We live, die and laugh

Despite the gnolls (hyena people), this is hardly a page out of the fantasy or science-fiction genre from Tahoe-area 100 Watt Press. It is, more accurately, a thinly veiled satire juxtaposing humans, who think we’re so much better off with our cars and forks and prepared foods, against loin-cloth-donning, flesh-ripping, all-consuming gnolls. J. Stanton mixes the sparse landscape of the Wild West with a colonialist slant of land-grabbing arrogance to question how far we’ve really come. The blunt (at times crude) language serves to quickly get to the point: Overworked perfectionist humans strive for a meaningless and endless goal. We anchor our purpose so far into the future, we see nothing in front of us. The gnolls, on the other hand, live only by their credo: “We are born and we die. No one cares, no one remembers, and it doesn’t matter. This is why we laugh.”