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Howl (The Howling Earth) Paperback – December 5, 2022

by e rathke (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 18 ratings
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e rathke's writing is brimming with imagination and rambunctious with heart. He is fleet, fun, and smart, and his tales delight and beguile. A legit talent to watch.

--Brian Allen Carr, author of Motherfucking Sharks & Opioid, Indiana

NAMELESS AND KINLESS. CURSED BY STRANGE MAGIC.

After being banished by the only people they have ever known, a man and woman wander the forest of towering mushrooms, where they meet Lady Agova, a giantess who has a job for them: help her hunt a vampire.

Set in a desolate postapocalyptic world where science and magic blend and reality itself twists and bends, where some attempt to grow a new world while others delve through the detritus of a shattered civilization, Howl is a wild monster hunting ride.
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Previous page
  1. Book 1 of 3
    The Howling Earth
  2. Print length
    177 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publication date
    December 5, 2022
  5. Dimensions
    4.25 x 0.45 x 7 inches
  6. ISBN-13
    979-8365941908
  7. See all details
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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BP4D27RH
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Independently published (December 5, 2022)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 177 pages
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8365941908
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.25 x 0.45 x 7 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 18 ratings

About the author

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e rathke

e rathke

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e rathke writes about games and books at radicaledward.substack.com. A finalist for the 2022 Baen Fantasy Adventure Award, he is the author of Glossolalia and several other forthcoming novellas. His short fiction will appear in Queer Tales of Monumental Invention, Mysterion Magazine, and elsewhere.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
18 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

kelby
5.0 out of 5 stars Come on, babies
Reviewed in the United States on December 15, 2022
Verified Purchase
What makes this book special is a lot due to how it came into being, but honestly, I've watched E Rathke's output very closely, and this is just the way this fool writes. HOWL came about as a dare. Broken River was entering a cyberpunk era, beginning with J. David Osborne's DYING WORLD and my own MERCY. And E Rathke said, "Bet that, I'll step nonchalantly onto this bullet train and whip out my own cyberpunk novel in a couple weeks." And then he did.

So HOWL is fast-paced and imaginative and full of tonal and genre shifts in the way it'd have to be in order to go from thought conception to published in such a short time frame. But E Rathke is a madman with an unpublished bag full of tomes and quick hits of all genres and styles. This fool knows what he's doing when it comes to storytelling.

HOWL is a bit of Vampire Hunter D, a bit of Princess Mononoke. There's dual-wielded broken katanas, wolves big as skyscrapers, mushrooms big as trees, and Lady Agova.

Lady Agova is one of the most iconic characters in modern literature. An amazon with glass teeth and attributes that our pubescent protagonist/narrator can't take his eyes off of. "Come on, babies," she tells our name-changing outcast heroes. And just as they follow her unquestioningly into a poisoned world of magic and vampires, so do we the reader follow Rathke wherever he wants to go in this unpredictable monster mash.
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Craig A. Buckley
5.0 out of 5 stars Silicon and pig and iron
Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2023
Verified Purchase
This is pure entertainment. Written to be read, written to be enjoyed, written because it is fun and violent and crazy. Shattered blades and skyscraping fungi. Vampire bone thrones and moondust divination. Feral children in a high tech world they never expected.

Can't wait for the next installment. Broken River is killing it with these neocyberpunk novellas, and E. Rathke is a straight slayer.
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J. David Osborne
5.0 out of 5 stars Free Flowing Cyberpunk Vampire Adventure in a Dark Souls World
Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2022
There are a few things you need to know about E. Rathke:

1) He has a clean yet completely distinct prose style that effortlessly carries you from one scene to the next, one line to the next even.
2) He's prolific. Rathke took a unique path for a writer over the past several years: he got off the internet and wrote. And wrote. And wrote. He practiced until it became second nature. As he mentioned in the endnotes, he wrote this book in a month and a half just to see if he could. The results are incredible.
3) He smells good. I don't know if that's true, but I'd like to believe it is.

The book begins with a clan of animists watching seventeen mothers tied to giant mushroom trees die agonizing deaths. There's some disease moving through this tribe. Then an attack from a motorcycle gang leaves our two main protagonists infected with a curse that swims through their bodies, a living bruise.

The clan immediately separates themselves from our heroes, casting them out into an alien world.

Names in Howl are fluid. Our protagonists are nameless and kinless, shaved bald as an egg, open to the world around them. Rathke has created the ideal pair of characters (Virgil and Vera, for now) to explore a cyberpunk dystopia. They're adults in the sense that they can fight, children in every other sense of the world. Their experience of the future is the same as ours would be if we'd been dropped there, minus our lingering stories of ourselves. And our addictions, of course.

They venture out into the world, acquire clothing, and fight a group of dog men. Rathke's vivid action scenes are some of the best I've read in quite some time. I heard once that the key to writing effective action is to describe each moment as though you're looking at individual comic panels. One panel = one sentence. I'm not sure if he's heard that, but it shows.

Virgil and Vera encounter Lady Agova, a gigantic cyborg woman with glass teeth. She is world-weary and intimidating, and she takes our protagonists on a vampire hunt.

That's right! A vampire hunt.

There is something to be said for new ways of approaching fiction. It's commonly understood that you are supposed to plan for these things, and if you don't, then you should at least work and rework the text until you've beaten it into an inert state. Not so with this book, or any of Rathke's writing. This is alive and confident in itself. If you think "wrote in six weeks" means "sloppy," you're in for a surprise.

In the case of Howl, it means "dynamic" or "organic" or "living." It's such a breath of fresh air. Such a fun way to kill an hour or two. It's really where I hope to see books start going in the future.

Five stars!
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Graham Bowlin
5.0 out of 5 stars Ready for more of this!
Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2023
Rathke takes us to a world unlike any I've seen. There's a magic here that penetrates every moment, blurring the line between high fantasy and cyberpunk grit. There are forests of huge mushrooms, vampires, cyborgs, everything you could want, really.

In case this is starting to feel like an "everything but the kitchen sink" scenario, don't worry, you're not eating a restaurant where they make a little bit of everything so it all sucks. Rathke blends all of this madness into a story that is grounded in character, genre-balanced, and moves at a lightning pace. His characters are memorable and his dialogue eschews cliche to keep the world grounded and even a little funny.

This is the first in a series and I can guarantee you'll want more of it as much as I do.
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David Simmons
5.0 out of 5 stars I Stand With Lady Agova
Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2022
This book made me cry a few times, but it also made me close my kindle, put it down on my lap and go "damn" and then smile. It just has some really good moments in it. I am a fan of E Rathke's work and one thing I have always liked about his writing is how he writes dialogue. His characters talk like somebody you know but also like nobody you know and they talk like they are in some epic fantasy novel, which they are, even though Howl is not stupid long, but they also talk like they are from the hood, but also not, which means that they talk like real people, but not exactly. And that combination gives all of E Rathke's books this otherworldly feel, as if you are reading something taboo and important, and I think this book is both of those things.

I liked the fight sequences as well. It seems difficult for an author to write action scenes but not E Rathke, as we see in Howl as well as his previous joints, Sing, Behemoth, Sing and Glossolalia.

Also, N*ke is going to be rereleasing the Panda Dunks this month, and due to their black and white colorway, people are saying that N*ke is doing this so that they have a matching shoe for the cover of Howl.
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Top reviews from other countries

Stephen
5.0 out of 5 stars Haunting and sincere
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 11, 2023
Verified Purchase
Obscure, weird, violent and gory but grows increasingly heartfelt and sincere (without being cloying or forced or unearned). Like wandering lost in the backdrop of a From Software game. First in what already looks like a promising series.
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