I will just say that I am deeply pleased to read this review of my latest Cross novel, The Apocalypse Ark. It’s nice to have a reader that gets what you’re trying to do.

Roman (a pseudonym for Vancouver Province journalist Peter Darbyshire) writes with the unfettered delight of a gluttonous reader trapped in a library in his own mind, drawing promiscuously from myth, folk tale, religious texts and apocrypha, literature, music and philosophy — seemingly anything that catches his attention. A Cross novel, at a quick glance or description, seems like an absurdist piece of outsider art, shiny objects thrown together in a fit of barely checked mania.

Anyone who has read a Cross novel, however, knows the truth: despite their crazed, iconoclastic appearance, Roman’s novels are skilfully wrought, thematically deep, with a philosophical depth and a keen sense for both story and its implications. They’re smarter than they would need to be, were they mere action novels, with a sense of literary intersectionality and deep, canonical knowledge most closely akin to writers like Neil Gaiman, Bill Willingham and Mike Carey, graphic novelists all, and three of the finest storytellers at work.

Special thanks to the Storm Crow Alehouse in Vancouver for the photo shoot! I will be back for the Dungeon Burger!