YES FOLKS, IT’S A FREE E-BOOK

It’s been a busy day working on the music and there will be a major announcement in the next couple of days. But right now I’m beat, so all I can do for you good friends who have braved the heinous content warning (which I have tried and failed to remove) to offer a free e-book copy of the complete (UK) version of “The Song of Phaid The Gambler.” (The link came from our own Elf Hellion.)

Click here for the pdf file.

And here’s a glowing review by Glen Young...

“They used to say of Graham Greene that his books evoked an atmosphere of grim seediness. You could almost taste the grit, the gloom, the decay. They called it Greene-land, and it was instantly recognizable. Perhaps it is invidious to compare Mick Farren with Graham Greene (though I will not say to whom) but certainly Farren’s characters live and move through a Greene-land of the future where culture is decayed, morality is egocentric and people are only tools to use. Happy is the man who can say, “Screw you Jack. I’m alright.“
The book opens cinematographically with a close up of a hotel; half-swallowed by the jungle. Gradually the viewpoint pulls backward and more detail slowly appears in the picture. A riverbank, a broken dock, an overgrown clearing. Hot and humid; the back end of nowhere. Phaid is a gambling man, stranded in a torrid zone without the price of the long ride back to civilization. And so the plot begins. An old and classic one. Homer called it an Odyssey, and it was old even when he pinched it from the Babylonians. We have a quest, a mighty journey with adventure all the way.
We travel with Phaid as he lies, cheats and steals his way along the slow and rocky path back to the good life (for there must be good life somewhere). It’s a struggle. Farren’s villains are right bastards and so are his heroes. Even the bright light of Revolution is dimmed by self-seekers trying (and succeeding) to milk the idealism for a fast buck. If you want to sum up this odyssey, consider it as an exercise in applied cynicism. (Even the Androids have off days.)
Like Greene before him, Farren has a genius for evoking atmosphere and character. You will not like or admire the people in the book (I hope you don’t anyway), but you will admire the skill with which Farren manipulates them throughout the course of this long and absorbing tale.” – Glen Young

The secret word is Literate