Public comments (Part 7) about this site of Gestalt Real-Time Reviews are shown in the comments stream below.
Continued from Part 6 here: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/15372-2/
“fine and dark tracery of limitless patterns”
— from VASTARIEN by Ligotti
HERE, Karen Heuler says this on her Friends FB:
“I’ve never had anyone review my collection story by story before, so this is both surprising and–because of the many wonderful thoughts and reactions–it’s making me very happy indeed.”
Re Collision by JS Breukelaar

There’s nothing like a Des Lewis review of your writings, and I mean that in all the best ways possible–he somehow avoids spoilers but still take a deep bite out of the heart of the story, exposing it still alive and beating and raring for more.
— Eric Schaller
Very clever and astute review of my short story TEN FRAGMENTS OF AN IDEA OF PARIS ALREADY IMAGINED BY YOU published in the anthology WE’LL NEVER HAVE PARIS (ed., Andrew Gallix) by the ever wondrous Des Lewis:
https://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/22792-2/#comment-15098
—- Lee Rourke, on his Facebook today
“Des Lewis does a great service for horror/weird fiction readers as he compiles his “real time reviews” on his blog. He’s been reviewing each story in Echoes since the anthology came out. His reviews-gracious, beautifully thought out, and written are less spoilery than you’d think.”
— Ellen Datlow (29.9.19)
RH: Well, Des, I regard you as one of the best book reviewers of all time, and frankly I don’t believe that anyone even need bother to try to compete with you on that
Me: thanks so much Rhys. It’s a synergy I hope between between me and each author, often with miraculous (literally) results.
RH: The overall project is truly extraordinary
From towards the end of one of the FB threads here: https://www.facebook.com/rhysaurus/posts/10162343759770246
Author Des Lewis’s reviews do not easily lend themselves to sound bites. They are just not that kind of review. He raises reviewing to his own unique art form with his “real time” reviews that often put the story he is thinking about in the context of the book, other stories by the author, and other books on his mind. They are always fun and thought provoking.
If you haven’t yet come across them they are fun to check out.
Hes reading Pareidolia and Nox Pareidolia at the moment.
Including my short story How to Stay Afloat When Drowning
“Going back and forth in time this is a complex story that really works…”
“Liking this story is akin to chumming a shark, negotiating the whirlpools in the pareidoliac patterns of semantic estuary.”
and Rum Punch is Going Down
“Now a trope becomes tropical” “But as in all Platonic caves we only know the shadows we think we know…”
The pareidolic caves are mentioned again in another review.
Enjoy his reviews and the books he is talking about if you are so inclined. Happy Tuesday.
https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2019/11/15/traumalising/
— Daniel Braum today
Des’s reviews are art. Art with heart.
— David Surface
Comments HERE
I love Des’s reviews. He takes a torch and goes cave-diving into your unconscious.
Des Lewis and John Clute are the two best reviewers I’ve ever encountered.
— David Mathew
Reviews do matter. Someone who has never read my work has just bought six books from me direct and is sourcing other titles from the publishers after having read reviews of my stories written by Des Lewis and then getting in touch. Flabbergasted!
— Andrew Hook
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10218306098276582&id=1615218452
Ralph Robert Moore
The comments upon this Slatsky FB post: HERE
This Toase Facebook post and its comments HERE
See S.P.Miskowski comment to my post;
Robert Shearman about my review of We All Read Books In The Dark as a public comment on Facebook :
“Wow! I won’t lie to you – the structure of the book was certainly influenced by the very particular way you draw parallels between stories across anthologies in your reviews – and thx freewheeling experiments in Nemonymous were an obvious inspiration. I hope the paths you follow (and break) don’t disappoint!”
Later, actually in the body of my review (https://nemonymousnight.wordpress.com/790-2/#comment-639):
“To be fair, though, Des – it is very specifically a book about the order in which the stories are read. I spent over a year devising a maze so that all the stories left strange and even contradictory echoes with each other dependent on the multiple choices that are offered to you by the narrator – seriously, it was incredibly hard to do! Right from the word go the book has tried to be a series of paths where some stories are accepted and some are discarded, and it’s genuinely not a collection of random short stories. It is a series of options, and of roads never taken. Some tales are definitely excluded by your reading others.
It’s your book, and your choice to read them in alphabetical order is entirely yours to make. (Though does deny the possibility of that ‘unique’ path formed by your reactions both for and against the tales, which means that it removes some of the personal element I was angling for!) . I don’t mean to seem defensive – writers should just shut up. but you did say you like it when we interact with what you write – but this was built very deliberately to be a mosaic, and your belief that reading in the stories in any random order is the same effect as the one I planned for such a long time, isn’t really true, I think.
Not trying to criticise. Just engage. I’m thrilled you like so many of the stories in my odd book!“
David Rix:
“Des Lewis has really gone in deep with his real-time review of my now very old collection Feather – and as always, I am somewhat in awe. Nobody does what he does – nobody reads like he reads.”
https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2021/01/16/o-for-obscurity-or-the-story-of-n-andrew-hook/#comment-20819
Des, you have made a new art form of your own, merging our responses to artistic works with *your* responses to the same. It’s a new religion, mate. It’s glorious.
— David Mathew