopian masterwork, *A Clockwork Orange,* and the supernatural ambiance of Simon R. Green's masterfully macabre Nightside novels (*Something from the Nightside, Agents of Light and Darkness,* et al.), Rob Thurman's debut novel, *Nightlife,* could be the love child of Lenny Bruce and H. P. Lovecraft.

Caliban "Cal" Leandros has got serious issues. His mother is a down-and-out con artist whose fortune-telling scam has long ago lost its shine. Living in a run-down trailer, she cares more about where she's going to get her next bottle of rotgut and pack of smokes than she does about the well-being of her two sons. Cal's deadbeat dad is, well, a monster. With only his butt-kicking big brother, Niko -- a "blond Bruce Lee" -- to watch over him, Cal has been on the run from the nightmarish Grendels for four years. But what would bloodthirsty monstrosities -- whose primal passions are violence, destruction, and mayhem -- want with a half-breed human? When Cal eventually finds out the reason for the Grendels' interest in him, he is forced to make some very difficult decisions -- decisions that could forever alter humankind

While some readers may find Cal's incessant outbursts of sullen, preadolescent behavior and bitingly sarcastic humor trying, dark fantasy fans who enjoy their novels with plenty of smart-ass attitude will find this chaotic and raging debut refreshingly unreserved and impenitent in its over-the-top narrative style. *Paul Goat Allen*