Totally excited for Ben's novel. I was lucky enough to participate in writing workshops with him at Evergreen and remember him being a powerful writer. Book sounds amazing.
As for the nay-sayers, it's obvious they haven't read it. While it's true that there's a lot of fantasy mixed with contemporary already out there, I have yet to find a writer who blends together the nonchalant and the fantastic as well as Parzybok. Then again, there are some moments where the magic is just missing, not necessarily in the sense of 'the book is boring,' more like 'this doesn't seem to be very fantasy-y,' which can be interpreted in a number of ways. In any case, the book itself made my Thanksgiving. If any of you doubt it, go pick the book up for yourself, I found it in a rather small (well, relatively) Barns & Noble without much trouble.
Such as: http://revoltingsofas.blogspot.com/
There's a couch picture competition for copies of Couch here: http://lcrw.net/parzybok/competition.htm
Translation: "I haven't read much in the genre since Bilbo Baggins."
As for the nay-sayers, it's obvious they haven't read it. While it's true that there's a lot of fantasy mixed with contemporary already out there, I have yet to find a writer who blends together the nonchalant and the fantastic as well as Parzybok. Then again, there are some moments where the magic is just missing, not necessarily in the sense of 'the book is boring,' more like 'this doesn't seem to be very fantasy-y,' which can be interpreted in a number of ways. In any case, the book itself made my Thanksgiving. If any of you doubt it, go pick the book up for yourself, I found it in a rather small (well, relatively) Barns & Noble without much trouble.