TBR Reviewer: Mark

Tales from beneath the Dulippa tree is a collection of short stories (?) and poetry from author, M.J. Hewitt but, much more than that, is like a trip through a diseased and very troubled mind. Though he has been described by critics as "the new King of Dark Fantasy", all I can say in their defence is that they must have read something different!

The short stories, if that is what they can be called, are almost entirely made up of bloody and visceral imagery with little cohesive narrative and no attempt is made at any time to associate you with any of the characters, such as they are. Likewise, the poetry is simply disturbing and full also of dark imagery and simile that kind of engulfs you without you actually having a clue what the author is saying.

 It is not that I didn't like this ~ more that I didn't have a clue what it was I was reading. At 92 pages, it is fair to say I got through this pretty quickly but did I understand any of it? No, not really. 
 
I give this two out of five because it provoked a reaction and I believe this is along the lines of what the author intended but if I could sum this up in a phrase then that phrase would be WTF??!!?? Simply because I feel as though I could read this ten, twenty, a hundred times and still not understand what the hell it was all about!

Poetry book
TBR Reviewer: Christine

Poetry is very hard to get right and even then, it’s subjective.   

This poetry book is not ground breaking. It has some decent poems. Those are mixed with poems that sound forced in the rhyming area.  Several of them are choppy. None of them have stayed with me as I finished reading The Wicked Come. There are none that I would memorize because I love it so, like William Ernest Henry poetry.  
 
The reason I believe this didn’t work, is this poetry is nothing new. It rather sounded like an angry teenager. Love and heartbreak, even violence has been written into poetry for so very long. The Wicked Come does not take the subject to the next step. Would I recommend this? Probably not. Would I read more from this poet? Not likely.