Good solid novel. While I didn't enjoy this one as much as some of his previous offerings, it was a Bassoff original, creepy, disassociative and unsettling.

I wrote a review that has disappeared on amazon one the publishers changed

This book would have received a 7/10 or three-star review on Murder Mayhem and More.
Review now postponed until publication confirmed

Jon Bassoff’s novels may not be horror, per se, but they are plenty scary through his keen insight into the darker corners of the human mind. The books are bleak and dark yet entertaining and insightful as well. I was happy to have a copy of his newest novel from DarkFuse, The Blade This Time, and was ready to take another journey into the darkness of the human soul with Bassoff as my guide.

When a man awakens underground in an abandoned New York subway station with no memory of his identity or past, it would be hard to imagine that things could get worse for him. Unfortunately, it can. Using part of a blood-stained wad of cash he finds in his pockets, the man rents a cheap apartment that had been abandoned by a strange artist, Max Leider, who had taken off and left most of his possessions behind. With nothing else to do, the man begins to go through the artist’s belongings and abandoned paintings only to find himself growing more and more intrigued with the artist, his work, and the object of the artist’s obsession: a woman who lives across the alley that had become the focal point of the artist’s paintings.

As the man delves deeper into the mystery of Max Leider, he soon finds that his world seems to spiraling out of control. He had started off by wearing his clothes out of necessity, as he had no possessions to go along with his missing past, but slowly begins to transform himself into the artist. He begins to go through the man’s art and notebooks before progressing to painting with the artist’s paints. He even begins to take over Leider’s obsessions and it is not too long before he becomes the artist. The man may have started off with no history but find himself on a collision course with a dark past once the Leider persona takes over his life.

Jon Bassoff takes the reader once more into the darkest corners of the human mind in The Blade This Time. The idea of getting to start life over with a blank slate is one that may seem appealing to many people at first but Bassoff shows how this can go terribly wrong. When the mind is a void, it is easy to see that the strongest influence would muscle its way in to take control. Bassoff provides no details about the man’s life before the novel and that makes it all the more terrifying as he begins his slow descent into insanity. This could be the man’s chance to change his life and become something greater than he was before. The obsession, or madness, of the artist is given free rein to take hold of his mind and turn the man into a monster. He may or may not have been a good man before but there is little question about what he is becoming.

The power in Bassoff’s writing comes from his ability to face the darkness of the human mind and shed a light into its darkest corners. That makes this novel terrifying even though it is not a horror novel as such. In a way in which few other writers have achieved, Bassoff is able to turn that dark side into something enlightening and almost beautiful amidst the despair and suffering that surround it. The novel is dark and brutal but it also holds a flicker flame of truth that makes it very human as well. Even though the main character lacks a name and identity, it is still easy for the reader to understand him and his choices even though he is not a sympathetic character. The Blade This Time is a dark novel but one that has a moral to it as well. Jon Bassoff is quickly becoming a master of dark fiction and The Blade This Time is another novel that is sure to send chills up the reader’s spine.

I would like to thank DarkFuse and NetGalley for this review copy. The Blade This Time is available now.

I loved this book! A true horror story, the imagery will stay with you for a long time. The Blade This Time is a well written novel of obsession and haunted pasts.

It's the journey ...

Jon Bassoff' "The Blade this Time" differs from other Bassoff novels in being a more linear and straightforward tale.
But the people you meet here, the situations, are pure Bassoff. E.g. the scene in the beginning in the underground, that seems to be like a sort of Wonderland.
Some readers are not so happy with the introductory mentioning of fugues, since they see it as giving away the "clou" of the story. In my opinion, even without this part, every reader will suspect the ending. Mentioning the fugues only makes clear, that something like this really is possible.
All in all this again is a great novel by the author.

2.5 stars.

THE BLADE THIS TIME, by Jon Bassoff was a novel that I probably would have been more impressed with if the "introduction" had not been included. I won't go into details that would spoil it for other readers, but the insight the author added before the start of the novel basically gave me the entire plot before I read the book.

The writing itself was good, the characters (especially those in the beginning) were very interesting from a readers' standpoint, and this "should" have been a book I was really able to get into. Unfortunately, by the second chapter, I had already made the connections, and the rest of the book just felt like a script I had already read playing itself out.

