The first of Joseph D’Lacey’s Snake Eyes pair of novellas, A Man of Will and Experience tells a tale where the fractured and many-layered psyche of the main character is as much an antagonist as any of the ‘spiders’ or plant-zombies he encounters.

Beginning in a dream, transitioning to a very-normal world and a hyper-normal protaginist, the reader is presented with an intriguing dilemma of a character who has noticed something that nobody else has.

The mystery gradually unfolds and soon the story begins to move from layer to layer, but whether we are transitioning from reality to fantasy or vice versa is never clear.

In this, the novella demonstrates a real mastery of action and misdirection, taking the reader on a journey through layers and layers of fantasy or reality, and which is the case is not truly revealed until the very end.

D’Lacey demonstrates fantastically how the uncertainty of one’s own mind, and a fragmented perception of what is real or true can be as unsettling and provide as much shock than any graphic description of torture or death.

- Rob Goforth

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http://www.amazon.co.uk/Snake-Eyes-ebook/dp/B007TW8N60