Then we get to see our future hero in action. All around New York City and its environs, groups of performing artists gather. Presaged by a super-storm, SOMETHING is coming, an evil, hungry, extra-dimensional shambler, foretold by many prophets, and Professor Pier Knight, a director at the Brooklyn Museum, has prepared his own creative weapon of defense against this consuming horror, based on some words by Balzac. I guess you’d have to say, this guy’s got Balz.

Unfortunately, once the storm starts, so do errors. I went from cringing at bad syntax to banging my head on the table as the author ignored the laws of physics. If seismic activity is strong enough for there to be “lawns swallowed” (page 38) and “magma in New York City” (page 47) I’m thinking there’d be nothing left of NYC but a wasteland of rubble, and a tsunami would probably have taken out most of the eastern seaboard. Another problem I had was with dialogue. At times, the characters represent fantastic range and diversity. You can tell Henderson has a great deal of admiration for humanity’s capacity for self-expression. Other times, however, characters time-warp to 1950s stereotypes, like an old episode of Flash Gordon, or the Foxtrot sequence when Roger is writing His Codename Was THE FOX.

No lesser writers than Mike Resnick and William Shatner endorsed this book, and if you don’t get hung up on these glitches, you can enjoy Central Park Knight in good spirit. The story is full of action and really good ideas, as dragons and humans vie for dominance, and the option of an alliance rivals the threat of mutual destruction. But C. J. Henderson, for all his [?] writing talent, (I cannot believe a woman would describe the assistant Bridget with such phrases as are by Henderson employed), seriously needs to add a science nerd to his list of A-readers, and a grammarian wouldn’t be amiss. ~~ C. Paige