Stormy Nights Reviewing & Bloggin': The Dolorous Adventure of Brother Banenose

About the Book

Title: The Dolorous Adventure of Brother Banenose

Author: Matthew Catania

Genre: Fantasy

The Dolorous Adventure of Brother Banenose is the ideal novel for mature readers with juvenile senses of humor who enjoy satire, sex, knife fights, theosophy, bestiaries, sorcery, and some history thrown in for good measure. This tale focuses on the comic misadventures of a 14th century Franciscan monk known as Brother Banenose, who dreams of becoming a saint. Unfortunately, he is afraid of being martyred. Even less fortunate, Brother Banenose inadvertently inspires murderous rages in many people he meets in the outside world, including a family of relentless barbarians. When he learns that a precious relic has been stolen from his monastery, Brother Banenose sets off to recover it. Along the way he strikes up questionable friendships with some less than pious individuals including a sultry witch, a fraudulent swineherd, a warrior maiden, and a soothsayer who can only foresee doom. His quest leads him to The Idyllic Land Of Bliss, which happens to be beset by both a menagerie of fantastical monsters and the Black Death. The situation grows even more perilous once the Holy Office of the Inquisition arrives in town. If you were to put The Decameron, The Name of the Rose, and The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle into a blender and hit frappe, you would wind up with something resembling The Dolorous Adventure of Brother Banenose. Original paintings by the author are included.

Author Bio

Matthew Catania graduated summa cum laude from William Paterson University. He majored in Psychology and minored in Honors Humanities, English, and Studio Art. He was President of Zeitgeist, the university’s literary arts magazine, for two years. He co-wrote, directed, and acted in a short film titled FILLER!, which took the top prize in the Alternative Film category at the William Paterson University Film Festival. Then he graduated from New York Law School as an Associate of the Program of Law in Journalism. He was a founding contributor to its award-winning legal journalism blog, Legal As She Is Spoke, and co-authored the monograph Generation Mixtape: A User’s Guide to Copyright Online. After passing both states’ bar exams on the first try, he has been admitted to practice law in both New Jersey and New York. Matthew made ends meet by working as an assistant librarian in the David and Lorraine Cheng Library and the Mendik Law Library. Topless Robot and io9 have featured his articles. Additional ramblings may be found on his personal blog, Matt the Catania. When not writing or painting, Matthew is employed as an unpaid feline pleasure maintenance technician. He is currently accepting donations to help pay off his law school loans and support his polydactyl pussycat.