Overall, I really wish the author had not chosen to include that section at the beginning, but rather, at the end. If it weren't for that, the straight-forward style, air of dark mystery, and characters could have made this a much more exciting read.

The Blade This Time is a cleverly crafted horror story about a man’s nightmarish decent into obsession and madness.
A well written tale with a distinct voice and great characters, it’s a dark and gritty story that makes great use of its seedy urban setting.
While the protagonist’s downward spiral is somewhat predictable, Bassoff’s blend of violence, sexual desire, art and obsession mean it’s never a dull ride.
Well worth a look.

The Blade This Time by Jon Bassof was received direct from the publisher. Darkfuse has been releasing some good ones lately, horror that you don't have to think about in order to "get." Take a street beaten man, an artist, a woman in black and many odd characters only Bassof can describe and you get this story. Are ghosts involved, is it mental illness, or what exactly is going on here, you have to decide on your own.

4 stars

I have been a big fan of most of Jon Bassoff's work, so was excited to read this one.

If you like the tone of previous works, you won't be disappointed with The Blade This Time. This is "black surreal noir" (think that will catch on?). The difference this time is that the narrative is mostly linear, and anyone paying attention (especially to the opening quote) will have no trouble following what is going on. I can see some readers being disappointed by this, but for me there is nothing wrong with a different approach. The nightmarish qualities and grotesque characters that define this version of New York(?) provide enough surrealism without having to figure out what the plot is too.

The Blade This Time is a well written novel of obsession and haunted pasts. Readers turned off by surreal fiction might want to give this one a try and see what they have been missing. Five stars, highly recommended.

Jon Bassoff can write. There is no denying that. He, for whatever reason, has been hit or miss with me. His latest effort “The Blade This Time” lay somewhere in-between. The writing, as I already mentioned, is extremely good, but I just couldn’t seem to get fully engaged in this one. It felt like it was trying too hard to be deep and mysterious and I kept waiting for a hard curveball or event to occur that turned the story upside down. Instead it just kept plodding along. Not entirely a bad thing, but still left me wanting a little bit.

*As a member of the DRG - DarkFuse Readers Group, I received an advanced copy of this title thru NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

P.S. Since I whined that “Factory Town” was excessively surreal and disjointed, this one felt straight ahead. I dug that, but ended up wishing for more. Evidently there is no pleasing me. Give it a shot. Your mileage may vary.

THE BLADE THIS TIME is rather well written book about a man's grip on reality. I did find it a little difficult to start, but once I got going and became invested in the characters I was able to read several hours until I was finished.

It will probably seem as clear to you as it did to me where the story is going. That didn't bother me. I may have been hoping for more - but I still found the straightforward telling of the story refreshing, especially for Bassoff.

I enjoyed reading this story, and think that if you like stories pertaining to insanity that you will like it also. I rated THE BLADE THIS TIME 4 stars, which means I liked it a lot.

I received my copy from the publisher of DarkFuse.

The Blade This Time opens with our Narrator waking in the tunnels beneath New York's subways. After escaping back to the surface, he wanders the streets until he comes across a wig shop with notice of an apartment for rent. The apartment was previously rented by a painter, Max Leider, who has fled the scene and left behind his clothes and paintings of the tenement across the street. The Narrator quickly becomes fascinated with these paintings, and the woman, garbed in funeral clothes, across the way.

I enjoyed what Jon Bassoff did in his previous books, The Incurables and Factory Town, the latter especially with its incongruous puzzle-box nature of storytelling. Unfortunately, I just didn't find myself all that interested in his latest effort.

The Blade This Time is too straightforward and linear, especially in comparison to the surreal, dreamscape narrative of Factory Town, and it was disappointing to have Bassoff spill all his secrets so early in the narrative. The book opens with a definition of a particular psychological disorder, which sets up the narrative nicely, but there's not many shocks or surprises to follow. This is a slow, psychological work of dark fiction, but it never really picks up or leads to any particular revelations, or at least none that aren't clearly, and disappointingly, telegraphed within the book's first few chapters.

Bassoff does a particularly fine job of writing those darker psychological compulsions that plague his characters, though. The Narrator's descent into madness is well-drawn, and there's a few terrific parallels drawn between him and the various characters he crosses paths with. But, for me, it's a lesser work in Bassoff's growing body of novels, and I kept wishing the plot would get more wrinkly and complicated than it does.

[Note: As a member of the DarkFuse Reader's Group, I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.]